Alternative Power of the Near Future
By Alex Oumantsev
ARIES in Japan
Alternative Power of the Near Future
By Alex Oumantsev
ARIES in Japan
A. The necessity of an alternate power source
E. Current projects
The necessity of an
alternate power source Most of today's electric
power is produced at the power plants that either burn
fossil fuels such as oil and coal, or use controlled fission
of uranium in the nuclear plants. It is known however; that,
the resources necessary to drive those plants, oil, coal,
and even uranium are non renewable. The known resources of
oil and coal are estimated to be depleted within the next
100 years. As there are less available fossil fuels, people
will begin to depend more on the use of what's known as
nuclear power, or the fission of uranium. Unfortunately,
even at present rate of consumption, the known resources of
uranium are predicted to last for around 60-70 years. When
these estimates take in account the increased dependence on
uranium for energy, and the time that the initially inserted
uranium can power a reactor, they show that we only have
enough uranium to power the reactors for around 50 years.
Thus, in the next 100
years, the resources that are used to produce the most power
will be used up. The other methods of power generation such
as hydro and wind generated do not produce enough power to
be anywhere as effective as the coal, oil and nuclear power
plants.
What is
fusion? Fusion is the process by
witch the stars and our Sun produce energy. Fusion is the
process of fusing 2 molecules of a certain element into 1
molecule, with release of high-energy neutrons and
tremendous energy. The Sun fuses hydrogen molecules into
helium, and thus produces energy. The same process can be
used in the fusion power plants, where hydrogen isotopes
would be fused into molecules of helium, and produce
tremendous energy as a byproduct.
Why fusion? The process of fusion is
remarkable. This process potentially has the highest energy
yield out of all the processes that man can create and
control. What's most important however, is the fact that the
fuel for this process, deuterium and tritium (2 hydrogen
isotopes), are renewable: we are easily able to obtain
hydrogen from water. As a result, the fusion power is
completely renewable and economically affordable. In
addition, fusion is environmentally safe, lacking both the
immediate environmental pollution of oil and coal power
plant as well as the potential devastating effects of a
malfunction of a current fission nuclear plants or the
time-bombs of their radioactive remains. The diagram below shows
the graph of radioactive emissions vs time of the current
elements used in the fission power plants(purple) as well as
various fusion products. The commercially viable process is
depicted by light blue.
Problems with
fusion The largest problem with
fusion is containment of the superheated plasma where fusion
occurs. An analogy to this would be something in the area of
"How do you keep a star in a metal box?". The solution to
this has been found, and the plasma in the current reactor's
is isolated by cylindrical magnetic fields, and isolated in
vacuum; however, right now it takes more energy to stabilize
the reaction than the process outputs. Thus the reaction
produces negative output. Other problems that have to be
addressed include finding the cheapest way to produce
tritium, an isotope of hydrogen, and containment of neutron
particles that split away during the reaction. Since
neutrons have no charge, it is difficult to stop the stray
neutrons that are released in the fusion reaction.
ARIES Project A current research
project with the goal of designing a reactor that uses
magnetic fields as confinement and pressure generators that
maintains the necessary pressure for fusion to occur. The
ARIES Demo reactor is the best candidate for delivering
controlled fusion plasma suitable for power generation. The
ARIES Demo reactor has a modular design that allows for easy
access for replacement and repairs of all the primary
components of the reactor. Below are shown the views
at various components of the ARIES Demo
reactor.
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ITER Project International power plant project with the goal of constructing an actual operational fusion power plant. As apposed to the ARIES project which worked with the fusion reactor in the research setting, ITER's goal is to construct a fully operational power plant. The project is a joint venture between Canada, Russia, Japan, and European nations. Originally, US was also participating in the project, but due to the high costs of the project, US has pulled out, and was replaced by Canada. This research builds on the work of 40 previous tokamaks and other related projects all over the world. The design work on the plant has already been completed, and the project is currently in the engineering and building stage. The cost of ITER is a total of $3760 M over 20 years. These estimated costs include personnel costs (~32%), energy and tritium fuel costs (~20%), and capital improvements, spare parts and materials, and waste management operations (48%).
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