Fusion power - wikipedia Fusion power The Sun, like other stars, is a natural fusion reactor, where stellar nucleosynthesis transforms lighter elements into heavier elements with the release of energy. Fusion power is a form of power generation in which energy is generated by using nuclear fusion reactions to produce heat for electricity generation. In a fusion process, two lighter atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus, and at the same time, they release energy. This is the same process that powers stars like our Sun. Devices designed to harness this energy are known as fusion reactors. Fusion processes require fuel and a highly confined environment with a high temperature and pressure, to create a plasma in which fusion can occur. In stars, the most common fuel is hydrogen, and gravity creates the high temperature and confinement needed for fusion. Fusion reactors generally use hydrogen isotopes such as deuterium and tritium, which react more easily, and create a confined plasma of millions of degrees using inertial methods ( laser ) or magnetic methods ( tokamak and similar ), although many other concepts have been attempted. The major challenges in realising fusion power are to engineer a system that can confine the plasma long enough at high enough temperature and density, for a long term reaction to occur, and for the most common reactions, managing neutrons that are released during the reaction, which over time can degrade many common materials used within the reaction chamber. As a source of power, nuclear fusion has several theoretical advantages over fission. These include reduced radioactivity in operation and little nuclear waste, ample fuel supplies, and increased safety. However, controlled fusion has proven to be extremely difficult to produce in a practical and economical manner. Research into fusion reactors began in the 1940s, but to date, no design has produced more fusion energy than the energy needed to initiate the reaction, meaning all existing designs have a negative energy balance. Over the years, fusion researchers have investigated various confinement concepts. The early emphasis was on three main systems : z - pinch, stellarator and magnetic mirror. The current leading designs are the tokamak and inertial confinement ( ICF ) by laser. Both designs are being built at very large scales, most notably the ITER tokamak in France, and the National Ignition Facility laser in the United States. Researchers are also studying other designs that may offer cheaper approaches. Among these alternatives there is increasing interest in magnetized target fusion and inertial electrostatic confinement. Contents 1 Background 1.1 Mechanism 1.2 Cross Section 1.3 Lawson Criterion 1.4 Triple product : density, temperature, time 1.5 Plasma behavior 1.6 Energy capture 2 Approaches 2.1 Magnetic confinement 2.2 Inertial confinement 2.3 Magnetic or electric pinches 2.4 Inertial electrostatic confinement 2.5 Other 3 Common tools 3.1 Heating 3.2 Measurement 3.3 Power production 4 Records 4.1 Q 4.2 Runtime 5 Confinement 5.1 Unconfined 5.2 Magnetic confinement 5.3 Inertial confinement 5.4 Electrostatic confinement 6 History of research 6.1 1920s 6.2 1930s 6.3 1940s 6.4 1950s 6.5 1960s 6.6 1970s 6.7 1980s 6.8 1990s 6.9 2000s 6.10 2010s 7 Fuels 7.1 Deuterium, tritium 7.2 Deuterium 7.3 Deuterium, helium - 3 7.4 Protium, boron - 11 8 Material selection 8.1 Considerations 8.2 Durability 8.3 Selection 9 Safety and the environment 9.1 Accident potential 9.2 Magnet quench 9.3 Effluents 9.4 Waste management 9.5 Nuclear proliferation 9.6 Energy source 10 Economics 11 Advantages 12 See also 13 References 14 Bibliography 15 External links Background Main article : Nuclear fusion Binding energy for different atomic nuclei. Iron - 56 has the highest, making it the most stable. Nuclei to the left are likely to fuse ; those to the right are likely to split. Mechanism Fusion reactions occur when two or more atomic nuclei come close enough for long enough that the nuclear force pulling them together exceeds the electrostatic force pushing them apart, fusing them into heavier nuclei. For nuclei lighter than iron - 56, the reaction is exothermic, releasing energy. For nuclei heavier than iron - 56, the reaction is endothermic, requiring an external source of energy. Hence, nuclei smaller than iron - 56 are more likely to fuse while those heavier than iron - 56 are more likely to break apart. The strong force acts only over short distances. The repulsive electrostatic force acts over longer distances. In order to undergo fusion, the fuel atoms need to be given enough energy to approach each other close enough for the strong force to become active. The amount of kinetic energy needed to bring the fuel atoms close enough is known as the `` Coulomb barrier ''. Ways of providing this energy include speeding up atoms in a particle accelerator, or heating them to high temperatures. Once an atom is heated above its ionization energy, its electrons are stripped away ( it is ionized ), leaving just the bare nucleus ( the ion ). The result is a hot cloud of ions and the electrons formerly attached to them. This cloud is known as plasma. Because the charges are separated, plasmas are electrically conductive and magnetically controllable. Many fusion devices take advantage of this to control the particles as they are heated. Cross section The fusion reaction rate increases rapidly with temperature until it maximizes and then gradually drops off. The deuterium - tritium fusion rate peaks at a lower temperature ( about 70 keV, or 800 million kelvin ) and at a higher value than other reactions commonly considered for fusion energy. A reaction 's cross section, denoted σ, is the measure of the probability that a fusion reaction will happen. This depends on the relative velocity of the two nuclei. Higher relative velocities generally increase the probability, but the probability begins to decrease again at very high energies. Cross sections for many fusion reactions were measured ( mainly in the 1970s ) using particle beams. In a plasma, particle velocity can be characterized using a probability distribution. If the plasma is thermalized, the distribution looks like a bell curve, or maxwellian distribution. In this case, it is useful to use the average particle cross section over the velocity distribution. This is entered into the volumetric fusion rate : P fusion = n A n B ⟨ σ v A, B ⟩ E fusion ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( fusion ) ) = n_ ( A ) n_ ( B ) langle sigma v_ ( A, B ) \rangle E_ ( \text ( fusion ) ) ) where : P fusion ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( fusion ) ) ) is the energy made by fusion, per time and volume n is the number density of species A or B, of the particles in the volume ⟨ σ v A, B ⟩ ( displaystyle langle sigma v_ ( A, B ) \rangle ) is the cross section of that reaction, average over all the velocities of the two species v E fusion ( displaystyle E_ ( \text ( fusion ) ) ) is the energy released by that fusion reaction. Lawson criterion The Lawson Criterion shows how energy output varies with temperature, density, speed of collision, and fuel. This equation was central to John Lawson 's analysis of fusion working with a hot plasma. Lawson assumed an energy balance, shown below. P out = η capture ( P fusion − P conduction − P radiation ) ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( out ) ) = eta _ ( \text ( capture ) ) left ( P_ ( \text ( fusion ) ) - P_ ( \text ( conduction ) ) - P_ ( \text ( radiation ) ) \right ) ) η, efficiency P conduction ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( conduction ) ) ), conduction losses as energy laden mass leaves P radiation ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( radiation ) ) ), radiation losses as energy leaves as light P out ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( out ) ) ), net power from fusion P fusion ( displaystyle P_ ( \text ( fusion ) ) ), is rate of energy generated by the fusion reactions. Plasma clouds lose energy through conduction and radiation. Conduction occurs when ions, electrons or neutrals impact other substances, typically a surface of the device, and transfer a portion of their kinetic energy to the other atoms. Radiation is energy that leaves the cloud as light in the visible, UV, IR, or X-ray spectra. Radiation increases with temperature. Fusion power technologies must overcome these losses. Triple product : density, temperature, time The Lawson criterion argues that a machine holding a thermalized and quasi-neutral plasma has to meet basic criteria to overcome radiation losses, conduction losses and reach efficiency of 30 percent. This became known as the `` triple product '' : the plasma density, temperature and confinement time. Attempts to increase the triple product led to targeting larger plants. Larger plants move structural materials further away from the centre of the plasma, which reduces conduction and radiation losses since more of the radiation is internally reflected. This emphasis on ( n T τ ) ( displaystyle ( nT \tau ) ) as a metric of success has impacted other considerations such as cost, size, complexity and efficiency. This has led to larger, more complicated and more expensive machines such as ITER and NIF. Plasma behavior Plasma is an ionized gas that conducts electricity. In bulk, it is modeled using magnetohydrodynamics, which is a combination of the Navier - Stokes equations governing fluids and Maxwell 's equations governing how magnetic and electric fields behave. Fusion exploits several plasma properties, including : Self - organizing plasma conducts electric and magnetic fields. Its motions can generate fields that can in turn contain it. Diamagnetic plasma can generate its own internal magnetic field. This can reject an externally applied magnetic field, making it diamagnetic. Magnetic mirrors can reflect plasma when it moves from a low to high density field. Energy capture Multiple approaches have been proposed for energy capture. The simplest is to heat a fluid. Most designs concentrate on the D-T reaction, which releases much of its energy in a neutron. Electrically neutral, the neutron escapes the confinement. In most such designs, it is ultimately captured in a thick `` blanket '' of lithium surrounding the reactor core. When struck by a high - energy neutron, the lithium can produce tritium, which is then fed back into the reactor. The energy of this reaction also heats the blanket, which is then actively cooled with a working fluid and then that fluid is used to drive conventional turbomachinery. It has also been proposed to use the neutrons to breed additional fission fuel in a blanket of nuclear waste, a concept known as a fission - fusion hybrid. In these systems, the power output is enhanced by the fission events, and power is extracted using systems like those in conventional fission reactors. Designs that use other fuels, notably the p-B reaction, release much more of their energy in the form of charged particles. In these cases, alternate power extraction systems based on the movement of these charges are possible. Direct energy conversion was developed at LLNL in the 1980s as a method to maintain a voltage using the fusion reaction products. This has demonstrated energy capture efficiency of 48 percent. Approaches Magnetic confinement Tokamak : the most well - developed and well - funded approach to fusion energy. This method races hot plasma around in a magnetically confined, donut - shaped ring, with an internal current. When completed, ITER will be the world 's largest tokamak. As of April 2012 an estimated 215 experimental tokamaks were either planned, decommissioned or currently operating ( 35 ) worldwide. Spherical tokamak : also known as spherical torus A variation on the tokamak with a spherical shape. Stellarator : Twisted rings of hot plasma. The stellarator attempts to create a natural twist plasma path, using external magnets, while tokamaks create those magnetic fields using an internal current. Stellarators were developed by Lyman Spitzer in 1950 and have four designs : Torsatron, Heliotron, Heliac and Helias. One example is Wendelstein 7 - X, a German fusion device that produced its first plasma on December 10, 2015. It is the world 's largest stellarator, designed to investigate the suitability of this type of device for a power station. Levitated Dipole Experiment ( LDX ) : These use a solid superconducting torus. This is magnetically levitated inside the reactor chamber. The superconductor forms an axisymmetric magnetic field that contains the plasma. The LDX was developed by MIT and Columbia University after 2000 by Jay Kesner and Michael E. Mauel. Magnetic mirror : Developed by Richard F. Post and teams at LLNL in the 1960s. Magnetic mirrors reflected hot plasma back and forth in a line. Variations included the Tandem Mirror, magnetic bottle and the biconic cusp. A series of well - funded, large, mirror machines were built by the US government in the 1970s and 1980s, principally at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Bumpy torus : A number of magnetic mirrors are arranged end - to - end in a toroidal ring. Any fuel ions that leak out of one are confined in a neighboring mirror, permitting the plasma pressure to be raised arbitrarily high without loss. An experimental facility, the ELMO Bumpy Torus or EBT was built and tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1970s. Field - reversed configuration : This device traps plasma in a self - organized quasi-stable structure ; where the particle motion makes an internal magnetic field which then traps itself. Spheromak : Very similar to a field reversed configuration, a semi-stable plasma structure made by using the plasmas ' own self - generated magnetic field. A spheromak has both a toroidal and poloidal fields, while a Field Reversed Configuration only has no toroidal field. Reversed field pinch : Here the plasma moves inside a ring. It has an internal magnetic field. Moving out from the center of this ring, the magnetic field reverses direction. Inertial confinement Direct drive : In this technique, lasers directly blast a pellet of fuel. The goal is to ignite a fusion chain reaction. Ignition was first suggested by John Nuckolls, in 1972. Notable direct drive experiments have been conducted at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Laser Mégajoule and the GEKKO XII facilities. Good implosions require fuel pellets with close to a perfect shape in order to generate a symmetrical inward shock wave that produces the high - density plasma. Fast ignition : This method uses two laser blasts. The first blast compresses the fusion fuel, while the second high energy pulse ignites it. Experiments have been conducted at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics using the Omega and Omega EP systems and at the GEKKO XII laser at the Institute for Laser Engineering in Osaka Japan. Indirect drive : In this technique, lasers blasts a structure around the pellet of fuel. This structure is known as a Hohlraum. As it disintegrates the pellet is bathed in a more uniform x-ray light, creating better compression. The largest system using this method is the National Ignition Facility. Magneto - inertial fusion or Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion : This combines a laser pulse with a magnetic pinch. The pinch community refers to it as magnetized liner Inertial fusion while the ICF community refers to it as magneto - inertial fusion. Heavy Ion Beams There are also proposals to do inertial confinement fusion with ion beams instead of laser beams. The main difference is the mass of the beam has momentum, whereas lasers do not. Magnetic or electric pinches Main article : Pinch ( plasma physics ) Z - Pinch : This method sends a strong current ( in the z - direction ) through the plasma. The current generates a magnetic field that squeezes the plasma to fusion conditions. Pinches were the first method for man - made controlled fusion. Some examples include the Dense plasma focus ( DPF ) and the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories. In DPF the focus consists of two coaxial cylindrical electrodes made from copper or beryllium and housed in a vacuum chamber containing a low - pressure fusible gas. An electrical pulse is applied across the electrodes, heating the gas into a plasma. The current forms into a minuscule vortex along the axis of the machine, which then kinks into a cage of current with an associated magnetic field. The cage of current and magnetic - field - entrapped plasma is called a plasmoid. The acceleration of the electrons about the magnetic field lines heats the nuclei within the plasmoid to fusion temperatures. Theta - Pinch : This method sends a current inside a plasma, in the theta direction. Screw Pinch : This method combines a theta and z - pinch for improved stabilization. Inertial electrostatic confinement Main article : Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusor : This method uses an electric field to heat ions to fusion conditions. The machine typically uses two spherical cages, a cathode inside the anode, inside a vacuum. These machines are not considered a viable approach to net power