Nuclear Fusion -Nuclear fusion is an atomic reaction in which multiple atom s combine to create a

single, more massive atom. The resulting atom has a slightly smaller mass than the sum of the
masses of the original atoms. The difference in mass is released in the form of energy during the
reaction, according to the Einstein formula E = mc 2 , where E is the energy in joule s, m is the mass
difference in kilogram s, and c is the speed of light (approximately 300,000,000 or 3 x 10 8 meters
per second)
The most common nuclear fusion reaction in the universe, and the one of most interest
to scientists, is the merging of hydrogen nuclei to form helium nuclei. This is the process that occurs
in the interiors of stars including the sun. Hydrogen fusion is responsible for the enormous energy
output that stars produce. The reaction involves three steps.
Nuclear fusion requires extremely high temperatures, on the order of tens of millions of degrees
Celsius . In addition, an intense attractive force, such as gravitation of the magnitude that occurs in
the centers of stars, is necessary to overcome the electrostatic repulsion among positively charged
nuclei. Scientists can generate the high temperatures and forces required to produce uncontrolled
hydrogen fusion, the most notable example being the hydrogen bomb. However, sustaining these
temperatures and forces indefinitely, in order to construct a hydrogen fusion reactor that can
generate useful energy, has proven difficult. Research in this direction took a significant step forward
in June 2005, with the announcement of an experimental fusion reactor to be built in the south of
France

CONTENT:
In nuclear physics, nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to
form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The
difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or
absorption of energy. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in atomic "binding energy"
between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Fusion is the process that powers active or
"main sequence" stars, or other high magnitude stars.

A fusion process that produces a nucleus lighter than iron-56 or nickel-62 will generally yield a net
energy release. These elements have the smallest mass per nucleon and the largest binding energy
per nucleon, respectively. Fusion of light elements toward these releases energy (an exothermic
process), while a fusion producing nuclei heavier than these elements will result in energy retained
by the resulting nucleons, and the resulting reaction is endothermic. The opposite is true for the
reverse process, nuclear fission. This means that the lighter elements, such as hydrogen and helium,
are in general more fusible; while the heavier elements, such as uranium, thorium and plutonium,
are more fissionable. The extreme astrophysical event of a supernova can produce enough energy to
fuse nuclei into elements heavier than iron.

In 1920, Arthur Eddington suggested hydrogen-helium fusion could be the primary source of stellar
energy. Quantum tunneling was discovered by Friedrich Hund in 1929, and shortly afterwards
Robert Atkinson and Fritz Houtermans used the measured masses of light elements to show that
large amounts of energy could be released by fusing small nuclei. Building on the early experiments
in nuclear transmutation by Ernest Rutherford, laboratory fusion of hydrogen isotopes was
accomplished by Mark Oliphant in 1932. In the remainder of that decade, the theory of the main
cycle of nuclear fusion in stars were worked out by Hans Bethe. Research into fusion for military
purposes began in the early 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. Fusion was accomplished in
1951 with the Greenhouse Item nuclear test. Nuclear fusion on a large scale in an explosion was first
carried out on November 1, 1952, in the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test.

Research into developing controlled thermonuclear fusion for civil purposes began in earnest in the
1940s, and it continues to this day.
Process

Fusion of deuterium with tritium creating helium-4, freeing a neutron, and releasing
17.59 MeV as kinetic energy of the products while a corresponding amount of mass
disappears, in agreement with kinetic E= Δmc2, where Δm is the decrease in the total rest
mass of particles.[1]
The release of energy with the fusion of light elements is due to the interplay of two
opposing forces: the nuclear force, which combines together protons and neutrons, and
the Coulomb force, which causes protons to repel each other. Protons are positively
charged and repel each other by the Coulomb force, but they can nonetheless stick
together, demonstrating the existence of another, short-range, force referred to as nuclear
attraction.[2] Light nuclei (or nuclei smaller than iron and nickel) are sufficiently small and
proton-poor allowing the nuclear force to overcome repulsion. This is because the nucleus is
sufficiently small that all nucleons feel the short-range attractive force at least as strongly as
they feel the infinite-range Coulomb repulsion. Building up nuclei from lighter nuclei by
fusion releases the extra energy from the net attraction of particles. For larger nuclei,
however, no energy is released, since the nuclear force is short-range and cannot continue
to act across longer atomic length scales. Thus, energy is not released with the fusion of
such nuclei; instead, energy is required as input for such processes.
Fusion powers stars and produces virtually all elements in a process called nucleosynthesis.
The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of
hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen
and makes 606 million metric tons of helium each second. The fusion of lighter elements in
stars releases energy and the mass that always accompanies it. For example, in the fusion of
two hydrogen nuclei to form helium, 0.7% of the mass is carried away in the form of kinetic
energy of an alpha particle or other forms of energy, such as electromagnetic radiation.[3]
It takes considerable energy to force nuclei to fuse, even those of the lightest
element, hydrogen. When accelerated to high enough speeds, nuclei can overcome this
electrostatic repulsion and brought close enough such that the attractive nuclear force is
greater than the repulsive Coulomb force. The strong force grows rapidly once the nuclei
are close enough, and the fusing nucleons can essentially "fall" into each other and the
result is fusion and net energy produced. The fusion of lighter nuclei, which creates a
heavier nucleus and often a free neutron or proton, generally releases more energy than it
takes to force the nuclei together; this is an exothermic processthat can produce self-
sustaining reactions.
Energy released in most nuclear reactions is much larger than in chemical reactions,
because the binding energy that holds a nucleus together is greater than the energy that
holds electrons to a nucleus. For example, the ionization energy gained by adding an
electron to a hydrogen nucleus is 13.6 eV—less than one-millionth of the 17.6 MeV released
in the deuterium–tritium (D–T) reaction shown in the adjacent diagram. The complete
conversion of one gram of matter would release 9×1013 joules of energy. Fusion reactions
have an energy density many times greater than nuclear fission; the reactions produce far
greater energy per unit of mass even though individual fission reactions are generally much
more energetic than individual fusion ones, which are themselves millions of times more
energetic than chemical reactions. Only direct conversion of mass into energy, such as that
caused by the annihilatory collision of matter and antimatter, is more energetic per unit of
mass than nuclear fusion.
Research into using fusion for the production of electricity has been pursued for over 60
years. Successful accomplishment of controlled fusion has been stymied by scientific and
technological difficulties; nonetheless, important progress has been made. At present,
controlled fusion reactions have been unable to produce break-even (self-sustaining)
controlled fusion.[4] The two most advanced approaches for it are magnetic confinement
(toroid designs) and inertial confinement (laser designs).
Workable designs for a toroidal reactor that theoretically will deliver ten times more fusion
energy than the amount needed to heat plasma to the required temperatures are in
development (see ITER). The ITER facility is expected to finish its construction phase in 2019.
It will start commissioning the reactor that same year and initiate plasma experiments in
2020, but is not expected to begin full deuterium-tritium fusion until 2027.[5]
The US National Ignition Facility, which uses laser-driven inertial confinement fusion, was
designed with a goal of break-even fusion; the first large-scale laser target experiments
were performed in June 2009 and ignition experiments began in early 2011.

NUCLEAR FUSION IN STARS

The proton-proton chain reaction, branch I, dominates in stars the size of the Sun or smaller.
The CNO cycle dominates in stars heavier than the Sun.
An important fusion process is the stellar nucleosynthesis that powers stars and the Sun. In the 20th
century, it was recognized that the energy released from nuclear fusion reactions accounted for the
longevity of stellar heat and light. The fusion of nuclei in a star, starting from its initial hydrogen and
helium abundance, provides that energy and synthesizes new nuclei as a byproduct of the fusion process.
Different reaction chains are involved, depending on the mass of the star (and therefore the pressure and
temperature in its core).
Around 1920, Arthur Eddington anticipated the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes
in stars, in his paper The Internal Constitution of the Stars.[8][9] At that time, the source of stellar energy
was a complete mystery; Eddington correctly speculated that the source was fusion of hydrogen into
helium, liberating enormous energy according to Einstein's equation E = mc2. This was a particularly
remarkable development since at that time fusion and thermonuclear energy, and even that stars are
largely composed of hydrogen (see metallicity), had not yet been discovered. Eddington's paper, based
on knowledge at the time, reasoned that:
The leading theory of stellar energy, the contraction hypothesis, should cause stars' rotation to visibly
speed up due to conservation of angular momentum. But observations of Cepheid variable stars
showed this was not happening.
The only other known plausible source of energy was conversion of matter to energy; Einstein had shown
some years earlier that a small amount of matter was equivalent to a large amount of energy.
Francis Aston had also recently shown that the mass of a helium atom was about 0.8% less than the
mass of the four hydrogen atoms which would, combined, form a helium atom, suggesting that if such a
combination could happen, it would release considerable energy as a byproduct.
If a star contained just 5% of fusible hydrogen, it would suffice to explain how stars got their energy. (We
now know that most 'ordinary' stars contain far more than 5% hydrogen)
Further elements might also be fused, and other scientists had speculated that stars were the "crucible"
in which light elements combined to create heavy elements, but without more accurate measurements
of their atomic masses nothing more could be said at the time.
All of these speculations were proven correct in the following decades.
The primary source of solar energy, and similar size stars, is the fusion of hydrogen to form helium
(the proton-proton chain reaction), which occurs at a solar-core temperature of 14 million kelvin. The
net result is the fusion of four protons into one alpha particle, with the release of two positrons and
two neutrinos (which changes two of the protons into neutrons), and energy. In heavier stars, the CNO
cycle and other processes are more important. As a star uses up a substantial fraction of its hydrogen, it
begins to synthesize heavier elements. The heaviest elements are synthesized by fusion that occurs as a
more massive star undergoes a violent supernova at the end of its life, a process known as supernova
nucleosynthesis.

