Only with the concerted efforts of all mankind and Qi Xin can we enter the new energy era, and scientific exploration and cooperation will always be on the road.

Now, you may not feel it, but what you are doing now, such as reading this article and everything outside the window, is powered by nuclear fusion, because nuclear fusion drives the sun and the sun drives everything on earth. Suppose you are close enough to the sun to see its core. Hydrogen atoms combine to form helium atoms, which will release a lot of energy in the process. Solar nuclear fusion not only helps the sun's core to heat up, but also produces a lot of solar activity. Solar active particles flow in the interstellar space of 65.438+0.5 billion kilometers, affecting the earth. In that case, the future energy is actually in sight.

Now, human scientists can make a machine to replicate what happens inside the sun on earth, but not on the scale of the sun. In theory, scientists only need to inject hydrogen into one end, aggregate its atoms, and then recover helium from the other end. In this process, this machine will generate a lot of heat energy, which we can use to drive anything, just like a traditional power plant. Without pollution, carbon dioxide and deadly nuclear waste, nuclear fusion energy will be clean and safe.

Nature has given mankind a lot, but it has also given us more tests. Now, we have many different ways to produce the energy we need, such as oil, natural gas, coal, wind energy, solar energy, hydropower, garbage incineration and bioenergy. There are so many kinds of energy, what's the use of nuclear fusion? It is very realistic that human beings will not live on mountains and water for a long time. In the next few decades, the earth will bring a series of practical problems to mankind.

The population of the world is increasing, and it is predicted that by 2050, it will increase from the current population of about 7.5 billion to about 654.38+000 billion. At the same time, people in developing countries use little energy at present. With the improvement of living standards, they will use more energy in the future. It is estimated that by 2050, the world will need 2-3 times as much energy as it does now. At present, 80% of our energy comes from fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal. However, the supply of these fuels is limited, especially oil and natural gas are rapidly drying up.

In addition, when we burn fossil energy, they will produce carbon dioxide gas. This will lead to climate change, and eventually our planet will face global fires, rising sea levels, volcanic eruptions and other problems. Renewable energy made from solar energy, wind energy, ocean and other energy sources is a way to solve these problems, but at present, the efficiency of these methods is not enough to have a big impact. For example, thousands of wind turbines generate only as much electricity as a coal-fired power plant. In other words, if we can build a nuclear fusion power plant with the same or even higher efficiency as a coal-fired power plant, and there is no environmental problem, we can solve the energy problem of the earth forever.

So how do we realize nuclear fusion reaction on earth and commercialize it on a large scale? The dream is coming true step by step. At present, the best way is to use other hydrogen isotopes that are slightly heavier than ordinary hydrogen atoms, and their atomic forms are different. Most nuclear fusion experiments are based on converting deuterium and tritium into helium. When two unstable atoms are rearranged into a stable atom, a lot of energy will be released. It sounds simple, but it is very, very difficult to do.

Because to fuse two atoms, you have to get the nuclei close enough. The problem is that the nucleus of each atom has a relatively large positive charge, and the closer the nucleus is, the more energy is needed. Through Coulomb's law, we know that every time the distance between two nuclei is reduced by half, the energy will increase by four times, which means that scientists must use a lot of energy to gather atoms together.

Nuclear fusion research is one of the most expensive research in the world. Generally speaking, we can't even afford to pay the electricity bill or build a tokamak device ... but everything will change. Nuclear fusion is too important for future energy. The future nuclear fusion energy can not only help people on earth solve energy problems, but also help people to become multi-planet species by striding into space with nuclear fusion. Now, the progress of ultra-high-speed computing, materials science, supercomputer modeling and simulation technology is helping to break the insurmountable technical obstacles of nuclear fusion, and a large number of talents and budgets are also flowing into this field. Some new nuclear fusion projects are using the latest generation of supercomputers to better understand and control the behavior of ultra-high temperature plasma.

