nuclear-news

Solar energy affordable now, nuclear fusion not likely to ever be

Would nuclear fusion be economically viable? THE WEEK, 14 Feb 14 Scientists have passed a crucial milestone on the road to nuclear fusion. But the final frontier for fusion isn’t scientific — it’s economic.

A team of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced Wednesday that they have reached a key milestone in the development of nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the process of atomic nuclei fusing to form a larger atom, which is how the sun emits heat and light.

Writing in the journal Nature, the scientists declared that for the first time ever they had yielded more energy out of fusion than what was needed to create the reaction. They used 192 lasers to compress a pellet of fuel, generating a reaction in which more energy came out of the fuel core than went into it.

But the goal of “ignition” — which is when more energy is yielded than was consumed in the entireprocess — remains distant……However, even ignition is not enough. The final frontier for nuclear fusion is not scientific, but economic — meaning, when it can compete price-wise with the alternatives. And humans already have lots of energy options for the future……

The twilight of the fossil fuel age is being spent developing renewable forms of energy. Some are inherently small-scale in nature, like wind and hydroelectric power………… the Sun, which each year casts down much greater quantities of energy onto the Earth than the total amount of fossil fuel beneath its surface.

For photovoltaic energy, we have already passed the threshold of “ignition,” with solar panels capturing more energy than it takes to produce them. Furthermore, solar energy’s prices are falling so rapidly that it is becoming competitive with fossil fuels……..or most purposes, it all comes down to efficiency. We still don’t know how efficient nuclear fusion reactors will be in practice. Right now, we do know that solar energy is already viable.John Aziz http://theweek.com/article/index/256500/would-nuclear-fusion-be-economically-viable

February 15, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized