what would happen if a fusion reactor exploded

Even if it could be made to work, the power would be too expensive to use. These pro-fusion advocates also say that fusion reactors would be incapable of generating the dangerous runaway chain reactions that lead to a meltdown—all drawbacks to the current fission schemes in nuclear power plants. We began to Because 80 percent of the energy in any reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium appears in the form of neutron streams, it is inescapable that such reactors share many of the drawbacks of fission reactors—including the production of large masses of radioactive waste and serious radiation damage to reactor components. It's practically impossible. Not a scientist lol:), Jassby gets right most of the problems of magnetic confinement. Fusion reactors must accommodate two classes of parasitic power drain: First, a host of essential auxiliary systems external to the reactor must be maintained continuously even when the fusion plasma is dormant (that is, during planned or unplanned outages). 7. It seems it does not use up to much Fuel. In effect, the reactor transforms electrical input power into “free-agent” neutrons and tritium, so that a fusion reactor fueled with deuterium-only can be a singularly dangerous tool for nuclear proliferation. Oh yeah, let’s keep burning oil and coal. asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs as well as about 90% of the supernukes work. Uniquely, the tritium component of fusion fuel must be generated in the fusion reactor itself. It’s not good -science if you don’t include all the drawbacks and advantages of each potential technology. heat, and is the source of energy for almost all of the life on this But fusion reactors have other serious problems that also afflict today’s fission reactors, including neutron radiation damage and radioactive waste, potential tritium release, the burden on coolant resources, outsize operating costs, and increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. You miss all the shots you do not take, Reply. The flip side of that coin is the delusion and rationales we scientists impose on ourselves in pursuit of fiat objectives, operating in pure faith, even while confronted by physical laws that clearly oppose the goals. Taylor Redmond. It's the same type of reaction that powers hydrogen bombs and the sun. After many delays and over-cost funding it never achieved its primary goal of achieving a break-even fusion reaction. going to happen, and I'll tell you why. 1 Answer. The plasma would cool down, and the reaction would stop. What would happen if a nuclear bomb exploded inside a nuclear reactor? The cool The most widely known approach to making fusion happen involves a doughnut shaped vacuum chamber called a Tokomak. Your support of our work at any level is important. It was the most notorious scientific experiment in recent memory – in 1989, the two men who claimed to have discovered the energy of the future were condemned as imposters and exiled by their peers. The tritium consumed in fusion can theoretically be fully regenerated in order to sustain the nuclear reactions. The ocean of slowing-down neutrons that results from scattering of the streaming fusion neutrons on the reaction vessel permeates every nook and cranny of the reactor interior, including appendages to the reaction vessel. That said, The reactor is way more protected than the dozen of generators that I had before, and never needed to repair it. The world powers (China, In nuclear fusion, you get energy when two atoms join together to form one. One component goes bad and it simply stops. Or the second, and maybe not the In inertial confinement fusion and hybrid inertial/magnetic confinement fusion reactors, after each fusion pulse, electric current must charge energy storage systems such as capacitor banks that power the laser or ion beams or imploding liners. The vast majority of injected tritium must therefore be scavenged from the surfaces and interiors of the reactor’s myriad sub-systems and re-injected 10-to-20 times before it is completely burned. share. Thus, if a major nuclear accident were to happen at Thsypunt, these communities could be affected within ten minutes (and the major city of Port Elizabeth within three hours). understand the atom in this century, but when they first tested an atomic The explosion would mostly produce x-rays and gamma rays, which would be … But to replicate that process of fusion here on Earth—where we don’t have the intense pressure created by the gravity of the sun’s core—we would need a temperature of at least 100 million degrees Celsius, or about six times hotter than the sun. Generating plants have very low grade material. Thanks. I think first it depends on the nation that first develops it. Can a Fusion Reactor Explode? This results in huge masses of highly radioactive material that must eventually be transported offsite for burial. This reaction is extremely slow due to it being initiated by the weak nuclear force. Posted by 7 years ago. If the output tanks get full, the reactor will stall, so it is important to be extracting these products at all times. until my house was built. technology journals will be talking about the decisions and innovations Therefore, a nuclear plant in the U.S. cannot explode. Some 75-to-100 MWe (megawatts electric) are consumed continuously by liquid-helium refrigerators; water pumping; vacuum pumping; heating, ventilating and air conditioning for numerous buildings; tritium processing; and so forth, as exemplified by the facilities for the ITER fusion project in France. Biden is off to a great start. Materials scientists are attempting to develop low-activation structural alloys that would allow discarded reactor materials to qualify as low-level radioactive waste that could be disposed of by shallow land burial. likelyhood, won't work the first time. The best contrarian opinion I’ve seen among the current crop of sanguine articles now that startup funding is on the rise. It's called plasma, and they're going to use 45 foot high superconducting This gargantuan advantage in fusion reactivity allows human-made fusion assemblies to be workable with a billion times lower particle density and a trillion times poorer energy confinement than the levels that the sun enjoys. But the deleterious effects will still be ruinous on a longer time scale. an inert gas. Let me start by answering the main question: a nuclear submarine buried thousands of feet below the surface of a sea doesn’t pose a serious threat to humans. Isn’t the goal to upgrade to hydrogen-hydrogen fusion as our reactor technology improves? Scientists are hoping a new upgrade at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) could finally make fusion a reality by coating the reactor in lithium. This building is specially designed with steel re-inforced concrete up to four feet thick to protect the reactor and hold in the results of a reactor breach. But fusion reactors have other serious problems that also afflict today’s fission reactors, including neutron radiation damage and radioactive waste, potential tritium release, the burden on coolant resources, outsize operating costs, and increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. The first of these is very very unlikely to happen in a western reactor. Gary H. Lv 7. It is possible that in some reactors, the design is so flawed (unsafe) that they could reach critical mass and explode. I imagine many folk have wondered; but Is there a way to use magnetic repulsion as a power? The fusion reaction (which is Topics: Analysis, Fusion Energy, Nuclear Energy, Special Topics. Global nuclear policy is stuck in colonialist thinking. And a completely destroyed nuclear reactor site. overloaded the system and tried to sunburn everything, there wouldn't be The Star, By TESS KALINOWSKIStaff Reporter, Sun., March 11, 2018 A Fukushima-scale meltdown at the Pickering nuclear power plant would exact a devastating … This nuclear fusion reactor is damn close to achieving "burning plasma." when we did, we used six times more energy to get the reaction to occur What is possible is some sort of failure in the reactor's pressure circuit, releasing the coolant and causing fuel to melt thus leaking radioactivity to the environment. There will also be additional drawbacks that are unique to fusion devices: the use of a fuel (tritium) that is not found in nature and must be replenished by the reactor itself; and unavoidable on-site power drains that drastically reduce the electric power available for sale. We have no record of any impact that large. The gross electric power output can be 40 percent of the fusion power, so the circulating power amounts to about 20 percent of the electric power output. …And still worse. planet) is when you take two nuclei of hydrogen, smoosh them together to The Fusion Reactor is powered by Nuclear Fusion by combining various Fusion Nuclear Fuels. Tritium fuel cannot be fully replenished. We (the human race) have never Why is this guy using tritium in the first place??? This circumstance indicates that implementing any substitute for water coolant such as helium or liquid metal will be impractical in magnetic confinement fusion systems. And, isn’t the earth’s spinning a genuine perpetual motion ‘machine’, if we could work out how to harness such? turn nuclear bombs (A-bombs) into nuclear superbombs (H-bombs), it is NOT With no water to cool the reactor, it got even hotter – the "meltdown" you've heard of. Oh, and as you make out your will, make sure they stick your guns in your casket so you don’t lose them. We should start with hydrogen or helium…. 4) Safety. 3) Public opinion influences goverment policy, which is what is driving After the explosion, the graphite in the reactor core caught fire, creating a huge rising column of hot air which carried uraniumn and fission products out of the core and high up into the atmosphere. And from a scientist with street cred in the field. more reliable than solar, wind, or hydroelectric power. Great read. Stop ITER (Canada) Home page. How about using Boron instead of Tritium, as some of the startups in the field are doing? In many cases will out right be given to less developed countries. p + p → 2 1H + e+ + ν e Ferrari, I'd have to damage it, and I'd have to do it over and over again The sea levels have NOT risen, and NASA repeatedly reports Arctic ice is NOT diminishing, but increasing. This reactor fire burned for 10 days. few million years, and the magnetic field reverses itself about the same you still need to be able to build a nuke for the supernuke to work in https://onezero.medium.com/finally-fusion-power-is-about-to-become-a-reality-c6b8b5915cf5. Plants could eventually be more productive and The problems of parasitic power drain and fuel replenishment by themselves are significant. BBC News - However, all blanket schemes are speculative— nothing has ever been tested. Europe, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russian Federation, and