Fusion, the source of the sun's energy, involves combining two light atoms into a single heavier atom. Argonne is part of a national team studying fusion as a potential source of commercial electricity for later this century.
Fusion reactors offer a clean, potentially limitless source of electricity.
Within the plasma, colliding deuterium and tritium nuclei would fuse into helium nuclei and release energy to be converted into electricity. The plasma particles must be heated to very high temperatures, approximately 100 million degrees, to fuse. Since the plasma is too hot to be contained by any material, the charged plasma particles are confined on magnetic field lines produced by powerful magnets. The plasma in a 1,000 megawatt fusion plant would contain only about a gram of hydrogen fuel at any given time. Argonne leads a project to solve the ash-removal problem, which is one of the challenges in developing fusion reactors.