because of their high conduction and radiation losses. They are simple enough to build that amateurs have fused atoms using them. Polywell : This design attempts to combine magnetic confinement with electrostatic fields, to avoid the conduction losses generated by the cage. Other Magnetized target fusion : This method confines hot plasma using a magnetic field and squeezes it using inertia. Examples include LANL FRX - L machine, General Fusion and the plasma liner experiment. Cluster Impact Fusion Microscopic droplets of heavy water are accelerated at great velocity into a target or into one another. Researchers at Brookhaven reported positive results which were later refuted by further experimentation. Fusion effects were actually produced because of contamination of the droplets. Uncontrolled : Fusion has been initiated by man, using uncontrolled fission explosions to ignite so - called Hydrogen Bombs. Early proposals for fusion power included using bombs to initiate reactions. Beam fusion : A beam of high energy particles can be fired at another beam or target and fusion will occur. This was used in the 1970s and 1980s to study the cross sections of high energy fusion reactions. Bubble fusion : This was a fusion reaction that was supposed to occur inside extraordinarily large collapsing gas bubbles, created during acoustic liquid cavitation. This approach was discredited. Cold fusion : This is a hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near, room temperature. Cold fusion is discredited and gained a reputation as pathological science. Muon - catalyzed fusion : This approach replaces electrons in the plasma by muons - far more massive particles with the same electric charge. Their greater mass allows nuclei to get much closer and collide more easily, so it greatly reduces the kinetic energy ( heat and pressure ) required to initiate fusion. A problem is that muons require more energy to produce than can be obtained from muon - catalysed fusion, making this approach impractical for power generation. Space - Based Solar Power argues that a majority of available fusion fuels exists within the sphere of the Sun where it is gravitationally confined, and that a tractable way to accomplish large - scale fusion power is to build very large space - borne platforms that capture energy via photons rather than via a carnot cycle. The theoretical limit of producing power by such means is a type - 2 civilization using a Dyson Sphere. Common tools Heating Gas is heated to form a plasma hot enough to start fusion reactions. A number of heating schemes have been explored : Radiofrequency Heating A radio wave is applied to the plasma, causing it to oscillate. This is basically the same concept as a microwave oven. This is also known as electron cyclotron resonance heating or Dielectric heating. Electrostatic Heating An electric field can do work on charged ions or electrons, heating them. Neutral Beam Injection An external source of hydrogen is ionized and accelerated by an electric field to form a charged beam which is shone through a source of neutral hydrogen gas towards the plasma which itself is ionized and contained in the reactor by a magnetic field. Some of the intermediate hydrogen gas is accelerated towards the plasma by collisions with the charged beam while remaining neutral : this neutral beam is thus unaffected by the magnetic field and so shines through it into the plasma. Once inside the plasma the neutral beam transmits energy to the plasma by collisions as a result of which it becomes ionized and thus contained by the magnetic field thereby both heating and refuelling the reactor in one operation. The remainder of the charged beam is diverted by magnetic fields onto cooled beam dumps. Antiproton annihilation Theoretically a quantity of antiprotons injected into a mass of fusion fuel can induce thermonuclear reactions. This possibility as a method of spacecraft propulsion, known as Antimatter - catalyzed nuclear pulse propulsion, was investigated at Pennsylvania State University in connection with the proposed AIMStar project. Magnetic Oscillations Measurement Thomson Scattering Light scatters from plasma. This light can be detected and used to reconstruct the plasmas ' behavior. This technique can be used to find its density and temperature. It is common in Inertial confinement fusion, Tokamaks and fusors. In ICF systems, this can be done by firing a second beam into a gold foil adjacent to the target. This makes x-rays that scatter or traverse the plasma. In Tokamaks, this can be done using mirrors and detectors to reflect light across a plane ( two dimensions ) or in a line ( one dimension ). Langmuir probe This is a metal object placed in a plasma. A potential is applied to it, giving it a positive or negative voltage against the surrounding plasma. The metal collects charged particles, drawing a current. As the voltage changes, the current changes. This makes a IV Curve. The IV - curve can be used to determine the local plasma density, potential and temperature. Neutron detectors Deuterium or tritium fusion produces neutrons. Neutrons interact with surrounding matter in ways that can be detected. Several types of neutron detectors exist which can record the rate at which neutrons are produced during fusion reactions. They are an essential tool for demonstrating success. Flux loop A loop of wire is inserted into the magnetic field. As the field passes through the loop, a current is made. The current is measured and used to find the total magnetic flux through that loop. This has been used on the National Compact Stellarator Experiment, the polywell and the LDX machines. X-ray detector All plasma loses energy by emitting light. This covers the whole spectrum : visible, IR, UV, and X-rays. This occurs anytime a particle changes speed, for any reason. If the reason is deflection by a magnetic field, the radiation is Cyclotron radiation at low speeds and Synchrotron radiation at high speeds. If the reason is deflection by another particle, plasma radiates X-rays, known as Bremsstrahlung radiation. X-rays are termed in both hard and soft, based on their energy. Power production Steam turbines It has been proposed that steam turbines be used to convert the heat from the fusion chamber into electricity. The heat is transferred into a working fluid that turns into steam, driving electric generators. Neutron blankets Deuterium and tritium fusion generates neutrons. This varies by technique ( NIF has a record of 3E14 neutrons per second while a typical fusor produces 1E5 -- 1E9 neutrons per second ). It has been proposed to use these neutrons as a way to regenerate spent fission fuel or as a way to breed tritium using a breeder blanket consisting of liquid lithium or, as in more recent reactor designs, a helium cooled pebble bed consisting of lithium bearing ceramic pebbles fabricated from materials such as Lithium titanate, lithium orthosilicate or mixtures of these phases. Direct conversion This is a method where the kinetic energy of a particle is converted into voltage. It was first suggested by Richard F. Post in conjunction with magnetic mirrors, in the late sixties. It has also been suggested for Field - Reversed Configurations. The process takes the plasma, expands it, and converts a large fraction of the random energy of the fusion products into directed motion. The particles are then collected on electrodes at various large electrical potentials. This method has demonstrated an experimental efficiency of 48 percent. Records Fusion records have been set by a number of devices. Here are some : Q The ratio of energy extracted against the amount of energy supplied. This record is considered to be set by the Joint European Torus ( JET ) in 1997 when the device extracted 16 MW of power. However, this ratio can be seen three different ways. 0.69 is the actual point in time ratio between '' fusion power '' and actual input power in the plasma ( 23 MW ). 0.069 is the ratio between the `` fusion '' power and the power required to produce the 23MW input power ( essentially it takes into account the efficiency of the NB system ). 0.0069 is the ratio between the `` fusion '' power and the total peak power required for a JET pulse. This takes into account all the power from the grid plus the one from the two large JET flywheel generators. Runtime In Field Reversed Configurations, the longest run time is 300 ms, set by the Princeton Field Reversed Configuration in August 2016. However this involved no fusion. Confinement Parameter space occupied by inertial fusion energy and magnetic fusion energy devices as of the mid 1990s. The regime allowing thermonuclear ignition with high gain lies near the upper right corner of the plot. Confinement refers to all the conditions necessary to keep a plasma dense and hot long enough to undergo fusion. Here are some general principles. Equilibrium : The forces acting on the plasma must be balanced for containment. One exception is inertial confinement, where the relevant physics must occur faster than the disassembly time. Stability : The plasma must be so constructed so that disturbances will not lead to the plasma disassembling. Transport or conduction : The loss of material must be sufficiently slow. The plasma carries off energy with it, so rapid loss of material will disrupt any machines power balance. Material can be lost by transport into different regions or conduction through a solid or liquid. To produce self - sustaining fusion, the energy released by the reaction ( or at least a fraction of it ) must be used to heat new reactant nuclei and keep them hot long enough that they also undergo fusion reactions. Unconfined The first human - made, large - scale fusion reaction was the test of the hydrogen bomb, Ivy Mike, in 1952. As part of the PACER project, it was once proposed to use hydrogen bombs as a source of power by detonating them in underground caverns and then generating electricity from the heat produced, but such a power station is unlikely ever to be constructed. Magnetic confinement At the temperatures required for fusion, the fuel is heated to a plasma state. In this state it has a very good electrical conductivity. This opens the possibility of confining the plasma with magnetic field, generally known as magnetic confinement. The field lines put a Lorentz force on the plasma. The force works perpendicular to the magnetic fields, so one problem in magnetic confinement is preventing the plasma from leaking out the ends of the field lines. A general measure of magnetic trapping in fusion is the beta ratio : β = p p m a g = n k B T ( B 2 / 2 μ 0 ) ( displaystyle \beta = ( \frac ( p ) ( p_ ( mag ) ) ) = ( \frac ( nk_ ( B ) T ) ( ( B ^ ( 2 ) / 2 mu _ ( 0 ) ) ) ) ) This is the ratio of the externally applied field to the internal pressure of the plasma. A value of 1 is ideal trapping. Some examples of beta values include : The START machine : 0.32 The Levitated dipole experiment : 0.26 Spheromaks : ≈ 0.1, Maximum 0.2 based on Mercier limit. The DIII - D machine : 0.126 The Gas Dynamic Trap a magnetic mirror : 0.6 for 5E - 3 seconds. The Sustained Spheromak Plasma Experiment at Los Alamos National labs < 0.05 for 4E - 6 seconds. Magnetic Mirror One example of magnetic confinement is with the magnetic mirror effect. If a particle follows the field line and enters a region of higher field strength, the particles can be reflected. There are several devices that try to use this effect. The most famous was the magnetic mirror machines, which was a series of large, expensive devices built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from the 1960s to mid 1980s. Some other examples include the magnetic bottles and Biconic cusp. Because the mirror machines were straight, they had some advantages over a ring shape. First, mirrors were easier to construct and maintain and second direct conversion energy capture, was easier to implement. As the confinement achieved in experiments was poor, this approach was abandoned. Magnetic Loops Another example of magnetic confinement is to bend the field lines back on themselves, either in circles or more commonly in nested toroidal surfaces. The most highly developed system of this type is the tokamak, with the stellarator being next most advanced, followed by the Reversed field pinch. Compact toroids, especially the Field - Reversed Configuration and the spheromak, attempt to combine the advantages of toroidal magnetic surfaces with those of a simply connected ( non-toroidal ) machine, resulting in a mechanically simpler and smaller confinement area. Inertial confinement Inertial confinement is the use of rapidly imploding shell to heat and confine plasma. The shell is imploded using a direct laser blast ( direct drive ) or a secondary x-ray blast ( indirect drive ) or heavy ion beams. Theoretically, fusion using lasers would be done using tiny pellets of fuel that explode several times a second. To induce the explosion, the pellet must be compressed to about 30 times solid density with energetic beams. If direct drive is used -- the beams are focused directly on the pellet -- it can in principle be very efficient, but in practice is difficult to obtain the needed uniformity. The alternative approach, indirect drive, uses beams to heat a shell, and then the shell radiates x-rays, which then implode the pellet. The beams are commonly laser beams, but heavy and light ion beams and electron beams have all been investigated. Electrostatic confinement There are also electrostatic confinement fusion devices. These devices confine ions using electrostatic fields. The best known is the Fusor. This device has a cathode inside an anode wire cage. Positive ions fly towards the negative inner cage, and are heated by the electric field in the process. If they miss the inner cage they can collide and fuse. Ions typically hit the cathode, however, creating prohibitory high conduction losses. Also, fusion rates in fusors are very low because of competing physical effects, such as energy loss in the form of light radiation. Designs have been proposed to avoid the problems associated with the cage, by generating the field using a non-neutral cloud. These include a plasma oscillating device, a magnetically - shielded - grid, a penning trap, the polywell and the F1 cathode driver concept. The technology is relatively immature, however, and many scientific and engineering questions remain. History of research See also : Timeline of nuclear fusion This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( March 2016 ) 1920s Research into nuclear fusion started in the early part of the 20th century. In 1920 the British physicist Francis William Aston discovered that the total mass equivalent of four hydrogen atoms ( two protons and two neutrons ) are heavier than the total mass of one helium atom ( He - 4 ), which implied that net energy can be released by combining hydrogen atoms together to form helium, and provided the first hints of a mechanism by which stars could produce energy in the quantities being measured. Through the 1920s, Arthur Stanley Eddington became a major proponent of the proton -- proton chain reaction ( PP reaction ) as the primary system running the Sun. 1930s Neutrons from fusion was first detected by staff members of Ernest Rutherfords ' at the University of Cambridge, in 1933. The experiment was developed by Mark Oliphant and involved the acceleration of protons towards a target at energies of up to 600,000 electron volts. In 1933, the Cavendish Laboratory received a gift from the American physical chemist Gilbert N. Lewis of a few drops of heavy water. The accelerator was used to fire heavy hydrogen nuclei deuterons at various targets. Working with Rutherford and others, Oliphant discovered the nuclei of Helium - 3 ( helions ) and tritium ( tritons ). A theory was verified by Hans Bethe in 1939 showing that beta decay and quantum tunneling in the Sun 's core might convert one of the protons into a neutron and thereby producing deuterium rather than a diproton. The deuterium would then fuse through other reactions to further increase the energy output. For this work, Bethe won the Nobel Prize in Physics. 1940s The first patent related to a fusion reactor was registered in 1946 by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. The inventors were Sir George Paget Thomson and Moses Blackman. This was the first detailed examination of the Z - pinch concept. Starting in 1947, two UK teams carried out small experiments based on this concept and began building a series of ever - larger experiments. 