It's no good dreaming about new energy all day. Scientists are doers, science is constantly improving, and science in the field of nuclear fusion is not a single science. At present, scientists are pursuing the development of nuclear fusion science and other scientific fields, which is of great significance to the commercialization of nuclear fusion energy. All countries or individual investors in the world are striving for the early realization of nuclear fusion, but looking at all nuclear fusion experiments and nuclear fusion facilities, we can summarize the nuclear fusion experiments on the earth into three main ways, which are actually more like three directions, which will be the key for mankind to realize controlled nuclear fusion.

When it comes to nuclear fusion, people will first think of the Tokamak device. The powerful electromagnetic field will confine the ultra-high temperature plasma in the annular structure of the tokamak, which means that scientists can electrify the tokamak, and then the outer ring of the tokamak can use magnetic force to control the ultra-high temperature plasma needed for nuclear fusion. In ultra-high temperature plasma, hydrogen nuclei will polymerize to form helium. Since 1960s, more than 200 functional tokamaks have been built, and the tokamak device is the mainstream of nuclear fusion. Many countries or institutions in the world have funded the tokamak device.

At present, the largest existing tokamak device is the British JET tokamak. Since the operation of 1983, JET has made great progress in the field of nuclear fusion science and engineering, and its success has contributed to the construction of the first commercial-scale nuclear fusion device ITER. In recent years, scientists have done a lot of important work with JET to help design and build the next generation ITER being built in France. After more than 30 years of successful operation, JET has provided a great deal of knowledge for the study of human integration.

Now in southern France, 35 countries are cooperating to build the largest tokamak device in the history of the world. Its name is also called ITER, which will be the first device to maintain the effect of nuclear fusion for a long time. This may be the closest time for mankind to achieve the result of nuclear fusion in recent years. In addition, ITER also needs to test the integrated technologies, materials and physical mechanisms needed for commercial nuclear fusion, which will be the first large-scale attempt.

With the tokamak device, the related technology can't stand still. At present, the difficulty of controlled nuclear fusion experiment in Tokamak lies in these plasmas, and their behavior is difficult to control. Just now I mentioned that we must overcome the positive charge repulsion of the nucleus to make the nucleus converge, which can only be achieved through very high temperature.

To fuse hydrogen nuclei, scientists need to find a way to overcome the repulsion of positively charged ions. Finally, scientists use the tokamak to raise the temperature of the sun's core (about 15 million degrees Celsius) by several orders of magnitude, so that the matter can only exist in the plasma state. In this state, electrons will leave the nucleus, which is more convenient for their fusion. However, plasma is notoriously naughty. It is very unstable and difficult to control. In the Tokamak experiment, scientists found that these plasmas would float to the edge of the energy field, where they would dissipate quickly. Most problems of nuclear fusion revolve around plasma: how to heat and control the plasma to make it polymerize.

At such a high temperature, the wall of the reaction chamber in the tokamak will not melt, and then these experimental plasmas will be exposed to the external environment, so the safety is very important for the tokamak. In addition, the material used to build the tokamak not only cannot be melted, but also needs to have a sufficiently low vapor pressure at high temperature to avoid polluting the plasma. All roads lead to Rome. In fact, the principle of the tokamak that we have been talking about is the mechanism of magnetically confined plasma, and scientists have a new method called inertial confinement fusion.

For a long time, scientists have always believed that when creating a stable and high-energy plasma field, the larger the scale, the better. But with the development of supercomputer and complex modeling technology, scientists are solving more mysteries about plasma behavior and developing new methods to analyze plasma behavior without tokamak.

Wendell Horton, a physicist at the Institute of Fusion at the University of Texas, used a supercomputer with stamps to simulate the behavior of plasma in the tokamak. "Our computing scale is expanding and the data is increasing. We also simulate plasma data in three dimensions and time. Now our data is more accurate and detailed than the data obtained by the Tokamak probe system, which can help us better improve the physical Tokamak device. " Wendell Horton said.