Methods for achieving fusion

Main article: Fusion power
Thermonuclear fusion
Main article: Thermonuclear fusion
If matter is sufficiently heated (hence being plasma), fusion reactions may occur due to collisions with
extreme thermal kinetic energies of the particles. Thermonuclear weapons produce what amounts to an
uncontrolled release of fusion energy. Controlled thermonuclear fusion energy has yet to be achieved.
Inertial confinement fusion
Main article: Inertial confinement fusion
Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a method aimed at releasing fusion energy by heating and
compressing a fuel target, typically a pellet containing deuterium and tritium.
Inertial electrostatic confinement
Main article: Inertial electrostatic confinement
Inertial electrostatic confinement is a set of devices that use an electric field to heat ions to fusion
conditions. The most well-known is the fusor. Starting in 1999, a number of amateurs have been able to
do amateur fusion using these homemade devices.[12][13][14][15] Other IEC devices include: the Polywell,
MIX POPS[16] and Marble concepts.[17]
Beam-beam or beam-target fusion
If the energy to initiate the reaction comes from accelerating one of the nuclei, the process is
called beam-target fusion; if both nuclei are accelerated, it is beam-beam fusion.
Accelerator-based light-ion fusion is a technique using particle accelerators to achieve particle kinetic
energies sufficient to induce light-ion fusion reactions. Accelerating light ions is relatively easy, and can
be done in an efficient manner—requiring only a vacuum tube, a pair of electrodes, and a high-voltage
transformer; fusion can be observed with as little as 10 kV between the electrodes. The key problem with
accelerator-based fusion (and with cold targets in general) is that fusion cross sections are many orders
of magnitude lower than Coulomb interaction cross sections. Therefore, the vast majority of ions expend
their energy emitting bremsstrahlung radiation and the ionization of atoms of the target. Devices
referred to as sealed-tube neutron generators are particularly relevant to this discussion. These small
devices are miniature particle accelerators filled with deuterium and tritium gas in an arrangement that
allows ions of those nuclei to be accelerated against hydride targets, also containing deuterium and
tritium, where fusion takes place, releasing a flux of neutrons. Hundreds of neutron generators are
produced annually for use in the petroleum industry where they are used in measurement equipment for
locating and mapping oil reserves.
Muon-catalysed fusion
Muon-catalysed fusion is a fusion process that occurs at ordinary temperatures. It was studied in detail
by Steven Jones in the early 1980s. Net energy production from this reaction has been unsuccessful
because of the high energy required to create muons, their short 2.2 µs half-life, and the high chance
that a muon will bind to the new alpha particle and thus stop catalyzing fusion.

Important reactions
 Astrophysical reaction chains
At the temperatures and densities in stellar cores the rates of fusion reactions are notoriously slow. For
example, at solar core temperature (T ≈ 15 MK) and density (160 g/cm3), the energy release rate is only
276 μW/cm3—about a quarter of the volumetric rate at which a resting human body generates heat.[25]
Thus, reproduction of stellar core conditions in a lab for nuclear fusion power production is completely
impractical. Because nuclear reaction rates depend on density as well as temperature and most fusion
schemes operate at relatively low densities, those methods are strongly dependent on higher
temperatures. The fusion rate as a function of temperature (exp(−E/kT)), leads to the need to achieve
temperatures in terrestrial reactors 10–100 times higher temperatures than in stellar interiors: T ≈ 0.1–
1.0×109 K.

Mathematical description