1950s The first man - made device to achieve ignition was the detonation of this fusion device, codenamed Ivy Mike. Early photo of plasma inside a pinch machine ( imperial college 1950 / 1951 ) The first successful man - made fusion device was the boosted fission weapon tested in 1951 in the Greenhouse Item test. This was followed by true fusion weapons in 1952 's Ivy Mike, and the first practical examples in 1954 's Castle Bravo. This was uncontrolled fusion. In these devices, the energy released by the fission explosion is used to compress and heat fusion fuel, starting a fusion reaction. Fusion releases neutrons. These neutrons hit the surrounding fission fuel, causing the atoms to split apart much faster than normal fission processes -- almost instantly by comparison. This increases the effectiveness of bombs : normal fission weapons blow themselves apart before all their fuel is used ; fusion / fission weapons do not have this practical upper limit. In 1949 an expatriate German, Ronald Richter, proposed the Huemul Project in Argentina, announcing positive results in 1951. These turned out to be fake, but it prompted considerable interest in the concept as a whole. In particular, it prompted Lyman Spitzer to begin considering ways to solve some of the more obvious problems involved in confining a hot plasma, and, unaware of the z - pinch efforts, he developed a new solution to the problem known as the stellarator. Spitzer applied to the US Atomic Energy Commission for funding to build a test device. During this period, James L. Tuck who had worked with the UK teams on z - pinch had been introducing the concept to his new coworkers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory ( LANL ). When he heard of Spitzer 's pitch for funding, he applied to build a machine of his own, the Perhapsatron. Spitzer 's idea won funding and he began work on the stellarator under the code name Project Matterhorn. His work led to the creation of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Tuck returned to LANL and arranged local funding to build his machine. By this time, however, it was clear that all of the pinch machines were suffering from the same issues involving instability, and progress stalled. In 1953, Tuck and others suggested a number of solutions to the stability problems. This led to the design of a second series of pinch machines, led by the UK ZETA and Sceptre devices. Spitzer had planned an aggressive development project of four machines, A, B, C, and D. A and B were small research devices, C would be the prototype of a power - producing machine, and D would be the prototype of a commercial device. A worked without issue, but even by the time B was being used it was clear the stellarator was also suffering from instabilities and plasma leakage. Progress on C slowed as attempts were made to correct for these problems. By the mid-1950s it was clear that the simple theoretical tools being used to calculate the performance of all fusion machines were simply not predicting their actual behavior. Machines invariably leaked their plasma from their confinement area at rates far higher than predicted. In 1954, Edward Teller held a gathering of fusion researchers at the Princeton Gun Club, near the Project Matterhorn ( now known as Project Sherwood ) grounds. Teller started by pointing out the problems that everyone was having, and suggested that any system where the plasma was confined within concave fields was doomed to fail. Attendees remember him saying something to the effect that the fields were like rubber bands, and they would attempt to snap back to a straight configuration whenever the power was increased, ejecting the plasma. He went on to say that it appeared the only way to confine the plasma in a stable configuration would be to use convex fields, a `` cusp '' configuration. When the meeting concluded, most of the researchers quickly turned out papers saying why Teller 's concerns did not apply to their particular device. The pinch machines did not use magnetic fields in this way at all, while the mirror and stellarator seemed to have various ways out. This was soon followed by a paper by Martin David Kruskal and Martin Schwarzschild discussing pinch machines, however, which demonstrated instabilities in those devices were inherent to the design. The largest `` classic '' pinch device was the ZETA, including all of these suggested upgrades, starting operations in the UK in 1957. In early 1958, John Cockcroft announced that fusion had been achieved in the ZETA, an announcement that made headlines around the world. When physicists in the US expressed concerns about the claims they were initially dismissed. US experiments soon demonstrated the same neutrons, although temperature measurements suggested these could not be from fusion reactions. The neutrons seen in the UK were later demonstrated to be from different versions of the same instability processes that plagued earlier machines. Cockcroft was forced to retract the fusion claims, and the entire field was tainted for years. ZETA ended its experiments in 1968. The first experiment to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion was accomplished using Scylla I at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1958. Scylla I was a θ - pinch machine, with a cylinder full of deuterium. Electric current shot down the sides of the cylinder. The current made magnetic fields that pinched the plasma, raising temperatures to 15 million degrees Celsius, for long enough that atoms fused and produce neutrons. In 1950 -- 1951 I.E. Tamm and A.D. Sakharov in the Soviet Union, first discussed a tokamak - like approach. Experimental research on those designs began in 1956 at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow by a group of Soviet scientists led by Lev Artsimovich. The tokamak essentially combined a low - power pinch device with a low - power simple stellarator. The key was to combine the fields in such a way that the particles orbited within the reactor a particular number of times, today known as the `` safety factor ''. The combination of these fields dramatically improved confinement times and densities, resulting in huge improvements over existing devices. 1960s A key plasma physics text was published by Lyman Spitzer at Princeton in 1963. Spitzer took the ideal gas laws and adapted them to an ionized plasma, developing many of the fundamental equations used to model a plasma. Laser fusion was suggested in 1962 by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, shortly after the invention of the laser itself in 1960. At the time, Lasers were low power machines, but low - level research began as early as 1965. Laser fusion, formally known as inertial confinement fusion, involves imploding a target by using laser beams. There are two ways to do this : indirect drive and direct drive. In direct drive, the laser blasts a pellet of fuel. In indirect drive, the lasers blast a structure around the fuel. This makes x-rays that squeeze the fuel. Both methods compress the fuel so that fusion can take place. At the 1964 World 's Fair, the public was given its first demonstration of nuclear fusion. The device was a θ - pinch from General Electric. This was similar to the Scylla machine developed earlier at Los Alamos. The magnetic mirror was first published in 1967 by Richard F. Post and many others at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The mirror consisted of two large magnets arranged so they had strong fields within them, and a weaker, but connected, field between them. Plasma introduced in the area between the two magnets would `` bounce back '' from the stronger fields in the middle. The A.D. Sakharov group constructed the first tokamaks, the most successful being the T - 3 and its larger version T - 4. T - 4 was tested in 1968 in Novosibirsk, producing the world 's first quasistationary fusion reaction. When this were first announced, the international community was highly skeptical. A British team was invited to see T - 3, however, and after measuring it in depth they released their results that confirmed the Soviet claims. A burst of activity followed as many planned devices were abandoned and new tokamaks were introduced in their place -- the C model stellarator, then under construction after many redesigns, was quickly converted to the Symmetrical Tokamak. In his work with vacuum tubes, Philo Farnsworth observed that electric charge would accumulate in regions of the tube. Today, this effect is known as the Multipactor effect. Farnsworth reasoned that if ions were concentrated high enough they could collide and fuse. In 1962, he filed a patent on a design using a positive inner cage to concentrate plasma, in order to achieve nuclear fusion. During this time, Robert L. Hirsch joined the Farnsworth Television labs and began work on what became the fusor. Hirsch patented the design in 1966 and published the design in 1967. 1970s Shiva laser, 1977, the largest ICF laser system built in the seventies The Tandem Mirror Experiment ( TMX ) in 1979 In 1972, John Nuckolls outlined the idea of ignition. This is a fusion chain reaction. Hot helium made during fusion reheats the fuel and starts more reactions. John argued that ignition would require lasers of about 1 kJ. This turned out to be wrong. Nuckolls 's paper started a major development effort. Several laser systems were built at LLNL. These included the argus, the Cyclops, the Janus, the long path, the Shiva laser and the Nova in 1984. This prompted the UK to build the Central Laser Facility in 1976. During this time, great strides in understanding the tokamak system were made. A number of improvements to the design are now part of the `` advanced tokamak '' concept, which includes non-circular plasma, internal diverters and limiters, often superconducting magnets, and operate in the so - called `` H - mode '' island of increased stability. Two other designs have also become fairly well studied ; the compact tokamak is wired with the magnets on the inside of the vacuum chamber, while the spherical tokamak reduces its cross section as much as possible. In 1974 a study of the ZETA results demonstrated an interesting side - effect ; after an experimental run ended, the plasma would enter a short period of stability. This led to the reversed field pinch concept, which has seen some level of development since. On May 1, 1974, the KMS fusion company ( founded by Kip Siegel ) achieves the world 's first laser induced fusion in a deuterium - tritium pellet. In the mid-1970s, Project PACER, carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory ( LANL ) explored the possibility of a fusion power system that would involve exploding small hydrogen bombs ( fusion bombs ) inside an underground cavity. As an energy source, the system is the only fusion power system that could be demonstrated to work using existing technology. It would also require a large, continuous supply of nuclear bombs, however, making the economics of such a system rather questionable. In 1976, the two beam Argus laser becomes operational at livermore. In 1977, The 20 beam Shiva laser at Livermore is completed, capable of delivering 10.2 kilojoules of infrared energy on target. At a price of $25 million and a size approaching that of a football field, Shiva is the first of the megalasers. That same year, the JET project is approved by the European Commission and a site is selected. 1980s Magnetic mirrors suffered from end losses, requiring high power, complex magnetic designs, such as the baseball coil pictured here. The Novette target chamber ( metal sphere with diagnostic devices protruding radially ), which was reused from the Shiva project and two newly built laser chains visible in background. Inertial confinement fusion implosion on the Nova laser during the 1980s was a key driver of fusion development. As a result of advocacy, the cold war, and the 1970s energy crisis a massive magnetic mirror program was funded by the US federal government in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This program resulted in a series of large magnetic mirror devices including : 2X, Baseball I, Baseball II, the Tandem Mirror Experiment, the Tandem mirror experiment upgrade, the Mirror Fusion Test Facility and the MFTF - B. These machines were built and tested at Livermore from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s. A number of institutions collaborated on these machines, conducting experiments. These included the Institute for Advanced Study and the University of Wisconsin -- Madison. The last machine, the Mirror Fusion Test Facility cost 372 million dollars and was, at that time, the most expensive project in Livermore history. It opened on February 21, 1986 and was promptly shut down. The reason given was to balance the United States federal budget. This program was supported from within the Carter and early Reagan administrations by Edwin E. Kintner, a US Navy captain, under Alvin Trivelpiece. In Laser fusion progressed : in 1983, the NOVETTE laser was completed. The following December 1984, the ten beam NOVA laser was finished. Five years later, NOVA would produce a maximum of 120 kilojoules of infrared light, during a nanosecond pulse. Meanwhile, efforts focused on either fast delivery or beam smoothness. Both tried to deliver the energy uniformly to implode the target. One early problem was that the light in the infrared wavelength, lost lots of energy before hitting the fuel. Breakthroughs were made at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester. Rochester scientists used frequency - tripling crystals to transform the infrared laser beams into ultraviolet beams. In 1985, Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou invented a method to amplify lasers pulses by `` chirping ''. This method changes a single wavelength into a full spectrum. The system then amplifies the laser at each wavelength and then reconstitutes the beam into one color. Chirp pulsed amplification became instrumental in building the National Ignition Facility and the Omega EP system. Most research into ICF was towards weapons research, because the implosion is relevant to nuclear weapons. During this time Los Alamos National Laboratory constructed a series of laser facilities. This included Gemini ( a two beam system ), Helios ( eight beams ), Antares ( 24 beams ) and Aurora ( 96 beams ). The program ended in the early nineties with a cost on the order of one billion dollars. In 1987, Akira Hasegawa noticed that in a dipolar magnetic field, fluctuations tended to compress the plasma without energy loss. This effect was noticed in data taken by Voyager 2, when it encountered Uranus. This observation would become the basis for a fusion approach known as the Levitated dipole. In Tokamaks, the Tore Supra was under construction over the middle of the eighties ( 1983 to 1988 ). This was a Tokamak built in Cadarache, France. In 1983, the JET was completed and first plasmas achieved. In 1985, the Japanese tokamak, JT - 60 was completed. In 1988, the T - 15 a Soviet tokamak was completed. It was the first industrial fusion reactor to use superconducting magnets to control the plasma. These were Helium cooled. In 1989, Pons and Fleischmann submitted papers to the Journal of Electroanalytical Chemistry claiming that they had observed fusion in a room temperature device and disclosing their work in a press release. Some scientists reported excess heat, neutrons, tritium, helium and other nuclear effects in so - called cold fusion systems, which for a time gained interest as showing promise. Hopes fell when replication failures were weighed in view of several reasons cold fusion is not likely to occur, the discovery of possible sources of experimental error, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts. By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead, and cold fusion subsequently gained a reputation as pathological science. However, a small community of researchers continues to investigate cold fusion claiming to replicate Fleishmann and Pons ' results including nuclear reaction byproducts. Claims related to cold fusion are largely disbelieved in the mainstream scientific community. In 1989, the majority of a review panel organized by the US Department of Energy ( DOE ) found that the evidence for the discovery of a new nuclear process was not persuasive. A second DOE review, convened in 2004 to look at new research, reached conclusions similar to the first. In 1984, Martin Peng of ORNL proposed an alternate arrangement of the magnet coils that would greatly reduce the aspect ratio while avoiding the erosion issues of the compact tokamak : a Spherical tokamak. Instead of wiring each magnet coil separately, he proposed using a single large conductor in the center, and wiring the magnets as half - rings off of this conductor. What was once a series of individual rings passing through the hole in the center of the reactor was reduced to a single post, allowing for aspect ratios as low as 1.2. The ST concept appeared to represent an enormous advance in tokamak design. However, it was being proposed during a period when US fusion research budgets were being dramatically scaled back. ORNL was provided with funds to develop a suitable central column built out of a high - strength copper alloy called `` Glidcop ''. However, they were unable to secure funding to build a demonstration machine, `` STX ''. Failing to build an ST at ORNL, Peng began a worldwide effort to interest other teams in the ST concept and get a test machine built. One way to do this quickly would be to convert a spheromak machine to the Spherical tokamak layout. Peng 's advocacy also caught the interest of Derek Robinson, of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority fusion center at Culham. Robinson was able to gather together a team and secure funding on the order of 100,000 pounds to build an experimental machine, the Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak, or START. Several parts of the machine were recycled from earlier projects, while others were loaned from other labs, including a 40 keV neutral beam injector from ORNL. Construction of START began in 1990, it was assembled rapidly and started operation in January 1991. 