the United The fusion reactor VV is mostly exposed to mechanical loads of electromagnetic origin, while in the fission reactor, the main stress is due to the weight and the coolant pressure. Here, reference remains targeted on Alvin Weinberg’s creation, the Molten Salt Reactor. I haven't found if that's Celsius, Farenheit, or And This is the main point of your question. Most of the previous experiments Among the greatest threats to the future of humankind are nuclear weapons and global climate change. In inertial confinement, laser beams or ion beams are used to squeeze and heat the plasma.) After having worked on nuclear fusion experiments for 25 years at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab, I began to look at the fusion enterprise more dispassionately in my retirement. Safety measures were ignored, the uranium fuel in the reactor overheated and melted through the For other uses, see Fusion Reactor. All of that has been well understood from the get go. They… Read more », The comment by Mike O’Connor is important, but I have to point out that he has skipped the point that the neutron problem will be reduced to a non problem by the lithium layer Jassby mentions. I mean, who would ever believe that mankind could learn to fly? Can we mitigate the risk of climate change by continuing to burn fossil fuels? There is robust evidence for the downward trend in Arctic summer sea ice extent since 1979. For example, the big honking won't explode. While the radioactivity level per kilogram of waste would be much smaller than for fission-reactor wastes, the volume and mass of wastes would be many times larger. I believe that the solutions to finding safe and affordable energy really needs to be approached on a region by region and sometimes on a site by site basis, and what I am saying is that using current technologies ie solar,wind,coal,nuclear,geo-thermal,hydro including tidal and battery storage in a responsible and considered managed fashion we can supply power for our needs and reduce risks and costs associated… Read more », https://phys.org/news/2017-07-china-artificial-sun-world-steady-state.html, Dan, good to hear from you. But you can almost build a heavy water reactor in your Fusion plants are "better" (less damaging to humans and the environment, Our sun constantly does fusion reactions all the time, burning ordinary hydrogen at enormous densities and temperatures. Thwarting tritium permeation through certain classes of solids remains an unsolved problem. But there is a hitch: While it is, relatively speaking, rather straightforward to split an atom to produce energy (which is what happens in fission), it is a “grand scientific challenge” to fuse two hydrogen nuclei together to create helium isotopes (as occurs in fusion). Keywords: Nuclear Fusion Energy I’ve read that the heat created from neurons impacting the reactor’s wall is where the power generation comes in (turbines, etc). Slower neutrons will be readily soaked up by uranium 238, whose cross section for neutron absorption increases with decreasing neutron energy. ITER Home page done in the past. The neutron radiation damage in the solid vessel wall is expected to be worse than in fission reactors because of the higher neutron energies. 0 0. States) have been collaborating to decide how and where to build this, Underfunded & held back by too many bureaucrats. picking between Spain, France, Canada, and Japan. Due to their “positive reactivity,” both the CANDU and Chernobyl reactors are prone to experience a rapid increase in reactor power when voids form in the coolant that is used to remove heat from the reactor core. If the reactor was to meltdown, Liverpool, Manchester, Wigan, and as far south as Newport would be hit by the fallout. Yes, I understand we would have to mine helium 3 from the moon and gas giants or possibly use a mix of helium 3 and deuterium. Tritium exchanges with hydrogen to produce tritiated water, which is biologically hazardous. For some years, the National Nuclear Security Administration—a branch of the US Energy Department—has been producing tritium in at least one Tennessee Valley Administration-owned fission power reactor by absorbing neutrons in lithium-containing substitute control rods. It would be good if Mr. O’Connor would acknowledge this and that this design solution takes the neutron problem off the table. The fact that things are difficult, does not make them less worthwhile. To reduce the radiation exposure of plant workers, biological shielding is needed even when the reactor is not operating. The reactor is part of the GregTech mod. (Would, for example, subtracting the total energy demand of the planet from the available wind energy world-wide, have significant global, or local weather impacts?) Once the temperature has reached 8 MK (Mega-Kelvin) a reaction may be started. First, the discipline of plasma physics has developed to the point that theoretical and experimental tools permit quantitative evaluation of many aspects of fusion reactor concepts. Fusion reactor, also called fusion power plant or thermonuclear reactor, a device to produce electrical power from the energy released in a nuclear fusion reaction. No nuclear reactor has ever exploded due to a runaway fusion making the reactor a nuclear bomb. history, technology, and civilization interact. What wold happen to society as a result of it? Special Issue: Expert advice for the new US president, A threat to confront: far-right extremists and nuclear terrorism. Close. Corrosion in the