Portuguese 
Spanish 
2 min of reading 
Have You Heard About Nuclear Fusion? Know That a Nuclear Fusion Reactor Can Be Created in the Next 05 Years
MIT scientists are designing a nuclear fusion reactor to produce clean electrical energy. Their goal is to make it efficient in energy production by 2025. This way, we would have a new form of clean electricity.
Clean Electrical Energy
The SPARC project started two years ago, when MIT struck a deal with the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems for the development of a prototype of a new generation of reactors.
The researchers in charge, after intensive work to enable the physics behind the project, brought good news. With the theoretical basis, the project, and the challenges laid out on paper, the construction of the nuclear fusion reactor is expected to begin in 2021. They hope to achieve the feat of the first reactor to maintain a self-sustaining fusion. In other words, a reactor that does not consume much energy but produces energy.
-
Advancement in renewable energy: A R$ 150 million project launched by Petrobras and Finep aims to create state-of-the-art electrolyzers for green hydrogen, strengthening national research and preparing Brazil to compete in a billion-dollar energy market.
-
Illiterate or semi-literate grandmothers were trained to repair solar systems, open rural workshops, and light up homes that still depended on kerosene.
-
The world has bet on green hydrogen as the fuel of the future, but now faces the side effect: producing 1 kilogram requires about 9 liters of ultrapure water, and the largest projects on the planet are precisely in the driest regions of the Earth, where water is already scarce for people.
-
Africa has about 500,000 cell towers and most still burn diesel to operate, while companies rush to cover antennas with solar energy and avoid signal blackouts.
Fusion and Fission
We already master nuclear fission. However, it is not the ideal way to harness nuclear energy. Although it produces less waste than, for example, coal, nuclear waste is more difficult to dispose of. In this process, some neutrons are released to initiate the reaction. This causes new neutrons to come out of atoms, hitting other nuclei. This causes atomic nuclei to “split” and release energy. That is why radioactive materials are necessary.
Fusion is completely different from fission. The first point is that radioactive material is not needed. Consequently, there is a much simpler disposal. Moreover, the safety and efficiency of a fusion reactor are much greater than that of a fission reactor. When we master nuclear fission, it may open many doors.
Nuclear fusion consists of the fusion of atomic nuclei. It is the nuclear fusion that occurs in the Sun; yes, the Sun is a giant nuclear reactor. In this case, deuterium and tritium are used, two isotopes of hydrogen. When you apply sufficient pressure and heat to “squeeze them together,” fusion occurs. This releases a neutron, a helium atom, and energy.
Be the first to react!