1990s Mockup of a gold - plated hohlraum designed for use in the National Ignition Facility In 1991 the Preliminary Tritium Experiment at the Joint European Torus in England achieved the world 's first controlled release of fusion power. In 1992, a major article was published in Physics Today by Robert McCory at the Laboratory for laser energetics outlying the current state of ICF and advocating for a national ignition facility. This was followed up by a major review article, from John Lindl in 1995, advocating for NIF. During this time a number of ICF subsystems were developing, including target manufacturing, cryogenic handling systems, new laser designs ( notably the NIKE laser at NRL ) and improved diagnostics like time of flight analyzers and Thomson scattering. This work was done at the NOVA laser system, General Atomics, Laser Mégajoule and the GEKKO XII system in Japan. Through this work and lobbying by groups like the fusion power associates and John Sethian at NRL, a vote was made in congress, authorizing funding for the NIF project in the late nineties. In the early nineties, theory and experimental work regarding fusors and polywells was published. In response, Todd Rider at MIT developed general models of these devices. Rider argued that all plasma systems at thermodynamic equilibrium were fundamentally limited. In 1995, William Nevins published a criticism arguing that the particles inside fusors and polywells would build up angular momentum, causing the dense core to degrade. In 1995, the University of Wisconsin -- Madison built a large fusor, known as HOMER, which is still in operation. Meanwhile, Dr George H. Miley at Illinois, built a small fusor that has produced neutrons using deuterium gas and discovered the `` star mode '' of fusor operation. The following year, the first `` US - Japan Workshop on IEC Fusion '', was conducted. At this time in Europe, an IEC device was developed as a commercial neutron source by Daimler - Chrysler and NSD Fusion. In 1996, the Z - machine was upgraded and opened to the public by the US Army in August 1998 in Scientific American. The key attributes of Sandia 's Z machine are its 18 million amperes and a discharge time of less than 100 nanoseconds. This generates a magnetic pulse, inside a large oil tank, this strikes an array of tungsten wires called a liner. Firing the Z - machine has become a way to test very high energy, high temperature ( 2 billion degrees ) conditions. In 1996, the Tore Supra creates a plasma for two minutes with a current of almost 1 million amperes driven non-inductively by 2.3 MW of lower hybrid frequency waves. This is 280 MJ of injected and extracted energy. This result was possible because of the actively cooled plasma - facing components In 1997, JET produced a peak of 16.1 MW of fusion power ( 65 % of heat to plasma ), with fusion power of over 10MW sustained for over 0.5 sec. Its successor, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor ( ITER ), was officially announced as part of a seven - party consortium ( six countries and the EU ). ITER is designed to produce ten times more fusion power than the power put into the plasma. ITER is currently under construction in Cadarache, France. In the late nineties, a team at Columbia University and MIT developed the Levitated dipole a fusion device which consisted of a superconducting electromagnet, floating in a saucer shaped vacuum chamber. Plasma swirled around this donut and fused along the center axis. 2000s Starting in 1999, a growing number of amateurs have been able to fuse atoms using homemade fusors, shown here. The Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak became operational in the UK in 1999 In the March 8, 2002 issue of the peer - reviewed journal Science, Rusi P. Taleyarkhan and colleagues at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory ( ORNL ) reported that acoustic cavitation experiments conducted with deuterated acetone ( C D O ) showed measurements of tritium and neutron output consistent with the occurrence of fusion. Taleyarkhan was later found guilty of misconduct, the Office of Naval Research debarred him for 28 months from receiving Federal Funding, and his name was listed in the ' Excluded Parties List '. `` Fast ignition '' was developed in the late nineties, and was part of a push by the Laboratory for Laser Energetics for building the Omega EP system. This system was finished in 2008. Fast ignition showed such dramatic power savings that ICF appears to be a useful technique for energy production. There are even proposals to build an experimental facility dedicated to the fast ignition approach, known as HiPER. In April 2005, a team from UCLA announced it had devised a way of producing fusion using a machine that `` fits on a lab bench '', using lithium tantalate to generate enough voltage to smash deuterium atoms together. The process, however, does not generate net power ( see Pyroelectric fusion ). Such a device would be useful in the same sort of roles as the fusor. In 2006, China 's EAST test reactor is completed. This was the first tokamak to use superconducting magnets to generate both the toroidal and poloidal fields. In the early 2000s, Researchers at LANL reasoned that a plasma oscillating could be at local thermodynamic equilibrium. This prompted the POPS and Penning trap designs. At this time, researchers at MIT became interested in fusors for space propulsion and powering space vehicles. Specifically, researchers developed fusors with multiple inner cages. Greg Piefer graduated from Madison and founded Phoenix Nuclear Labs, a company that developed the fusor into a neutron source for the mass production of medical isotopes. Robert Bussard began speaking openly about the Polywell in 2006. He attempted to generate interest in the research, before his death. In 2008, Taylor Wilson achieved notoriety for achieving nuclear fusion at 14, with a homemade fusor. In March 2009, a high - energy laser system, the National Ignition Facility ( NIF ), located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, became operational. The early 2000s saw the founding of a number of privately backed fusion companies pursuing innovative approaches with the stated goal of developing commercially viable fusion power plants. Secretive startup Tri Alpha Energy, founded in 1998, began exploring a field - reversed configuration approach. In 2002, Canadian company General Fusion began proof - of - concept experiments based on a hybrid magneto - inertial approach called Magnetized Target Fusion. These companies are funded by private investors including Jeff Bezos ( General Fusion ) and Paul Allen ( Tri Alpha Energy ). Toward the end of the decade, UK - based fusion company Tokamak Energy started exploring spherical tokamak devices. 2010s The preamplifiers of the National Ignition Facility. In 2012, the NIF achieved a 500 - terawatt shot. The Wendelstein7X under construction Example of a stellarator design : A coil system ( blue ) surrounds plasma ( yellow ). A magnetic field line is highlighted in green on the yellow plasma surface. NIF, the French Laser Mégajoule and the planned European Union High Power laser Energy Research ( HiPER ) facility continued researching inertial ( laser ) confinement. In 2010, NIF researchers conducted a series of `` tuning '' shots to determine the optimal target design and laser parameters for high - energy ignition experiments with fusion fuel. Firing tests were performed on October 31, 2010 and November 2, 2010. In early 2012, NIF director Mike Dunne expected the laser system to generate fusion with net energy gain by the end of 2012. However, that did not happen until August 2013. The facility reported that their next step involved improving the system to prevent the hohlraum from either breaking up asymmetrically or too soon. A 2012 paper demonstrated that a dense plasma focus had achieved temperatures of 1.8 billion degrees Celsius, sufficient for boron fusion, and that fusion reactions were occurring primarily within the contained plasmoid, a necessary condition for net power. In April 2014, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ended the Laser Inertial Fusion Energy ( LIFE ) program and redirected their efforts towards NIF. In August 2014, Phoenix Nuclear Labs announced the sale of a high - yield neutron generator that could sustain 5 × 10 deuterium fusion reactions per second over a 24 - hour period. In October 2014, Lockheed Martin 's Skunk Works announced the development of a high beta fusion reactor, the Compact Fusion Reactor, intending on making a 100 - megawatt prototype by 2017 and beginning regular operation by 2022. Although the original concept was to build a 20 - ton, container - sized unit, the team later conceded that the minimum scale would be 2,000 tons. In January 2015, the polywell was presented at Microsoft Research. In August, 2015, MIT announced a tokamak it named ARC fusion reactor using rare - earth barium - copper oxide ( REBCO ) superconducting tapes to produce high - magnetic field coils that it claimed produce comparable magnetic field strength in a smaller configuration than other designs. In October 2015, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics completed building the largest stellarator to date, named Wendelstein 7 - X. On December 10, they successfully produced the first helium plasma, and on February 3, 2016 produced the device 's first hydrogen plasma. With plasma discharges lasting up to 30 minutes, Wendelstein 7 - X is attempting to demonstrate the essential stellarator attribute : continuous operation of a high - temperature hydrogen plasma. General Fusion developed its plasma injector technology and Tri Alpha Energy constructed and operated its C - 2U device. In 2017 Helion Energy 's fifth - generation plasma machine went into operation, seeking to achieve plasma density of 20 Tesla and fusion temperatures. In 2018 General Fusion was developing 70 % scale demo system to be completed around 2023. In 2018, energy corporation Eni announced a $50 million investment in the newly founded Commonwealth Fusion Systems, to attempt to commercialize ARC technology using a test reactor ( SPARC ) in collaboration with MIT. Fuels By firing particle beams at targets, many fusion reactions have been tested, while the fuels considered for power have all been light elements like the isotopes of hydrogen -- protium, deuterium, and tritium. The deuterium and helium - 3 reaction requires helium - 3, an isotope of helium so scarce on Earth that it would have to be mined extraterrestrially or produced by other nuclear reactions. Finally, researchers hope to perform the protium and boron - 11 reaction, because it does not directly produce neutrons, though side reactions can. Deuterium, tritium Diagram of the D-T reaction The easiest nuclear reaction, at the lowest energy, is : D + → He ( 3.5 MeV ) + n ( 14.1 MeV ) This reaction is common in research, industrial and military applications, usually as a convenient source of neutrons. Deuterium is a naturally occurring isotope of hydrogen and is commonly available. The large mass ratio of the hydrogen isotopes makes their separation easy compared to the difficult uranium enrichment process. Tritium is a natural isotope of hydrogen, but because it has a short half - life of 12.32 years, it is hard to find, store, produce, and is expensive. Consequently, the deuterium - tritium fuel cycle requires the breeding of tritium from lithium using one of the following reactions : n + Li → + He n + Li → + He + n The reactant neutron is supplied by the D-T fusion reaction shown above, and the one that has the greatest yield of energy. The reaction with Li is exothermic, providing a small energy gain for the reactor. The reaction with Li is endothermic but does not consume the neutron. At least some neutron multiplication reactions are required to replace the neutrons lost to absorption by other elements. Leading candidate neutron multiplication materials are beryllium and lead however the Li reaction above also helps to keep the neutron population high. Natural lithium is mainly Li however this has a low tritium production cross section compared to Li so most reactor designs use breeder blankets with enriched Li. Several drawbacks are commonly attributed to D-T fusion power : It produces substantial amounts of neutrons that result in the neutron activation of the reactor materials. Only about 20 % of the fusion energy yield appears in the form of charged particles with the remainder carried off by neutrons, which limits the extent to which direct energy conversion techniques might be applied. It requires the handling of the radioisotope tritium. Similar to hydrogen, tritium is difficult to contain and may leak from reactors in some quantity. Some estimates suggest that this would represent a fairly large environmental release of radioactivity. The neutron flux expected in a commercial D-T fusion reactor is about 100 times that of current fission power reactors, posing problems for material design. After a series of D-T tests at JET, the vacuum vessel was sufficiently radioactive that remote handling was required for the year following the tests. In a production setting, the neutrons would be used to react with lithium in the context of a breeder blanket comprising lithium ceramic pebbles or liquid lithium, in order to create more tritium. This also deposits the energy of the neutrons in the lithium, which would then be transferred to drive electrical production. The lithium neutron absorption reaction protects the outer portions of the reactor from the neutron flux. Newer designs, the advanced tokamak in particular, also use lithium inside the reactor core as a key element of the design. The plasma interacts directly with the lithium, preventing a problem known as `` recycling ''. The advantage of this design was demonstrated in the Lithium Tokamak Experiment. Deuterium Deuterium fusion cross section ( in square meters ) at different ion collision energies. This is the second easiest fusion reaction, fusing two deuterium nuclei. The reaction has two branches that occur with nearly equal probability : D + D → T + H D + D → He + n This reaction is also common in research. The optimum energy to initiate this reaction is 15 keV, only slightly higher than the optimum for the D-T reaction. The first branch does not produce neutrons, but it does produce tritium, so that a D-D reactor will not be completely tritium - free, even though it does not require an input of tritium or lithium. Unless the tritons can be quickly removed, most of the tritium produced would be burned before leaving the reactor, which would reduce the handling of tritium, but would produce more neutrons, some of which are very energetic. The neutron from the second branch has an energy of only 2.45 MeV ( 0.393 pJ ), whereas the neutron from the D-T reaction has an energy of 14.1 MeV ( 2.26 pJ ), resulting in a wider range of isotope production and material damage. When the tritons are removed quickly while allowing the He to react, the fuel cycle is called `` tritium suppressed fusion '' The removed tritium decays to He with a 12.5 year half life. By recycling the He produced from the decay of tritium back into the fusion reactor, the fusion reactor does not require materials resistant to fast 14.1 MeV ( 2.26 pJ ) neutrons. Assuming complete tritium burn - up, the reduction in the fraction of fusion energy carried by neutrons would be only about 18 %, so that the primary advantage of the D-D fuel cycle is that tritium breeding would not be required. Other advantages are independence from scarce lithium resources and a somewhat softer neutron spectrum. The disadvantage of D-D compared to D-T is that the energy confinement time ( at a given pressure ) must be 30 times longer and the power produced ( at a given pressure and volume ) would be 68 times less. Assuming complete removal of tritium and recycling of He, only 6 % of the fusion energy is carried by neutrons. The tritium - suppressed D-D fusion requires an energy confinement that is 10 times longer compared to D-T and a plasma temperature that is twice as high. Deuterium, helium - 3 A second - generation approach to controlled fusion power involves combining helium - 3 ( He ) and deuterium ( H ) : D + He → He + H This reaction produces a helium - 4 nucleus ( He ) and a high - energy proton. As with the p - B aneutronic fusion fuel cycle, most of the reaction energy is released as charged particles, reducing activation of the reactor housing and potentially allowing more efficient energy harvesting ( via any of several speculative technologies ). In practice, D-D side reactions produce a significant number of neutrons, resulting in p - B being the preferred cycle for aneutronic fusion. Protium, boron - 11 If aneutronic fusion is the goal, then the most promising candidate may be the hydrogen - 1 ( protium ) and boron reaction, which