Nuclear fusion between energetic solution and dream

¡Que toda la vida es sueño,
 y los sueños, sueños son!

Calderon De la Barca

Traslate

For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are nothing but dreams.

There had been a time when the future was seeing as a world full of light and spatial engines. That world showed us a peaceful people in houses with automatic doors, kitchens working order by our voice, car flying over cities and all kind of electric tools what would make every our dream. But this time was finished in 1972 when oil began its particular ascension to sky and after then energy left to be a cheap resource. Before energy had been a very cheap thing, most of it we could obtain by a natural sources (as a wind, river water or animal strong) and also was free. The industrial revolution increased the consumption but the introduction of mineral coal supply the insufficiency of natural, that item was increase the price of energy because it’s Necessary was the use of labor (mining), however mechanization arrived to mina too and it reduced the price of extraction.  But generalization of the use of oil as a source of energy, cheaper than coal extraction and easier of manipulation than it, opened the door in the age of mass consumption of energy.

Obviously everybody thank in the time when oil will end, but they has been thinking that before to arrive we would find a better new source what would substituted oil and coal. This new magical source would be the nuclear power and specially Fusion Nuclear Power.
As often happens in stories where speculation about the future, an unexpected event broke on the scene: the prix oil crisis; and the long time that they believed to have disappeared. The time of cheap energy was over, but things if can be worse they will be, massive use of fossil fuels also destroys the environment and changes climate.
The energy urgencies knock the door and we don’t take some alternative to afford the challenger. After verifying that renewable energy can’t achieve the standards required by the current rate of consumption, industry fixes its eyes on the Fission Nuclear Power as alternative wile it awaits the arrival of Fusion energy. But its election isn’t easy because on the one hand this energy is highly polluting and dangerous (there is a little example), and in the other said the oil and coal industry have a massive amounts of expensive oil and coal for sale which will give trillion dollars of benefit. Nevertheless they don’t contemplate the possibility of reducing consumption because the new dial because new era of inexhaustible energy is all ready to get.
What is this magical source of energy that will solve all energetics problems in future?
Nuclear fusion is energy that comes from the difference in mass converted into energy between hydrogen atoms which become for junction in helium atoms. This is spontaneous reaction because helium atom is more stable than the hydrogen atom, and this reaction is what gives the life in our planet so it’s the main source of energy of Sun. If we think that hydrogen is a second component of water and water is the main mineral of earth's crust, it isn’t silly to think that we have an almost inexhaustible resource, even we can think in large terms about of universe abundance of Hydrogen which is higher (75%). On the other hand the fusion reaction is relatively clean as basically emits radiation usable for energy, and little radiation in particles.
In the end of the day we find at last with the solution of all problem. But that marvelous challenger has a problem: it’s only a project and we don’t know how we can do it. We arguably have achieved fusion reactions in the form of nuclear weapon (H-bomb). Logically in nuclear explosion it liberate significant amount of energy but this energy aren’t usable because it’s liberate in a short time (this is the objective of a bomb) and its amount we haven’t any kind of way to collect, nuclear explosion destroy cities completely and nothing making by human can resist it. The solution of course is doing very small reactions that may be manipulated for us. And searching this challenger they are several teams of research to find a form to make nuclear fusion reaction usable (report of The Guardian).
Today there are two ways of research: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. Second way is lead an international project called ITER, but the first there are only a national projects (sometimes with more budget than ITER) because in these are a secret military goal hidden of energy research. Both try to create the boundary conditions that allow the reaction in Sun. ITER is the better project but the most difficult to do and inertial confinement has most possibilities to success but its probabilities of profit are the same of H-Bombs.
Why are the difficulties that research find?
The main problem is that Earth and Sun are completely different. Sun is a million times higher and weight than Earth and in its boundary conditions isn’t possible to have life. Fusion is possible there because the higher pressure and temperature make possible it. Pressure and temperature are consequence of the huge weight that must support the core of the star, however this weight is what makes possible to maintain confined the reaction and it prevents to explode the star; this is named gravitational confinement. Inner Sun where the fusion is doing there aren’t solids, all material are in plasma phase and only the gravitational trap confines it.
The projects to profit fusion energy want to emulate this trap. The Magnetic confinement would use the eclectic charge of plasma phase to confine it within a toroidal field or magnetic bottle; the main advantage of the system is with how to harness the energy and have control over hydrogen burning, is equal to the current power plants; but its problem is the great quantity of energy that it needs to create the boundary conditions and after maintain the reaction once begun within the confinement, apart when subjected these materials to high energy its consistency mechanical, electrical and thermal response suffers, just look at the large particle accelerators and their problems, considering they don’t work continuously and they are alone of the reactor, but they are the most close it. The Inertial confinement has better prognostic about achieve a controlled reaction, but nobody conceives how to use it because inertial cheap is the same form which we can explode weapons but without a fission bomb what creates the boundary conditions; in fact this system consist in to make controlled explosions; the main problem is the great quantity of neutrons that would generate, apart of course that how profit.
Nuclear fusion is a beautiful dream but today we haven’t yet. Surely one day will achieve a nuclear fusion reaction sustained and controllable but this this will not in the near future. For this reason is important that we begin to think about how to reduce energy consumption because the current sources of energy deteriorate by leaps and bounds the habitability of our planet. The dais of energy in abundance must end because rest a long time to arrive nuclear fusion and planet can’t hold more time the current pressure above it.
Industry has a dream for continue its way of life but its dream are a long time and perhaps when we will achieve it the valance between energy needed and energy obtained couldn’t be cost effective. The dreams seam the reality but as told by Calderon de la Barca the dreams are only dreams.