Fission Or Fusion

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nuclei such as hydrogen, deuterium, or
carbon. This fact is the basis for the design of practical energy-producing
fission reactors.
In December 1942 at the University of Chicago, the Italian physicist
Enrico Fermi succeeded in producing the first nuclear chain reaction. This was
done with an arrangement of natural uranium lumps distributed within a large
stack of pure graphite, a form of carbon. In Fermi's "pile," or nuclear reactor,
the graphite moderator served to slow the neutrons.
Nuclear fusion was first achieved on earth in the early 1930s by
bombarding a target containing deuterium, the mass-2 isotope of hydrogen, with
high-energy deuterons in a cyclotron. To accelerate the deuteron beam a great
deal of energy is required, most of which appeared as heat in the target. As a
result, no net useful energy was produced. In the 1950s the first large-scale
but uncontrolled release of fusion energy was demonstrated in the tests of
thermonuclear weapons by the United States, the ...

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"nuclear ignition" is said to
have occurred. The basic problems in attaining useful nuclear fusion conditions
are to heat the gas to these very high temperatures, and to confine a
sufficient quantity of the reacting nuclei for a long enough time to permit the
release of more energy than is needed to heat and confine the gas. A subsequent
major problem is the capture of this energy and its conversion to electricity.
At temperatures of even 100,000° C (180,000° F), all the hydrogen atoms
are fully ionized. The gas consists of an electrically neutral assemblage of
positively charged nuclei and negatively charged free electrons. This state of
matter is called a plasma. A plasma hot ...

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