releases alpha ( helium ) particles, but does not rely on neutron scattering for energy transfer. H + B → 3 He Under reasonable assumptions, side reactions will result in about 0.1 % of the fusion power being carried by neutrons. At 123 keV, the optimum temperature for this reaction is nearly ten times higher than that for the pure hydrogen reactions, the energy confinement must be 500 times better than that required for the D-T reaction, and the power density will be 2500 times lower than for D-T. Because the confinement properties of conventional approaches to fusion such as the tokamak and laser pellet fusion are marginal, most proposals for aneutronic fusion are based on radically different confinement concepts, such as the Polywell and the Dense Plasma Focus. Results have been extremely promising : `` In the October 2013 edition of Nature Communications, a research team led by Christine Labaune at École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, reported a new record fusion rate : an estimated 80 million fusion reactions during the 1.5 nanoseconds that the laser fired, which is at least 100 times more than any previous proton - boron experiment. '' Material selection Main article : International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility Considerations Any power station using hot plasma, is going to have plasma facing walls. In even the simplest plasma approaches, the material will get blasted with matter and energy. This leads to a minimum list of considerations, including dealing with : A heating and cooling cycle, up to a 10 MW / m2 thermal load. Neutron radiation, which over time leads to neutron activation and embrittlement. High energy ions leaving at tens to hundreds of electronvolts. Alpha particles leaving at millions of electronvolts. Electrons leaving at high energy. Light radiation ( IR, visible, UV, X-ray ). Depending on the approach, these effects may be higher or lower than typical fission reactors like the pressurized water reactor ( PWR ). One estimate put the radiation at 100 times the ( PWR ). Materials need to be selected or developed that can withstand these basic conditions. Depending on the approach, however, there may be other considerations such as electrical conductivity, magnetic permeability and mechanical strength. There is also a need for materials whose primary components and impurities do not result in long - lived radioactive wastes. Durability For long term use, each atom in the wall is expected to be hit by a neutron and displaced about a hundred times before the material is replaced. High - energy neutrons will produce hydrogen and helium by way of various nuclear reactions that tends to form bubbles at grain boundaries and result in swelling, blistering or embrittlement. Selection One can choose either a low - Z material, such as graphite or beryllium, or a high - Z material, usually tungsten with molybdenum as a second choice. Use of liquid metals ( lithium, gallium, tin ) has also been proposed, e.g., by injection of 1 -- 5 mm thick streams flowing at 10 m / s on solid substrates. If graphite is used, the gross erosion rates due to physical and chemical sputtering would be many meters per year, so one must rely on redeposition of the sputtered material. The location of the redeposition will not exactly coincide with the location of the sputtering, so one is still left with erosion rates that may be prohibitive. An even larger problem is the tritium co-deposited with the redeposited graphite. The tritium inventory in graphite layers and dust in a reactor could quickly build up to many kilograms, representing a waste of resources and a serious radiological hazard in case of an accident. The consensus of the fusion community seems to be that graphite, although a very attractive material for fusion experiments, can not be the primary plasma - facing material ( PFM ) in a commercial reactor. The sputtering rate of tungsten by the plasma fuel ions is orders of magnitude smaller than that of carbon, and tritium is much less incorporated into redeposited tungsten, making this a more attractive choice. On the other hand, tungsten impurities in a plasma are much more damaging than carbon impurities, and self - sputtering of tungsten can be high, so it will be necessary to ensure that the plasma in contact with the tungsten is not too hot ( a few tens of eV rather than hundreds of eV ). Tungsten also has disadvantages in terms of eddy currents and melting in off - normal events, as well as some radiological issues. Safety and the environment Accident potential Unlike nuclear fission, fusion requires extremely precise and controlled temperature, pressure and magnetic field parameters for any net energy to be produced. If a reactor suffers damage or loses even a small degree of required control, fusion reactions and heat generation would rapidly cease. Additionally, fusion reactors contain only small amounts of fuel, enough to `` burn '' for minutes, or in some cases, microseconds. Unless they are actively refueled, the reactions will quickly end. Therefore, fusion reactors are considered immune from catastrophic meltdown. For similar reasons, runaway reactions can not occur in a fusion reactor. The plasma is burnt at optimal conditions, and any significant change will simply quench the reactions. The reaction process is so delicate that this level of safety is inherent. Although the plasma in a fusion power station is expected to have a volume of 1,000 cubic metres ( 35,000 cu ft ) or more, the plasma density is low and typically contains only a few grams of fuel in use. If the fuel supply is closed, the reaction stops within seconds. In comparison, a fission reactor is typically loaded with enough fuel for several months or years, and no additional fuel is necessary to continue the reaction. It is this large amount of fuel that gives rise to the possibility of a meltdown ; nothing like this exists in a fusion reactor. In the magnetic approach, strong fields are developed in coils that are held in place mechanically by the reactor structure. Failure of this structure could release this tension and allow the magnet to `` explode '' outward. The severity of this event would be similar to any other industrial accident or an MRI machine quench / explosion, and could be effectively stopped with a containment building similar to those used in existing ( fission ) nuclear generators. The laser - driven inertial approach is generally lower - stress because of the increased size of the reaction chamber. Although failure of the reaction chamber is possible, simply stopping fuel delivery would prevent any sort of catastrophic failure. Most reactor designs rely on liquid hydrogen as both a coolant and a method for converting stray neutrons from the reaction into tritium, which is fed back into the reactor as fuel. Hydrogen is highly flammable, and in the case of a fire it is possible that the hydrogen stored on - site could be burned up and escape. In this case, the tritium contents of the hydrogen would be released into the atmosphere, posing a radiation risk. Calculations suggest that at about 1 kilogram ( 2.2 lb ), the total amount of tritium and other radioactive gases in a typical power station would be so small that they would have diluted to legally acceptable limits by the time they blew as far as the station 's perimeter fence. The likelihood of small industrial accidents, including the local release of radioactivity and injury to staff, can not be estimated yet. These would include accidental releases of lithium or tritium or mishandling of decommissioned radioactive components of the reactor itself. Magnet quench A quench is an abnormal termination of magnet operation that occurs when part of the superconducting coil enters the normal ( resistive ) state. This can occur because the field inside the magnet is too large, the rate of change of field is too large ( causing eddy currents and resultant heating in the copper support matrix ), or a combination of the two. More rarely a defect in the magnet can cause a quench. When this happens, that particular spot is subject to rapid Joule heating from the enormous current, which raises the temperature of the surrounding regions. This pushes those regions into the normal state as well, which leads to more heating in a chain reaction. The entire magnet rapidly becomes normal ( this can take several seconds, depending on the size of the superconducting coil ). This is accompanied by a loud bang as the energy in the magnetic field is converted to heat, and rapid boil - off of the cryogenic fluid. The abrupt decrease of current can result in kilovolt inductive voltage spikes and arcing. Permanent damage to the magnet is rare, but components can be damaged by localized heating, high voltages, or large mechanical forces. In practice, magnets usually have safety devices to stop or limit the current when the beginning of a quench is detected. If a large magnet undergoes a quench, the inert vapor formed by the evaporating cryogenic fluid can present a significant asphyxiation hazard to operators by displacing breathable air. A large section of the superconducting magnets in CERN 's Large Hadron Collider unexpectedly quenched during start - up operations in 2008, necessitating the replacement of a number of magnets. In order to mitigate against potentially destructive quenches, the superconducting magnets that form the LHC are equipped with fast - ramping heaters which are activated once a quench event is detected by the complex quench protection system. As the dipole bending magnets are connected in series, each power circuit includes 154 individual magnets, and should a quench event occur, the entire combined stored energy of these magnets must be dumped at once. This energy is transferred into dumps that are massive blocks of metal which heat up to several hundreds of degrees Celsius -- because of resistive heating -- in a matter of seconds. Although undesirable, a magnet quench is a `` fairly routine event '' during the operation of a particle accelerator. Effluents The natural product of the fusion reaction is a small amount of helium, which is completely harmless to life. Of more concern is tritium, which, like other isotopes of hydrogen, is difficult to retain completely. During normal operation, some amount of tritium will be continually released. Although tritium is volatile and biologically active, the health risk posed by a release is much lower than that of most radioactive contaminants, because of tritium 's short half - life ( 12.32 years ) and very low decay energy ( ~ 14.95 keV ), and because it does not bioaccumulate ( instead being cycled out of the body as water, with a biological half - life of 7 to 14 days ). Current ITER designs are investigating total containment facilities for any tritium. Waste management This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( July 2017 ) The large flux of high - energy neutrons in a reactor will make the structural materials radioactive. The radioactive inventory at shut - down may be comparable to that of a fission reactor, but there are important differences. The half - life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tends to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Unlike fission reactors, whose waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, most of the radioactive material in a fusion reactor would be the reactor core itself, which would be dangerous for about 50 years, and low - level waste for another 100. Although this waste will be considerably more radioactive during those 50 years than fission waste, the very short half - life makes the process very attractive, as the waste management is fairly straightforward. By 500 years the material would have the same radiotoxicity as coal ash. Additionally, the choice of materials used in a fusion reactor is less constrained than in a fission design, where many materials are required for their specific neutron cross-sections. This allows a fusion reactor to be designed using materials that are selected specifically to be `` low activation '', materials that do not easily become radioactive. Vanadium, for example, would become much less radioactive than stainless steel. Carbon fiber materials are also low - activation, as well as being strong and light, and are a promising area of study for laser - inertial reactors where a magnetic field is not required. In general terms, fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, the material it would create is less damaging biologically, and the radioactivity `` burns off '' within a time period that is well within existing engineering capabilities for safe long - term waste storage. Nuclear proliferation Main article : Nuclear proliferation Although fusion power uses nuclear technology, the overlap with nuclear weapons would be limited. A huge amount of tritium could be produced by a fusion power station ; tritium is used in the trigger of hydrogen bombs and in a modern boosted fission weapon, but it can also be produced by nuclear fission. The energetic neutrons from a fusion reactor could be used to breed weapons - grade plutonium or uranium for an atomic bomb ( for example by transmutation of U to Pu, or Th to U ). A study conducted 2011 assessed the risk of three scenarios : Use in small - scale fusion station : As a result of much higher power consumption, heat dissipation and a more recognizable design compared to enrichment gas centrifuges this choice would be much easier to detect and therefore implausible. Modifications to produce weapon - usable material in a commercial facility : The production potential is significant. But no fertile or fissile substances necessary for the production of weapon - usable materials needs to be present at a civil fusion system at all. If not shielded, a detection of these materials can be done by their characteristic gamma radiation. The underlying redesign could be detected by regular design information verifications. In the ( technically more feasible ) case of solid breeder blanket modules, it would be necessary for incoming components to be inspected for the presence of fertile material, otherwise plutonium for several weapons could be produced each year. Prioritizing a fast production of weapon - grade material regardless of secrecy : The fastest way to produce weapon usable material was seen in modifying a prior civil fusion power station. Unlike in some nuclear power stations, there is no weapon compatible material during civil use. Even without the need for covert action this modification would still take about 2 months to start the production and at least an additional week to generate a significant amount for weapon production. This was seen as enough time to detect a military use and to react with diplomatic or military means. To stop the production, a military destruction of inevitable parts of the facility leaving out the reactor itself would be sufficient. This, together with the intrinsic safety of fusion power would only bear a low risk of radioactive contamination. Another study concludes that `` (... ) large fusion reactors -- even if not designed for fissile material breeding -- could easily produce several hundred kg Pu per year with high weapon quality and very low source material requirements. '' It was emphasized that the implementation of features for intrinsic proliferation resistance might only be possible at this phase of research and development. The theoretical and computational tools needed for hydrogen bomb design are closely related to those needed for inertial confinement fusion, but have very little in common with the more scientifically developed magnetic confinement fusion. Energy source Large - scale reactors using neutronic fuels ( e.g. ITER ) and thermal power production ( turbine based ) are most comparable to fission power from an engineering and economics viewpoint. Both fission and fusion power stations involve a relatively compact heat source powering a conventional steam turbine - based power station, while producing enough neutron radiation to make activation of the station materials problematic. The main distinction is that fusion power produces no high - level radioactive waste ( though activated station materials still need to be disposed of ). There are some power station ideas that may significantly lower the cost or size of such stations ; however, research in these areas is nowhere near as advanced as in tokamaks. Fusion power commonly proposes the use of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen, as fuel and in many current designs also use lithium. Assuming a fusion energy output equal to the 1995 global power output of about 100 E J / yr ( = 1 × 10 J / yr ) and that this does not increase in the future, which is unlikely, then the known current lithium reserves would last 3000 years. Lithium from sea water would last 60 million years, however, and a more complicated fusion process using only deuterium would have fuel for 150 billion years. To put this in context, 150 billion years is close to 30 times the remaining lifespan of the sun, and more than 10 times the estimated age of the universe. Economics While fusion power is still in early stages of development, substantial