The data results of supercomputer provide a basis for the design of tokamaks of different sizes. This is actually a complex modeling technology. Scientists can now even simulate all the matter in the universe within 3 billion light years, not to mention the behavior of plasma. It not only simulates plasma, but also an American company named TAE designed a tokamak device using supercomputer data. Their design uses a magnetic field inversion structure to generate a vortex plasma ring. Instead of using deuterium and tritium, the tokamak they designed injected a high-energy neutral hydrogen particle beam into boron-hydrogen fuel, forcing it to react and produce ionized helium nuclei.

The generated heat will be converted into electric energy through the traditional heat conversion system, thus completing a complete nuclear fusion reaction facility. In addition, boron hydrogen fuel means that a reaction will not produce destructive neutron radiation, but the disadvantage is that this facility needs a very high temperature, about 3 billion degrees Celsius. TAE also cooperated with Google to analyze plasma behavior data by using artificial intelligence model algorithm of nuclear fusion, and combined these variables to create the most ideal conditions for nuclear fusion environment.

Supercomputers, artificial intelligence and data models have helped scientists a lot. The third method we will talk about next is called magnetized target nuclear fusion technology, which is also closely related to supercomputers. Its working principle is to inject pulsed magnetic confinement plasma fuel into a sphere filled with molten lead-lithium mixed materials. The piston structure around the reactor will make the shock wave bombard the center, compress the fuel and force the particles to have a fusion reaction. The resulting heat can be absorbed by liquid metal to generate steam, which will make the turbine rotate to generate electricity.

In fact, the third method is just the opposite of the working principle of the magnetic confinement tokamak device, because the experimental environment of the tokamak is a relatively low-density large plasma energy field. This method wants to create a small-sized plasma with extremely high density and then bombard it with shock waves. Because the magnetic field is very dense and small, nuclear fusion can have an energy response even if it lasts only one millisecond. This is actually not a new method. In the 1970s, the US Naval Research Laboratory tried to use this mechanism to trigger nuclear fusion, but the experiment failed, largely because they could not accurately control the time of the shock wave at that time. Now, a company in Vancouver, Canada has developed a new algorithm and a highly accurate control system, which can fine-tune the speed and time of the shock wave.

For nuclear fusion, there is a saying that "as long as the dream of nuclear fusion lasts, the joke will last." In fact, nuclear fusion is really difficult to achieve, but it is precisely because of this that it is worth the joint efforts of scientists and scientific research institutions all over the world. Since the birth of the first tokamak in 1958, human beings have been studying nuclear fusion. Now the nuclear fusion research we see is changing from local regionalization, and global research will be the mainstream in the future. ITER is the best example. Last year, ITER's research and development work has exceeded two-thirds, which is a good progress.

Climate issues, population issues, resource issues, etc. I wonder whether this is a problem brought by the earth or by human beings themselves, but to be sure, in order to solve all the problems, both methods are very important. One is to realize commercial nuclear fusion, and the other is to realize multi-planet civilization. In the future, mankind will not only live on the earth. In fact, I have been thinking about what is the future science and what is the science that can affect the future mankind. After thinking about it, nuclear fusion is indeed an important field for the future progress of human science.

There is more than one tokamak, and there is more than one way for human beings to achieve nuclear fusion. Infinite clean energy, this reason is enough for all mankind to cooperate in development, from which I also see the importance of scientific cooperation, and more countries will join the ranks of nuclear fusion research in the future. Time has a memory, and this article will look forward to the arrival of commercial nuclear fusion with you and me.

This is a propeller designed by NASA for nuclear fission and fusion. The system can reach 15kw/kg and 30,000 seconds ISP. The nuclear fusion design of thruster mainly focuses on magnetic confinement fusion and inertial confinement fusion, while magnetic confinement fusion contains low density steady plasma. The fission process heats the fusion plasma to increase the fusion reaction rate, and then the fusion products strengthen the fission reaction, which can promote each other's reaction rate.