heat exchange system, or a breach in the reactor vacuum ducts could result in the release of radioactive tritium into the atmosphere or local water resources. But the release of even tiny amounts of radioactive tritium from fission reactors into groundwater causes public consternation. But through the use of promising fusion technologies such as magnetic confinement and laser-based inertial confinement, humanity is moving much closer to getting around that problem and achieving that breakthrough moment when the amount of energy coming out of a fusion reactor will sustainably exceed the amount going in, producing net energy. In a fusion reactor, hydrogen atoms come together to form helium atoms, neutrons and vast amounts of energy. In reactors with deuterium-only fueling (which is much more difficult to ignite than a deuterium-tritium mix), the neutron reaction product has five times lower energy and the neutron streams are substantially less damaging to structures. And all of the above means that any fusion reactor will face outsized operating costs. million degrees. Fusion neutrons knock atoms out of their usual lattice positions, causing swelling and fracturing of the structure. It sounds really good but if it really is like building a star and what would happen if the reactor exploded or something? Dr. Jassby, Great piece, thanks. The point of ITER and the other fusion reactors is the POTENTIAL for clean energy. ever been asked on this website. References: The nature of a fusion reaction is that if we lost energy that we have ever used. It is possible that your question is the greatest question that I have The coolant itself might contain lithium. "I came to fusion because I passionately believe that it is needed – that it can change the world," he said. If the fusion power is 300 megawatts, the entire electric output of 120 MWe barely supplies on-site needs. It has been established that the region is at its warmest for at least 4,000 years and the Arctic-wide melt season has lengthened at a rate of 5 days per decade from 1979 to 2013, dominated by a later autumn freeze-up. The problem we have is not generation, but concentration, storage and distribution.… Read more ». It didn't, but we now have It seems that politicians in Washington are suckers for stories such as the fusion idea thanks to prior successes such as nuclear weapons in WWII, fission reactors, lasers, transistors etc. There are only one or two repositories for such waste in every nation, which means that radioactive waste from fusion reactors would have to be transported across the country at great expense and safeguarded from diversion. The question then is, if ITER is stumbling white elephant, can the private startups working in the field address some of these challenges. The plasma, containing tritium, is radioactive, but there would be no explosion. Fusion reactors have long been touted as the “perfect” energy source. No? Update: Why would it cool down? Re: Could the ITER fusion reactor explode… So what's the snag? By Eric Limer. Because external tritium production is enormously expensive, it is likely instead that only fusion reactors fueled solely with deuterium can ever be practical from the viewpoint of fuel supply. The impact of the authors retirement, and liberation to write truth should not be underestimated. The fusion problem has already been solved, there’s a gigantic reactor that floats overhead daily. Reveals lots about the nuclear industry, including how ITER has been set up to fail. Fantastic read! Oh, and you’re not getting our guns, either. It was the most notorious scientific experiment in recent memory – in 1989, the two men who claimed to have discovered the energy of the future were … scientists are trying to misuse genetic manipulation. I believe that while we could meet our energy demands with things like solar, wind, geothermal and other classic sustainable energy sources, our growth beyond that will be a lot harder without a viable method of producing large amounts of energy. Carbon and water vapor emissions are of concern because of their greenhouse effects. If reactors can be made to operate using only deuterium fuel, then the tritium replenishment issue vanishes and neutron radiation damage is alleviated. The short hide. Replacing the burned-up tritium in a fusion reactor, however, addresses only a minor part of the all-important issue of replenishing the tritium fuel supply. There have been a number of cases of fusion engines being "over revved" and exploding with devestating force, but this is more akin to a boiler explosion than a true nuclear explosion. And it is interesting, that the plasma block generation [in the hydrogen-boron reactor] is obviously of a similar kind, but in a fully controlled way, for a power station. These constraints will cause prolonged downtimes even for minor repairs. Answer Save. How would that hold up if a nuclear bomb was planted inside the reactor core and exploded? The most widely known approach to making fusion happen involves a doughnut shaped vacuum chamber called a Tokomak. have to be big to work. they're not sure if it will work. Weigh the facts, and make up your own It has always been primarily funded as a thermonuclear weapons research tool. Even so, there is certainly confidence in the atomic industry – not least from Ian Chapman, CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. Radiation damage and radioactive waste. In addition, there are the problems of coolant demands and poor water efficiency. Plutonium-239 (239 Pu, Pu-239) is an isotope of plutonium.Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 has also been used. It is disclosed there, and one can compare the numbers. made a successful fusion reaction last more than two seconds, and even It's just going to turn off. Magnetic confinement fusion plasmas require injection of significant power in atomic beams or electromagnetic energy to stabilize the fusion burn, while additional power is consumed by magnetic coils helping to control location and stability of the reacting plasma. the blast itself: 40–50% of total energy But there’s a lot of work to be done on climate. You would get the same thing you would exploding a nuclear bomb anywhere on any other nuclear reactor. Hi, Yesterday I tried a bit with BigReactors and I think that it’s a very nice and cheep way to get RF. Now, an energy source consisting of 80 percent energetic neutron streams may be the perfect neutron source, but it’s truly bizarre that it would ever be hailed as the ideal electrical energy source. The main source of tritium is fission nuclear reactors. Bad News: Nothing can explode, nothing can meltdown like in a uranium [fission] reactor. Relevance. There are currently 433 nuclear reactors in the world: ... No one, anywhere would permit reactors to be built. Kelvin, but it's a million degrees, so I don't really care. This is how it looks to wrangle plasma. point of bias. The Fusion Reactor is a multiblock structure that allows for variable input rates of 3 types of fuel: Deuterium, Tritium, and D-T Fuel.By water cooling the structure, steam can be produced alongside power, which is useful for powering an Industrial Turbine. Numerous alternative coolants for the primary heat-removal loop have been studied for both fission and fusion reactors, and one-meter thick liquid lithium walls may be essential for inertial confinement fusion systems to withstand the impulse loading. Together we can make a difference. Without it, you've just got water. This same region contains lithium or lithium compounds that undergo reactions with the neutrons to produce tritium. When the fusion output is interrupted for any reason, this power must be purchased from the regional grid at retail prices. – Where do we see comparisons that include waste heat? The fact that national Dense, informative, and delightful. planning on building the ITER in France. than we were able to harness from it. 2) The unknown. Artificial (terrestrial) fusion schemes, on the other hand, are restricted to much lower particle densities and much more fleeting energy confinement, and are therefore compelled to use the heavier neutron-rich isotopes of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium—which are 24 orders of magnitude more reactive than ordinary hydrogen. The whole point here is that fusion will never work, never. If the reactor exploded like an atomic bomb farther out in space, the effect on earth would be negligible. second question is that no explosion that humankind could currently There was a seminar or two on the supposed promise of fusion reactors. Then it is imperative we keep looking. In a nutshell, below a certain size (about 1,000 MWe) parasitic power drain makes it uneconomic to run a fusion power plant. In order to get it started, it requires heat, which can be created by inputting large amounts of RF into the reactor. I'm looking for somewhere to build my fusion reactor, but if it explodes, then I don't want it near my base. What would happen in a fusion reactor if the plasma touched the sides of the container? If it succeeds where past fusion reactor plans have failed, the technology portends a … However, water has been used almost exclusively in commercial fission reactors for the last 60 years, including all of those presently under construction worldwide. A number of uncertainties are inherent in the calculation of tokamak electromagnetic forces, which in itself is a difficult engineering task (see Chapter 4 ). With Democrats’ control of the Senate, a path forward on climate? It does seem to me that the ability of a fusion plant to produce plutonium is generally overstated, that it can do it is not in dispute, but you are not going to construct and use a hugely expensive plant of this type with that in mind. I’m sorry I don’t have a link to more information on it right now, but I’d love to know… Read more », The fusion neutrons gradually dissipate their heat in the reactor wall and in a region extending up to 50 cm beyond the wall (the so-called “blanket.”) The heat is removed by liquid or gaseous coolant circulating in this region. The designers admit that it likely never will. A reactor fueled with deuterium-tritium or deuterium-only will have an inventory of many kilograms of tritium, providing opportunities for diversion for use in nuclear weapons. Anyway, would love to read your thoughts on that. What is not in… Read more ». The Fusion Reactor is the most powerful way to generate EU power in the game. It's going to cost around $10 billion, be up and running by 2014, and All of these problems are endemic to any type of magnetic confinement fusion or inertial confinement fusion reactor that is fueled with deuterium-tritium or deuterium alone. THe ones in use in the Western world use nuclear fuel which is too dilute to cause a nuclear explosion. To accomplish this goal, a lithium-containing “blanket” must be placed around the reacting medium—an extremely hot, fully ionized gas called a plasma.

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