sums have been and continue to be invested in research. In the EU almost € 10 billion was spent on fusion research up to the end of the 1990s, and the new ITER reactor alone is budgeted at € 6.6 billion total for the timeframe between 2008 and 2020. It is estimated that up to the point of possible implementation of electricity generation by nuclear fusion, R&D will need further promotion totalling around € 60 -- 80 billion over a period of 50 years or so ( of which € 20 -- 30 billion within the EU ) based on a report from 2002. Nuclear fusion research receives € 750 million ( excluding ITER funding ) from the European Union, compared with € 810 million for sustainable energy research, putting research into fusion power well ahead of that of any single rivaling technology. Indeed, the size of the investments and time frame of the expected results mean that fusion research is almost exclusively publicly funded, while research in other forms of energy can be done by the private sector. In spite of that, a number of start - up companies active in the field of fusion power have managed to attract private money. Advantages Fusion power would provide more energy for a given weight of fuel than any fuel - consuming energy source currently in use, and the fuel itself ( primarily deuterium ) exists abundantly in the Earth 's ocean : about 1 in 6500 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium. Although this may seem a low proportion ( about 0.015 % ), because nuclear fusion reactions are so much more energetic than chemical combustion and seawater is easier to access and more plentiful than fossil fuels, fusion could potentially supply the world 's energy needs for millions of years. Despite being technically non-renewable, fusion power ( like fission power using breeder reactors and reprocessing ) has many of the benefits of renewable energy sources ( such as being a long - term energy supply and emitting no greenhouse gases or air pollution ) as well as some of the benefits of the resource - limited energy sources as hydrocarbons and nuclear fission ( without reprocessing ). Like these currently dominant energy sources, fusion could provide very high power - generation density and uninterrupted power delivery ( because it is not dependent on the weather, unlike wind and solar power ). Another aspect of fusion energy is that the cost of production does not suffer from diseconomies of scale. The cost of water and wind energy, for example, goes up as the optimal locations are developed first, while further generators must be sited in less ideal conditions. With fusion energy the production cost will not increase much even if large numbers of stations are built, because the raw resource ( seawater ) is abundant and widespread. Some problems that are expected to be an issue in this century, such as fresh water shortages, can alternatively be regarded as problems of energy supply. For example, in desalination stations, seawater can be purified through distillation or reverse osmosis. Nonetheless, these processes are energy intensive. Even if the first fusion stations are not competitive with alternative sources, fusion could still become competitive if large - scale desalination requires more power than the alternatives are able to provide. A scenario has been presented of the effect of the commercialization of fusion power on the future of human civilization. ITER and later DEMO are envisioned to bring online the first commercial nuclear fusion energy reactor by 2050. Using this as the starting point and the history of the uptake of nuclear fission reactors as a guide, the scenario depicts a rapid take up of nuclear fusion energy starting after the middle of this century. Fusion power could be used in interstellar space, where solar energy is not available. See also Energy portal Nuclear technology portal ARC fusion reactor DEMO FuseNet Fusion Fusor General Fusion High beta fusion reactor Inertial confinement fusion ITER Inertial electrostatic confinement Joint European Torus Levitated dipole List of fusion experiments Magnetic mirror National Ignition Facility Oil constant Spheromak Stellarator Tokamak Tri Alpha Energy, Inc Wendelstein 7 - X COLEX process ( isotopic separation ) References Jump up ^ `` Nuclear Fusion : WNA ''. world-nuclear.org. November 2015. Jump up ^ `` Fission and fusion can yield energy ''. Hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu. Retrieved 30 October 2014. ^ Jump up to : Miley, G.H. ; Towner, H. ; Ivich, N. ( 1974 - 06 - 17 ). `` SciTech Connect : Fusion cross sections and reactivities ''. Osti.gov. doi : 10.2172 / 4014032. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. ^ Jump up to : `` Some Criteria for a Power producing thermonuclear reactor '' John Lawson, Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Hanvell, Berks, 2nd November 1956 Jump up ^ `` Lawson 's three criteria ''. EFDA. February 25, 2013. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` Triple product ''. EFDA. 2014 - 06 - 20. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ Fitzpatrick, Richard. `` Magnetized plasma ''. Introduction to Plasma Physics. Jump up ^ Alfvén, H ( 1942 ). `` Existence of electromagnetic - hydrodynamic waves ''. Nature. 150 : 405 -- 406. Bibcode : 1942Natur. 150... 405A. doi : 10.1038 / 150405d0. Jump up ^ Tuszewski, M. ( 1988 ). `` Field reversed configurations ''. Nuclear Fusion. 28 ( 11 ) : 2033 -- 2092. doi : 10.1088 / 0029 - 5515 / 28 / 11 / 008. Jump up ^ Engelhardt, W. ( 2005 - 01 - 01 ). `` Is a Plasma Diamagnetic ? ''. Physics Essays. 18 ( 4 ) : 504 -- 513. arXiv : physics / 0510139. Bibcode : 2005PhyEs... 18... 504E. doi : 10.4006 / 1.3025762. Jump up ^ R.F. Post, Proc. of Second U.N. Int. Conf. on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Vol. 32, p. 245 ( Geneva, 1958 ) Jump up ^ `` Laser Inertial Fusion Energy ''. Life.llnl.gov. Archived from the original on 2014 - 09 - 15. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. ^ Jump up to : `` Experimental results from a beam direct converter at 100 kV '' R.W. MOIR, W.L. BARR, Journal of fusion energy, Volume 2, No 2, 1982 Jump up ^ `` All - the - Worlds - Tokamaks ''. tokamak.info. Jump up ^ `` The first plasma : the Wendelstein 7 - X fusion device is now in operation ''. www.ipp.mpg.de. Jump up ^ `` MIT tests unique approach to fusion power ''. MIT News, David Chandler, MIT News Office, March 19, 2008. Accessed March 2008 ^ Jump up to : `` Mirror Systems : Fuel Cycles, loss reduction and energy recovery '' by Richard F. Post, BNES Nuclear fusion reactor conferences at Culham laboratory, September 1969. Jump up ^ J Berowitz, H Grad and H Rubin, in proceedings of the second United Nations International conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy, Geneva, 1958, Vol 31, Page 177 Jump up ^ P.A. Bagryansky et. al., Physical Review Letters 114, 205001 ( 2015 ) Jump up ^ Freidberg, Jeffrey P. ( 8 February 2007 ). Plasma Physics and Fusion Energy. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978 - 0 - 521 - 85107 - 7. Jump up ^ `` Magnetic Fusion Technology '' Thomas Dolan, et Al, Springer, 2014 Chapter 1, pages 30 - 40 ^ Jump up to : Nuckolls, John ; Wood, Lowell ; Thiessen, Albert ; Zimmerman, George ( 1972 ). `` Laser Compression of Matter to Super-High Densities : Thermonuclear ( CTR ) Applications ''. Nature. 239 : 139 -- 142. Bibcode : 1972Natur. 239... 139N. doi : 10.1038 / 239139a0. Jump up ^ Y.C. Francis Thio Ph. D., Program Manager, U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, Germantown, Maryland, United States. `` Status of the U.S. program in magneto - inertial fusion '' ( PDF ). Iopscience.iop.org. Retrieved 30 October 2014. CS1 maint : Multiple names : authors list ( link ) Jump up ^ INERTIAL FUSION DRIVEN BY INTENSE HEAVY - ION BEAMS, W.M. Sharp, et al, 2011 ^ Jump up to : Seife, Charles. Sun in a Bottle : The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking. 1st ed. Vol. 1. N.p. : Penguin, 2008. Print. ^ Jump up to : Phillips, James. `` Magnetic Fusion. '' Los Alamos Science Winter 1983 : 64 - 67. Web. 4 Apr. 2013. Jump up ^ Srivastava, K.M. ; Vyas, D.N., `` Non-linear analysis of the stability of the screw pinch '', ( 1982 ) Astrophysics and Space Science, vol. 86, no. 1, Aug. 1982, p. 71 - 89 Jump up ^ `` A general critique of inertial - electrostatic confinement fusion systems '' Plasma Physics, June 1995, Dr. Todd Rider, MIT Jump up ^ `` The Boy Who Played With Fusion ''. Popular Science. Retrieved October 18, 2013. Jump up ^ US patent 5,160,695, Robert W. Bussard, `` Method and apparatus for creating and controlling nuclear fusion reactions '', issued 1992 - 11 - 03 Jump up ^ FRX - L : A Plasma Injector for Magnetized Target Fusion Jump up ^ `` Spherically imploding plasma liners as a standoff driver for MIF '' IEEE transactions, 2012, Hsu, et al. Jump up ^ Chang, Kenneth ( February 27, 2007 ). `` Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble ? ''. New York Times. Retrieved 2007 - 02 - 27. `` Dr. Putterman 's approach is to use sound waves, called sonofusion or bubble fusion, to expand and collapse tiny bubbles, generating ultrahot temperatures. At temperatures hot enough, atoms can literally fuse and release even more energy than when they split in nuclear fission, now used in nuclear power stations and weapons. Furthermore, fusion is clean (, ) in that it does not produce long - lived nuclear waste. '' Jump up ^ Chang, Kenneth ( 2004 - 03 - 25 ), US will give cold fusion a second look, The New York Times, retrieved 2009 - 02 - 08. Jump up ^ Ouellette, Jennifer ( 2011 - 12 - 23 ), Could Starships Use Cold Fusion Propulsion ?, Discovery News. Jump up ^ Huizenga, John Robert ( 1993 ). Cold Fusion : The Scientific Fiasco of the Century. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978 - 0 - 19 - 855817 - 0. Jump up ^ `` NEUTRAL - BEAM INJECTION '' W.B. Kunkel, Lawrence Livermore National Labs, FUSION, 1980 Jump up ^ McGuire, Thomas. Heating Plasma for Fusion Power Using Magnetic Field Oscillations. Baker Botts LLP, assignee. Issued : 4 / 2 / 14, Patent 14 / 243,447. N.d. Print. Jump up ^ `` Nonlinear Thomson scattering of intense laser pulses from beams and plasma '' Phys. Rev. E 48, 3003 -- Published 1 October 1993 Eric Esarey, Sally K. Ride, and Phillip Sprangle Jump up ^ `` Thomson scattering system on the TEXTOR tokamak using a multi-pass laser beam configuration '' M Yu Kantor, AJH Donné, R Jaspers, Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, Volume 51, 5 Jump up ^ Mott - Smith, H.M. and Langmuir, Irving ( 1926 ). `` The Theory of Collectors in Gaseous Discharges ''. Phys. Rev. 28 ( 4 ) : 727 -- 763. Jump up ^ `` NCSX Vacuum Vessel External Flux Loops Design and Installation, PPPL, Twenty - Second Symposium on Fusion Engineering, 2007 Jump up ^ Park, Jaeyoung ; Krall, Nicholas A. ; Sieck, Paul E. ; Offermann, Dustin T. ; Skillicorn, Michael ; Sanchez, Andrew ; Davis, Kevin ; Alderson, Eric ; Lapenta, Giovanni ( 2014 - 06 - 01 ). `` High Energy Electron Confinement in a Magnetic Cusp Configuration ''. arXiv : 1406.0133. Bibcode : 2015PhRvX... 5b1024P. doi : 10.1103 / PhysRevX. 5.021024. Jump up ^ J. Larmor, `` On a dynamical theory of the electric and luminiferous medium '', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 190, ( 1897 ) pp. 205 -- 300 ( Third and last in a series of papers with the same name ). Jump up ^ `` Study of steam, helium and supercritical CO2 turbine power generations in prototype fusion power reactor '', S Ishiyama, Y Muto, Y Kato, S Nishio, Progress in Nuclear Fusion, 2008 Jump up ^ Seaver, Lynda L ( 8 November 2010 ). `` Press release : World 's largest laser sets records for neutron yield and laser energy ''. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Jump up ^ T. Anklam ; A.J. Simon ; S. Powers ; W.R. Meier ( December 2, 2010 ). `` LIFE : The Case for Early Commercialization of Fusion Energy '' ( PDF ). Livermore, LLNL - JRNL - 463536. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ Hanaor, D.A.H. ; Kolb, M.H.H. ; Gan, Y. ; Kamlah, M. ; Knitter, R. ( 2014 ). `` Solution based synthesis of mixed - phase materials in the Li TiO - Li SiO system ''. Journal of Nuclear Materials. 456 : 151 -- 161. arXiv : 1410.7128. Bibcode : 2015JNuM... 456... 151H. doi : 10.1016 / j. jnucmat. 2014.09. 028. Jump up ^ `` Mirror Systems : Fuel Cycles, loss reduction and energy recovery '' by Richard F. Post, BNES Nuclear fusion reactor conferences at Culham laboratory, September 1969 Jump up ^ `` Test results on plasma direct converters '' William L. Barr and Ralph W Moir, Nuclear Technology Vol 3, January 1983 Jump up ^ `` JET ''. Culham Centre Fusion Energy. Retrieved 26 June 2016. Jump up ^ Cohen, Sam, and B. Berlinger. `` Long - pulse Operation of the PFRC - 2 Device. '' The Joint US - Japan Compact Torus. Wisconsin, Madison. 22 Aug. 2016. Lecture. Jump up ^ Wesson, J : `` Tokamaks '', 3rd edition page 115, Oxford University Press, 2004 Jump up ^ `` Improved Confinement During Magnetic Levitation in LDX '', 50th Annual Meeting of the APS DDP, November 18, 2008 M Manuel Jump up ^ Ono, Y ( 1999 ). `` New relaxation of merging spheromaks to a field reversed configuration ''. Nuclear Fusion 39 ( 11Y ) : 2001 -- 2008. doi : 10.1088 / 0029 - 5515 / 39 / 11Y / 346. edit Jump up ^ `` Advanced Spheromak Fusion Reactor '' T Fowler, E Hooper, 8th international conference on emerging nuclear energy ystems Jump up ^ `` Three Game Changing Discoveries : A Simpler Fusion Concept ? '' by Thomas C Simonen, Journal of Fusion Energy, 2016 Jump up ^ Gas Dynamic Trap ( GDT ). Experiments with Electron Heating. Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk State University. Siberian Branch, Russia, 2012, Thomas Simonen Jump up ^ Wood RD, Hill DN, McLean HS, Hooper EB, Hudson BF, Moller JM, Romero - Talamas CA ( 2009 ) `` Improved magnetic field generation efficiency and higher temperature spheromak plasmas, '' Nuclear Fusion 49, 025001 ( 4pp ). Jump up ^ Booth, William. `` Fusion 's $372 - Million Mothball. '' Science ( New York City ) 9 Oct. 1987, Volume 238 ed. : 152 - 55. Print Jump up ^ Containment in a cusped Plasma System, Dr. Harold Grad, NYO - 9496 Jump up ^ Pfalzner 2006, p. 19 -- 20. Jump up ^ Pfalzner, 2006 & p182 -- 193. Jump up ^ Thorson, Timothy A. ( 1996 ). Ion flow and fusion reactivity characterization of a spherically convergent ion focus. University of Wisconsin, Madison. Jump up ^ `` Stable, thermal equilibrium, large - amplitude, spherical plasma oscillations in electrostatic confinement devices '', DC Barnes and Rick Nebel, PHYSICS OF PLASMAS VOLUME 5, NUMBER 7 JULY 1998 Jump up ^ Carr, M. ; Khachan, J. ( 2013 ). `` A biased probe analysis of potential well formation in an electron only, low beta Polywell magnetic field ''. Physics of Plasmas 20 ( 5 ) : 052504. Bibcode : 2013PhPl... 20e2504C. doi : 10.1063 / 1.4804279 Jump up ^ Cockburn, Stewart ; Ellyard, David ( 1981 ). Oliphant, the Life and Times of Sir Mark Oliphant. Adelaide : Axiom Books. ISBN 978 - 0 - 9594164 - 0 - 4. Jump up ^ Cockburn & Ellyard 1981, pp. 48 -- 50. Jump up ^ Cockburn & Ellyard 1981, pp. 52 -- 55. Jump up ^ Oliphant, M.L.E. ; Rutherford, Lord ( 3 July 1933 ). `` Experiments on the Transmutation of Elements by Protons ''. Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 141 ( 843 ) : 259 -- 281. Bibcode : 1933RSPSA. 141... 259O. doi : 10.1098 / rspa. 1933.0117. Jump up ^ Oliphant, M.L.E. ; Kinsey, B.B. ; Rutherford, Lord ( 1 September 1933 ). `` The Transmutation of Lithium by Protons and by Ions of the Heavy Isotope of Hydrogen ''. Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 141 ( 845 ) : 722 -- 733. Bibcode : 1933RSPSA. 141... 722O. doi : 10.1098 / rspa. 1933.0150. Jump up ^ Oliphant, M.L.E. ; Harteck, P. ; Rutherford, Lord ( 1 May 1934 ). `` Transmutation Effects Observed with Heavy Hydrogen ''. Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 144 ( 853 ) : 692 -- 703. Bibcode : 1934RSPSA. 144... 692O. doi : 10.1098 / rspa. 1934.0077. Jump up ^ `` British Patent 817681 ''. V3.espacenet.com. Retrieved 2013 - 06 - 22. Jump up ^ Nathaniel Fisch. Edward Teller Centennial Symposium. Books.google.com. p. 118. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ ( 1 ), LOS ALAMOS SCIENCE Winter / Spring 1983 Jump up ^ Lyman J Spitzer, `` The Physics of Fully Ionized Gases '' 1963 Jump up ^ ( 2 ) Archived October 30, 2014, at the Wayback Machine. Jump up ^ `` Nuclear Power : A Very Short Introduction '' 2011, page 90, Maxwell Irvine Jump up ^ Cartlidge, Edwin. The Secret World of Amateur Fusion. Physics World, March 2007 : IOP Publishing Ltd, pp. 10 - 11. ISSN 0953 - 8585. Jump up ^ US Patent 3,258,402 June 28, 1966 Jump up ^ US Patent 3,386,883 June 4, 1968 Jump up ^ Robert L. Hirsch, `` Inertial - Electrostatic Confinement of Ionized Fusion Gases '', Journal of Applied Physics, v. 38, no. 7, October 1967 Jump up ^ M.H. Key 1985 Nucl. Fusion 25 1351, doi : 10.1088 / 0029 - 5515 / 25 / 9 / 063 Jump up ^ `` A Piece of the sun '' by Dan Clery, June 2014 Jump up ^ Long 1976, p. 25. Jump up ^ Principals of plasma physics, Nicholas Krall, 1973, Page 273 Jump up ^ `` Summary of results from the tandem mirror experiment, TMX group, February 26, 1981 Jump up ^ `` TMX Major Project proposal '' Fred Coensgen, January 12, 1977 Jump up ^ Booth, William. `` Fusion 's $372 - Million Mothball. '' Science ( New York City ) 9 Oct. 1987, Volume 238 ed. : 152 - 55. Print. Jump up ^ Koppel, Niko ( May 20, 2010 ). `` Edwin E. Kintner, Nuclear Power Pioneer, Dies at 90 ''. NYTimes.com. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` Dr. Donna Strickland Science ''. Uwaterloo.ca. Archived from the original on 2014 - 01 - 11. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. ^ Jump up to : Dr. Matthew McKinzie ; Christopher E. Paine ( 2000 ). `` When peer review fails : The Roots of the National Ignition Facility ( NIF ) Debacle ''. National Resources Defense Council. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` Recent Progress on the Los Alamos Aurora ICF ( Inertial Confinement Fusion ) Laser System. '' L.A. Rosocha, L.S. Blair, Publication Date, 1987. Jump up ^ `` Los Alamos National Labs Aurora Laser Fusion Project Hextek Corp ''. Hextek.com. 2014 - 06 - 20. Archived from the original on May 17, 2014. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ Hasegawa, A., Comments on Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 1987, vol. 1, p. 147. Jump up ^ `` Archived copy ''. Archived from the original on November 15, 2012. Retrieved February 3, 2016. Jump up ^ University of Utah, `` ' Simple experiment ' results in sustained n - fusion at room temperature for first time '', Newenergytimes.com, retrieved 28 July 2011 Jump up ^ Browne 1989, Close 1992, Huizenga 1993, Taubes 1993 ^ Jump up to : Browne 1989 Jump up ^ Chang, Kenneth ( 2004 - 03 - 25 ). `` US will give cold fusion a second look ''. The New York Times. Retrieved 2009 - 02 - 08. Jump up ^ Voss 1999, Platt 1998, Goodstein 1994, Van Noorden 2007, Beaudette 2002, Feder 2005, Hutchinson 2006, Kruglinski 2006, Adam 2005 Jump up ^ William J. Broad ( 31 October 1989 ). `` Despite Scorn, Team in Utah Still Seeks Cold - Fusion Clues ''. The New York Times. pp. C1. Jump up ^ Alfred 2009 Jump up ^ `` ' Cold fusion ' rebirth ? New evidence for existence of controversial energy source '' ( Press release ). American Chemical Society. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ Hagelstein et al. 2004 Jump up ^ Feder 2005 Jump up ^ Choi 2005, Feder 2005, US DOE 2004 Jump up ^ Y-K Martin Peng, `` Spherical Torus, Compact Fusion at Low Yield ''., ORNL / FEDC - 87 / 7 ( December 1984 ) Jump up ^ Sykes 1997, pg. B247 ^ Jump up to : Braams and Scott, pg. 225 Jump up ^ Sykes 2008, pg. 11 Jump up ^ `` Neutron measurements from the preliminary tritium experiment at JET ( invited ) ''. 2006 - 06 - 16. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ Lindl, John ; McCrory, Robert L. ; Campbell, E. Michael ( 1992 ), `` Progress Toward Ignition and Burn Propagation in Inertial Confinement Fusion '' ( PDF ), Physics Today, 45 : 32 -- 40, Bibcode : 1992PhT... 45i... 32L, doi : 10.1063 / 1.881318 Jump up ^ Lindl, John ( 1995 - 11 - 01 ). `` Development of the indirect ‐ drive approach to inertial confinement fusion and the target physics basis for ignition and gain ''. Physics of Plasmas ( 1994 - present ). 2 ( 11 ) : 3933 -- 4024. Bibcode : 1995PhPl... 2.3933 L. doi : 10.1063 / 1.871025. ISSN 1070 - 664X. Jump up ^ Krall, N.A. ; Coleman, M. ; Maffei, K. ; Lovberg, J. ; Jacobsen, R. ; Bussard, R.W. ( 1995 ). `` Forming and maintaining a potential well in a quasispherical magnetic trap ''. Physics of Plasmas 2 : 146. Jump up ^ `` Inertial electrostatic fusion ( IEF ) : A clean energy future '' ( Microsoft Word document ). Energy / Matter Conversion Corporation. Retrieved 2006 - 12 - 03. Jump up ^ `` Fundamental limitations on plasma fusions systems not in thermodynamic equilibrium '' Thesis, Todd Rider, June 1995 Jump up ^ Nevins, William M. `` Can Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Work beyond the Ion - ion Collisional Time Scale ? '' Physics of Plasmas 2.10 ( 1995 ) : 3804 - 819. Print. Jump up ^ `` '' IEC Lab Timeline '' accessed 1 - 25 - 2014 ``. Iec.neep.wisc.edu. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` A portable neutron / tunable X-ray source based on inertial electrostatic confinement '', Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, A 422 ( 1999 ) 16 - 20 Jump up ^ ( 3 ) Jump up ^ `` NSD - GRADEL - FUSION - Neutron Generators ''. Nsd-fusion.com. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` The IEC star - mode fusion neutron source for NAA -- status and next - step designs ''. Appl Radiat Isot 53 ( 4 - 5 ) : 779 -- 83. October 2000. Jump up ^ ( 4 ) Jump up ^ `` Archived copy ''. Archived from the original on October 4, 2012. Retrieved October 4, 2012. Jump up ^ `` Output of Sandia Z Accelerator Climbs Closer to Fusion ''. Sandia.gov. August 1, 1997. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` Another dramatic climb toward fusion conditions for Sandia Z accelerator ''. Sandia.gov. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` High - Output Sandia Accelerator Able to Predict Nuclear Blast Physics ''. Sandia.gov. December 2, 1996. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ http://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/downloads/mediacorner/publications/reports/fusion_research_english.pdf, Page 27 Jump up ^ `` Archived copy ''. Archived from the original on May 27, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2016. Jump up ^ `` Fusor Forums Index page ''. Fusor.net. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` Build a Nuclear Fusion Reactor ? No Problem ''. Clhsonline.net. 2012 - 03 - 23. Archived from the original on 2014 - 10 - 30. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` Extreme DIY : Building a homemade nuclear reactor in NYC ''. BBC News. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ Schechner, Sam ( 2008 - 08 - 18 ). `` Nuclear Ambitions : Amateur Scientists Get a Reaction From Fusion - WSJ ''. Online.wsj.com. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` Will 's Amateur Science and Engineering : Fusion Reactor 's First Light ! ''. Tidbit77.blogspot.com. 2010 - 02 - 09. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ Taleyarkhan, R.P. ; C.D. West ; J.S. Cho ; R.T. Lahey ; Jr. R. Nigmatulin ; R.C. Block ( 2002 - 03 - 08 ). `` Evidence for Nuclear Emissions During Acoustic Cavitation ''. Science. 295 ( 1868 ) : 1868 -- 73. Bibcode : 2002Sci... 295.1868 T. doi : 10.1126 / science. 1067589. PMID 11884748. Archived from the original on November 6, 2005. Retrieved 2007 - 05 - 13. Jump up ^ Purdue physicist found guilty of misconduct, Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2008, Thomas H. Maugh II ^ Jump up to : Reich, Eugenie Samuel ( 23 November 2009 ). `` Bubble - fusion scientist debarred from federal funding ''. Nature. doi : 10.1038 / news. 2009.1103. Jump up ^ Science News Staff ( 23 November 2009 ), `` Roundup 11 / 23 : Keep Your Eyes on the Prize Edition '', Science Insider, archived from the original on June 14, 2013. It cites `` New Energy Times Special Edition # 33 '', New Energy Times ( 33 ), November 20, 2009 Jump up ^ `` The Year in Science : Physics ''. Web.archive.org. 2006 - 10 - 21. Archived from the original on October 21, 2006. Retrieved 2013 - 06 - 22. Jump up ^ `` Equilibrium and low - frequency stability of a uniform density, collisionless, spherical Vlasov system '' DC Barns, L Chacon, Physics of plasma November 2002 Jump up ^ `` Observation of Spherical Focus in an Electron Penning Trap '', T.B. Mitchell and M.M. Schauer, PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, VOLUME 78, NUMBER 1 Jump up ^ Ph. D. Thesis `` Improving Particle Confinement in Inertial Electrostatic Fusion for Spacecraft Power and Propulsion '', Carl Dietrich, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FEBRUARY 2007 Jump up ^ Ph. D. Thesis `` Improved lifetimes and synchronization behavior in Mutlt - grid IEC fusion devices '', Tom McGuire, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FEBRUARY 2007 Jump up ^ `` Phoenix Nuclear Labs meets neutron production milestone '', PNL press release May 1, 2013, Ross Radel, Evan Sengbusch Jump up ^ SirPhilip ( posting an e-mail from `` RW Bussard '' ) ( 2006 - 06 - 23 ). `` Fusion, eh ? ''. James Randi Educational Foundation forums. Retrieved 2006 - 12 - 03. Jump up ^ `` The Advent of Clean Nuclear Fusion : Super-performance Space Power and Propulsion '', Robert W. Bussard, Ph. D., 57th International Astronautical Congress, October 2 -- 6, 2006 Jump up ^ Dutton, Judy. `` Teen Nuclear Scientist Fights Terror '', CNN.com, September 1, 2011. Retrieved September 3, 2011. Jump up ^ `` Rock Center : 19 - year - old hopes to revolutionize nuclear power ''. NBC. Retrieved October 18, 2013. Jump up ^ TED2013. `` Taylor Wilson : My radical plan for small nuclear fission reactors ''. TED.com. Retrieved May 6, 2013. Jump up ^ May, Kate Torgovnick ( February 27, 2013 ). `` Good energy comes in small packages : Taylor Wilson at TED2013 ''. TED blog -- Science. TED ( conference ). Retrieved 2014 - 02 - 10. Jump up ^ `` President Obama Hosts the White House Science Fair ''. The White House. Retrieved October 18, 2013. Jump up ^ What is NIF ?, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. ^ Jump up to : Clery, Daniel ( 2014 - 07 - 25 ). `` Fusion 's restless pioneers ''. Science. 345 ( 6195 ) : 370 -- 375. doi : 10.1126 / science. 345.6195. 370. ISSN 0036 - 8075. PMID 25061186. ^ Jump up to : Frochtzwajg, Jonathan. `` The secretive, billionaire - backed plans to harness fusion ''. Retrieved 2017 - 08 - 21. Jump up ^ Kanellos, Michael. `` Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Russia Join Forces on Nuclear Fusion ''. Forbes. Retrieved 2017 - 08 - 21. Jump up ^ Gray, Richard. `` The British reality TV star building a fusion reactor ''. Retrieved 2017 - 08 - 21. Jump up ^ Seaver, Lynda L. ( 2010 - 10 - 01 ). `` World 's largest laser sets records for neutron yield and laser energy ''. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Retrieved 2013 - 06 - 22. Jump up ^ `` First successful integrated experiment at National Ignition Facility announced ''. General Physics. PhysOrg.com. October 8, 2010. Retrieved 2010 - 10 - 09. Jump up ^ SPIE Europe Ltd. `` PW 2012 : fusion laser on track for 2012 burn ''. Optics.org. Retrieved 2013 - 06 - 22. Jump up ^ `` Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab ''. BBC News. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` ADVANCES TOWARDS PB11 FUSION WITH THE DENSE PLASMA FOCUS '', Eric Lerner, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, 2008 Jump up ^ Kramer, David ( 2006 - 06 - 16 ). `` Livermore ends LIFE ''. scitation.aip.org. Retrieved 2014 - 08 - 24. Jump up ^ `` The Alectryon High Yield Neutron Generator ''. Phoenix Nuclear Labs. 2013. Jump up ^ `` FuseNet : The European Fusion Education Network ''. Fusenet.eu. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` Fusion Power Could Happen Sooner Than You Think ''. Popular Science. Popular Science. 2013. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` Nuclear fusion energy in a decade ? Lockheed Martin is betting on it ''. Washington Post. 2014 - 10 - 15. Retrieved 30 October 2014. ^ Jump up to : Wang, Brian ( August 1, 2018 ). `` Nuclear Fusion Updated project reviews ''. www.nextbigfuture.com. Retrieved 2018 - 08 - 03. Jump up ^ `` Microsoft Research -- Emerging Technology, Computer, and Software Research ''. Microsoft Research. Jump up ^ Chandler, David L. ( 10 August 2015 ). `` A small, modular, efficient fusion plant ''. MIT News. MIT News Office. Jump up ^ `` Wendelstein W7 - X starting its experimental journey ''. Germany : ipp.mpg.de. Jump up ^ Clery, Daniel ( 2017 - 04 - 28 ). `` Private fusion machines aim to beat massive global effort ''. Science. 356 ( 6336 ) : 360 -- 361. doi : 10.1126 / science. 356.6336. 360. ISSN 0036 - 8075. PMID 28450588. Jump up ^ Gibbs, W. Wayt. `` The Fusion Underground ''. Scientific American. 315 ( 5 ) : 38 -- 45. Bibcode : 2016SciAm. 315e... 38G. doi : 10.1038 / scientificamerican1116 - 38. Jump up ^ `` Italy 's Eni defies sceptics, may up stake in nuclear fusion project ''. 13 April 2018. Jump up ^ `` MIT Aims to Harness Fusion Power Within 15 years ''. 3 April 2018. Jump up ^ `` MIT Aims To Bring Nuclear Fusion To The Market In 10 Years ''. 9 March 2018. Jump up ^ `` MIT and newly formed company launch novel approach to fusion power ''. 9 March 2018. Jump up ^ Atzeni, Stefano ( 3 June 2004 ). The Physics of Inertial Fusion : BeamPlasma Interaction, Hydrodynamics, Hot Dense Matter. OUP Oxford. pp. 12 -- 13. ISBN 978 - 0 - 19 - 152405 - 9. first2 = missing last2 = in Authors list ( help ) Jump up ^ `` Thinkquest : D-T reaction ''. Retrieved 12 June 2010. Jump up ^ Iiyoshi, A ; H. Momota ; O Motojima ; et al. ( October 1993 ). `` Innovative Energy Production in Fusion Reactors ''. National Institute for Fusion Science NIFS : 2 -- 3. Retrieved 14 February 2012. Jump up ^ `` Nuclear Fusion Power, Assessing fusion power ''. World-nuclear.org. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ Rolfe, A.C. ( 1999 ). `` Remote Handling JET Experience '' ( PDF ). Nuclear Energy. 38 ( 5 ) : 6. ISSN 0140 - 4067. Retrieved 10 April 2012. Jump up ^ M. Sawan, S. Zinkle, and J. Sheffield, Fusion Eng Des 61 - 2, 561 ( 2002 ). Jump up ^ J. Kesner, D. Garnier, A. Hansen, M. Mauel, and L. Bromberg, Nucl Fusion 2004 ; 44, 193 Jump up ^ Heindler and Kernbichler, Proc. 5th Intl. Conf. on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems, 1989, pp. 177 -- 82. See also Residual radiation from ap -- 11B reactor Jump up ^ `` Nuclear Fusion : Laser - Beam Experiment Yields Exciting Results ''. LiveScience.com. Jump up ^ `` Record proton - boron fusion rate achieved - FuseNet ''. www.fusenet.eu. ^ Jump up to : `` Thermal response of nanostructured tungsten '' Shin Kajita, et al., January 2014, Nucl. Fusion 54 ( 2014 ) 033005 ( 10pp ) Jump up ^ Evans, Ll. M. ; Margetts, L. ; Casalegno, V. ; Lever, L.M. ; Bushell, J. ; Lowe, T. ; Wallwork, A. ; Young, P. ; Lindemann, A. ( 2015 - 05 - 28 ). `` Transient thermal finite element analysis of CFC -- Cu ITER monoblock using X-ray tomography data ''. Fusion Engineering and Design. 100 : 100 -- 111. doi : 10.1016 / j. fusengdes. 2015.04. 048. Jump up ^ Evans, Ll. M. ; Margetts, L. ; Casalegno, V. ; Leonard, F. ; Lowe, T. ; Lee, P.D. ; Schmidt, M. ; Mummery, P.M. ( 2014 - 06 - 01 ). `` Thermal characterisation of ceramic / metal joining techniques for fusion applications using X-ray tomography ''. Fusion Engineering and Design. 89 ( 6 ) : 826 -- 836. doi : 10.1016 / j. fusengdes. 2014.05. 002. Jump up ^ Dulon, Krista ( 2012 ). `` Who is afraid of ITER ? ''. iter.org. Retrieved 18 August 2012. ^ Jump up to : McCracken, Garry ; Stott, Peter ( 8 June 2012 ). Fusion : The Energy of the Universe. Academic Press. pp. 198 -- 199. ISBN 978 - 0 - 12 - 384656 - 3. Retrieved 18 August 2012. Jump up ^ Angelo, Joseph A. ( 30 November 2004 ). Nuclear Technology. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 474. ISBN 978 - 1 - 57356 - 336 - 9. Retrieved 18 August 2012. ^ Jump up to : T. Hamacher ; A.M. Bradshaw ( October 2001 ). `` Fusion as a Future Power Source : Recent Achievements and Prospects '' ( PDF ). World Energy Council. Archived from the original ( PDF ) on 2004 - 05 - 06. Jump up ^ `` Interim Summary Report on the Analysis of the 19 September 2008 Incident at the LHC '' ( PDF ). CERN. Jump up ^ Peterson, Tom. `` Explain it in 60 seconds : Magnet Quench ''. Symmetry Magazine. Fermilab / SLAC. Retrieved 15 February 2013. Jump up ^ Petrangeli, Gianni ( 1 January 2006 ). Nuclear Safety. Butterworth - Heinemann. p. 430. ISBN 978 - 0 - 7506 - 6723 - 4. Jump up ^ Markandya, Anil ; Wilkinson, Paul ( 2007 ). `` Electricity generation and health ''. The Lancet. 370. pp. 979 -- 990. ^ Jump up to : R.J. Goldston, A. Glaser, A.F. Ross : `` Proliferation Risks of Fusion Energy : Clandestine Production, Covert Production, and Breakout '' ; 9th IAEA Technical Meeting on Fusion Power Plant Safety ( accessible at no cost, 2013 ) and Glaser, A. ; Goldston, R.J. ( 2012 ). `` Proliferation risks of magnetic fusion energy : Clandestine production, covert production and breakout ''. Nuclear Fusion. 52 ( 4 ) : 043004. Bibcode : 2012NucFu... 52d3004G. doi : 10.1088 / 0029 - 5515 / 52 / 4 / 043004. ^ Jump up to : `` Strong Neutron Sources - How to cope with weapon material production capabilities of fusion and spallation neutron sources ? '' Matthias Englert, Giorgio Franceschini, Wolfgang Liebert ( 2011 ) ; 7th INMM / Esarda Workshop, Aix ‐ en ‐ Provence Jump up ^ `` Energy for Future Centuries '' ( PDF ). Archived from the original ( PDF ) on 2011 - 07 - 27. Retrieved 2013 - 06 - 22. Jump up ^ Eric Christian ; et al. `` Cosmicopia ''. NASA. Retrieved 2009 - 03 - 20. Jump up ^ Fusion For Energy. `` Fusion For Energy - Bringing the power of the sun to earth ''. f4e.europa.eu. Jump up ^ `` The current EU research programme '' ( PDF ). FP6. Tab Beim Bundestag ( tab.fzk.de ). Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` The Sixth Framework Programme in brief '' ( PDF ). ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ Grossman, Lev ( November 2, 2015 ). `` Star power ''. Time. Jump up ^ Robert F. Heeter ; et al. `` Conventional Fusion FAQ Section 2 / 11 ( Energy ) Part 2 / 5 ( Environmental ) ''. Fused.web.llnl.gov. Archived from the original on 3 March 2001. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ Frank J. Stadermann. `` Relative Abundances of Stable Isotopes ''. Laboratory for Space Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis. Archived from the original on 2011 - 07 - 20. Jump up ^ J. Ongena ; G. Van Oost. `` Energy for Future Centuries '' ( PDF ). Laboratorium voor Plasmafysica -- Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas Koninklijke Militaire School -- École Royale Militaire ; Laboratorium voor Natuurkunde, Universiteit Gent. pp. Section III. B. and Table VI. Archived from the original ( PDF ) on 2011 - 07 - 27. Jump up ^ EPS Executive Committee. `` The importance of European fusion energy research ''. The European Physical Society. Archived from the original on 2008 - 10 - 08. Jump up ^ Sing Lee ; Sor Heoh Saw. `` Nuclear Fusion Energy - Mankind 's Giant Step Forward '' ( PDF ). HPlasmafocus.net. Retrieved 30 October 2014. Jump up ^ `` What Is The Future Of Space Travel ? ''. Zidbits. Retrieved 14 November 2015. Bibliography Baheti, Prashant Prakashchandra ( 2003 ). Evaluating a Software Engineering Knowledge Base. Clery, Daniel ( 29 July 2014 ). A Piece of the Sun : The Quest for Fusion Energy. The Overlook Press. pp. 1 --. ISBN 978 - 1 - 4683 - 1041 - 2. Dean, Stephen O. ( 5 January 2013 ). Search for the Ultimate Energy Source : A History of the U.S. Fusion Energy Program. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 978 - 1 - 4614 - 6037 - 4. Molina, Andrés de Bustos ( 29 August 2013 ). Kinetic Simulations of Ion Transport in Fusion Devices. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978 - 3 - 319 - 00421 - 1. Pfalzner, Susanne ( 2006 ). An Introduction to Inertial Confinement Fusion. USA : Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0 - 7503 - 0701 - 3. Voss, David ( March 1, 1999 ). `` What Ever Happened to Cold Fusion ''. Physics World. ISSN 0953 - 8585. Retrieved 1 May 2008. Kruglinski, Susan ( 2006 - 03 - 03 ). `` Whatever Happened To... Cold Fusion ? ''. Discover Magazine. ISSN 0274 - 7529. Retrieved 20 June 2008. Choi, Charles ( 2005 ). `` Back to Square One ''. Scientific American. Retrieved 25 November 2008. Feder, Toni ( January 2005 ). `` Cold Fusion Gets Chilly Encore ''. Physics Today. 58 : 31. Bibcode : 2005PhT... 58a... 31F. doi : 10.1063 / 1.1881896. Hagelstein, Peter L. ; McKubre, Michael ; Nagel, David ; Chubb, Talbot ; Hekman, Randall ( 2004 ), New Physical Effects in Metal Deuterides ( PDF ), Washington : US Department of Energy, archived from the original ( PDF ) on January 6, 2007 ( manuscript ) U.S. Department of Energy ( 2004 ), Report of the Review of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions ( PDF ), Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Energy, archived from the original ( PDF ) on 2008 - 02 - 26, retrieved 2008 - 07 - 19 Goodstein, David ( 1994 ), `` Whatever happened to cold fusion ? '', American Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa Society, 63 ( 4 ) : 527 -- 541, ISSN 0003 - 0937, retrieved 2008 - 05 - 25 Close, Frank E. ( 1992 ), Too Hot to Handle : The Race for Cold Fusion ( 2 ed. ), London : Penguin, ISBN 0 - 14 - 015926 - 6 Beaudette, Charles G. ( 2002 ), Excess Heat & Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, South Bristol, Maine : Oak Grove Press, ISBN 0 - 9678548 - 3 - 0 Van Noorden, R. ( April 2007 ), `` Cold fusion back on the menu '', Chemistry World, ISSN 1473 - 7604, retrieved 2008 - 05 - 25 Taubes, Gary ( 1993 ). Bad Science : The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion. New York : Random House. ISBN 0 - 394 - 58456 - 2. Browne, M. ( May 3, 1989 ), `` Physicists Debunk Claim Of a New Kind of Fusion '', New York Times, retrieved 2008 - 05 - 25 Adam, David ( 24 March 2005 ), Rusbringer, Alan, ed., `` In from the cold '', The Guardian, London, retrieved 2008 - 05 - 25 Platt, Charles ( 1998 ), `` What if Cold Fusion is Real ? '', Wired Magazine ( 6.11 ), retrieved 2008 - 05 - 25 Hutchinson, Alex ( January 8, 2006 ), `` The Year in Science : Physics '', Discover Magazine ( online ), ISSN 0274 - 7529, retrieved 2008 - 06 - 20 Adam, David ( 24 March 2005 ), Rusbringer, Alan, ed., `` In from the cold '', The Guardian, London, retrieved 2008 - 05 - 25 Alfred, Randy ( 2009 - 03 - 23 ). `` March 23, 1989 : Cold Fusion Gets Cold Shoulder ''. Wired. Archived from the original on January 4, 2014. External links U.S. Fusion Energy Science Program Fusion power Core topics Nuclear fusion Timeline List of experiments Nuclear power Nuclear reactor Atomic nucleus Fusion energy gain factor Lawson criterion Magnetohydrodynamics Neutron Plasma Nuclear fusion processes and methods By confinement Gravitational Alpha process Triple - alpha process Proton - proton chain Helium flash CNO cycle Lithium burning Carbon - burning Neon - burning Oxygen - burning Silicon - burning S - process R - process Fusor Nova remnants Magnetic Tokamak Spherical tokamak Stellarator Spheromak Reversed field pinch Field - reversed configuration Levitated dipole Z - pinch Dense plasma focus Inertial Laser - driven Fusor Polywell Bubble ( acoustic ) H - bomb Pure fusion weapon Electrostatic RF accelerator - driven heavy - ion Magnetized inertial Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion Magnetized - target Spatial Big Bang nucleosynthesis ( BBN ) Big Crunch nucleosynthesis ( BCN ; hypothetical ) Other forms Muon - catalyzed Pyroelectric Migma Fusion experimental devices by confinement method Magnetic Tokamak International ITER DEMO PROTO Americas STOR - M MEDUSA - CR Alcator C - Mod DIII - D UCLA ET LTX NSTX Pegasus PBX - M TEXT TFTR ETE Novillo Asia and Australia LT - 1 TORTUS CT - 6 CFETR EAST HL - 1 ( M ) HL - 2A HT - 6 ( B, M ) HT - 7 ( U ) KT - 5 SUNIST ADITYA SST - 1 IR - T1 JT - 60 QUEST KTM GLAST KSTAR KDEMO Europe JET COMPASS GOLEM TJ - I TFR WEST ASDEX Upgrade TEXTOR FTU IGNITOR RTP ISTTOK T - 3 T - 4 T - 10 T - 15 TCV START MAST MAST - U Stellarator Americas ATF CAT HSX HIDRA NCSX QPS SCR - 1 Asia and Australia H - 1NF Lingyun CHS Heliotron J LHD TU - Heliac Europe UST - 1 UST - 2 TJ - IU TJ - II TJ - K WEGA Wendelstein 7 - AS Wendelstein 7 - X Uragan - 1 Uragan - 2 ( Uragan - 2M ) Uragan - 3 ( Uragan - 3M ) L - 2M RFP RFX TPE - RX EXTRAP T2R MST Other MTF LDX SSPX MFTF MCX Polywell Dense plasma focus ZETA Inertial Laser Americas NIF OMEGA Nova Nike Shiva Argus Cyclops Janus Long path Laser Inertial Fusion Energy Asia SG - I SG - II SG - III SG - IV GEKKO XII Europe HiPER Asterix IV ( PALS ) LMJ LULI2000 ISKRA Vulcan Non-laser Qiangguang - 1 PTS Z machine PACER International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility Nuclear technology Science Chemistry Engineering Physics Atomic nucleus Fission Fusion Radiation ionizing braking Fuel Tritium Deuterium Helium - 3 Fertile material Fissile material Isotope separation Nuclear material Uranium enriched depleted Plutonium Thorium Neutron Activation Capture Poison Cross section Generator Radiation Reflector Temperature Thermal Fast Fusion Power by country Power plant Economics Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator Accidents and incidents Policy Fusion Radioisotope thermoelectric ( RTG ) Propulsion rocket Safety and security Medicine Imaging RadBall Scintigraphy Single - photon emission ( SPECT ) Positron - emission tomography ( PET ) Therapy Fast - neutron Neutron capture therapy of cancer Targeted alpha - particle Proton - beam Tomotherapy Brachytherapy Radiation therapy Radiosurgery Radiopharmacology Weapons Topics Arms race Delivery Design Disarmament Ethics Explosion effects History Proliferation Testing high - altitude underground Warfare Yield TNTe Lists Estimated death tolls from attacks States with nuclear weapons Tests United States WMD treaties Weapon - free zones Weapons Waste Products Actinide Reprocessed uranium Reactor - grade plutonium Minor actinide Activation Fission LLFP Actinide chemistry Disposal Fuel cycle High - level ( HLW ) Low - level ( LLW ) Repository Reprocessing Spent fuel pool cask Transmutation Debate Nuclear power Nuclear weapons Blue Ribbon Commission on America 's Nuclear Future Anti-nuclear movement Uranium mining Nuclear power phase - out Nuclear reactors Fission Moderator Light water Aqueous homogeneous Boiling BWR ABWR ESBWR Kerena Pressurized AP1000 APR - 1400 APR+ APWR ATMEA1 CAP1400 CPR - 1000 EPR HPR - 1000 ACPR1000 ACP1000 VVER many others Supercritical ( SCWR ) Natural fission Heavy water D O Pressurized CANDU CANDU 6 CANDU 9 EC6 AFCR ACR - 1000 AHWR CVTR IPHWR - X PHWR KWU MZFR R3 R4 Marviken H O HWLWR ATR HW BLWR 250 Steam - generating ( SGHWR ) Organic WR - 1 CO HWGCR EL - 4 KS 150 Graphite by coolant Water H O AM - 1 AMB - X EGP - 6 RBMK Gas CO Uranium Naturel Graphite Gaz ( UNGG ) Magnox Advanced gas - cooled ( AGR ) He GTMHR MHR - T UHTREX VHTR ( HTGR ) PBR ( PBMR ) AVR HTR - 10 HTR - PM THTR - 300 PMR Molten - salt Fluorides Fuji MSR Liquid - fluoride thorium reactor ( LFTR ) Molten - Salt Reactor Experiment ( MSRE ) Integral Molten Salt Reactor ( IMSR ) ThorCon None ( fast - neutron ) Breeder ( FBR ) Integral ( IFR ) Liquid - metal - cooled ( LMFR ) Small sealed transportable autonomous ( SSTAR ) Traveling - wave ( TWR ) Energy Multiplier Module ( EM2 ) Reduced - moderation ( RMWR ) Fast Breeder Test Reactor ( FBTR ) Dual fluid reactor ( DFR ) Generation IV Sodium ( SFR ) BN - 350 BN - 600 BN - 800 BN - 1200 Phénix Superphénix PFBR CEFR PFR PRISM Lead ( LFR ) Helium gas ( GFR ) Others Organically moderated and cooled reactor Aircraft Reactor Experiment Fusion by confinement Magnetic Field - reversed configuration Levitated dipole Reversed field pinch Spheromak Stellarator Tokamak Inertial Bubble ( acoustic ) Fusor electrostatic Laser - driven Magnetized - target Z - pinch Other Dense plasma focus Migma Muon - catalyzed Polywell Pyroelectric Category Portal Commons Emerging technologies Fields Agriculture Agricultural robot Closed ecological systems Cultured meat Genetically modified food Precision agriculture Vertical farming Architecture Arcology Building printing Contour crafting Domed city Biomedical Artificial uterus Ampakine Brain transplant Cryonics Cryoprotectant Cryopreservation Vitrification Suspended animation De-extinction Genetic engineering Gene therapy Head transplant Isolated brain Life extension Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence Nanomedicine Nanosensors Personalized medicine Regenerative medicine Stem - cell therapy Tissue engineering Robot - assisted surgery Synthetic biology Synthetic genomics Virotherapy Oncolytic virus Tricorder Whole genome sequencing Displays Next generation FED FLCD iMoD Laser LPD OLED OLET QD - LED SED TPD TDEL TMOS Screenless Bionic contact lens Head - mounted display Head - up display Optical head - mounted display Virtual retinal display Other Autostereoscopy Flexible display Holographic display Computer - generated holography Multi-primary color display Ultra HD Volumetric display Electronics Electronic nose E-textiles Flexible electronics Molecular electronics Nanoelectromechanical systems Memristor Spintronics Thermal copper pillar bump Energy Production Airborne wind turbine Artificial photosynthesis Biofuels Carbon - neutral fuel Concentrated solar power Fusion power Home fuel cell Hydrogen economy Methanol economy Molten salt reactor Nantenna Photovoltaic pavement Space - based solar power Vortex engine Storage Beltway battery Compressed air energy storage Flywheel energy storage Grid energy storage Lithium -- air battery Molten - salt battery Nanowire battery Research in lithium - ion batteries Silicon -- air battery Thermal energy storage Ultracapacitor Other Smart grid Wireless power Information and communications Ambient intelligence Internet of things Artificial intelligence Applications of artificial intelligence Progress in artificial intelligence Machine translation Mobile translation Machine vision Semantic Web Speech recognition Atomtronics Carbon nanotube field - effect transistor Cybermethodology Fourth - generation optical discs 3D optical data storage Holographic data storage GPGPU Memory CBRAM FRAM Millipede MRAM NRAM PRAM Racetrack memory RRAM SONOS Optical computing RFID Chipless RFID Software - defined radio Three - dimensional integrated circuit Manufacturing 3D printing Claytronics Molecular assembler Utility fog Materials science Aerogel Amorphous metal Artificial muscle Conductive polymer Femtotechnology Fullerene Graphene High - temperature superconductivity High - temperature superfluidity Linear acetylenic carbon Metamaterials Metamaterial cloaking Metal foam Multi-function structures Nanotechnology Carbon nanotubes Molecular nanotechnology Nanomaterials Picotechnology Programmable matter Quantum dots Silicene Superalloy Synthetic diamond Military Antimatter weapon Caseless ammunition Directed - energy weapon Laser Maser Particle - beam weapon Sonic weapon Coilgun Railgun Plasma weapon Pure fusion weapon Stealth technology Vortex ring gun Neuroscience Artificial brain Brain -- computer interface Electroencephalography Mind uploading Brain - reading Neuroinformatics Neuroprosthetics Bionic eye Brain implant Exocortex Retinal implant Quantum Quantum algorithms Quantum amplifier Quantum bus Quantum channel Quantum circuit Quantum complexity theory Quantum computing Quantum cryptography Quantum dynamics Quantum electronics Quantum error correction Quantum imaging Quantum information Quantum key distribution Quantum logic Quantum logic gates Quantum machine Quantum machine learning Quantum metamaterial Quantum metrology Quantum network Quantum neural network Quantum optics Quantum programming Quantum sensing Quantum simulator Quantum teleportation Robotics Domotics Nanorobotics Powered exoskeleton Self - reconfiguring modular robot Swarm robotics Uncrewed vehicle Space science Launch Fusion rocket Non-rocket spacelaunch Mass driver Orbital ring Skyhook Space elevator Space fountain Space tether Reusable launch system Propulsion Beam - powered propulsion Ion thruster Laser propulsion Plasma propulsion engine Helicon thruster VASIMR Nuclear pulse propulsion Solar sail Other Interstellar travel Propellant depot Laser communication in space Transport Aerial Adaptive compliant wing Backpack helicopter Delivery drone Flying car High - altitude platform Jet pack Pulse detonation engine Scramjet Spaceplane Supersonic transport Land Airless tire Alternative fuel vehicle Hydrogen vehicle Driverless car Ground effect train Maglev train Personal rapid transit Transit Elevated Bus Vactrain Vehicular communication systems Pipeline Pneumatic transport Automated vacuum collection Other Anti-gravity Cloak of invisibility Digital scent technology Force field Plasma window Immersive virtual reality Magnetic refrigeration Phased - array optics Topics Collingridge dilemma Differential technological development Disruptive Innovation Ephemeralization Exploratory engineering Fictional technology Proactionary principle Technological change Technological unemployment Technological convergence Technological evolution Technological paradigm Technology forecasting Accelerating change Moore 's law Technological singularity Technology scouting Technology readiness level Technology roadmap Transhumanism Category List Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fusion_power&oldid=854667245 '' Categories : Fusion power Alternative energy Emerging technologies Hidden categories : All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from June 2018 Articles with dead external links from May 2016 CS1 maint : Multiple names : authors list Webarchive template wayback links Articles with dead external links from August 2014 CS1 errors : missing author or editor All accuracy disputes Articles with disputed statements from October 2014 All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from October 2014 Articles with unsourced statements from February 2016 Articles with unsourced statements from April 2017 Articles with unsourced statements from July 2018 Articles with unsourced statements from March 2015 Articles with unsourced statements from October 2009 Articles needing additional references from March 2016 All articles needing additional references Articles with disputed statements from June 2015 Articles with unsourced statements from November 2014 Articles with unsourced statements from December 2011 Articles with unsourced statements from September 2016 Articles with unsourced statements from March 2014 Articles with unsourced statements from June 2017 Articles with unsourced statements from July 2017 Articles needing additional references from July 2017 Articles with unsourced statements from July 2013 Articles with unsourced statements from April 2016 Talk Contents About Wikipedia Azərbaycanca বাংলা Català Dansk Deutsch Español فارسی Français 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Қазақша Кыргызча Bahasa Melayu Nederlands 日本 語 Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча Polski Русский Simple English Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska ไทย Türkçe Українська Tiếng Việt Winaray 粵語 中文 24 more Edit links This page was last edited on 13 August 2018, at 00 : 25 ( UTC ). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: where can we find an operating fusion reaction
Answer: stars like our Sun