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Fusion reactors are not subject to catastrophic meltdown. [121] It requires precise and controlled temperature, pressure and magnetic field parameters to produce net energy, and any damage or loss of required control would rapidly quench the reaction. [122] Fusion reactors operate with seconds or even microseconds worth of fuel at any moment.
The plasma tends to expand immediately and some force is necessary to act against it. This force can take one of three forms: gravitation in stars, magnetic forces in magnetic confinement fusion reactors, or inertial as the fusion reaction may occur before the plasma starts to expand, so the plasma's inertia is keeping the material together.
New reactor designs have features of passive safety, such as the flooding of the reactor core without active intervention by reactor operators. But these safety measures have generally been developed and studied with respect to accidents, not to the deliberate reactor attack by a terrorist group.
Advances in the potential energy source may not be about electricity, at least at first.
To create reliable, commercial nuclear fusion on Earth, scientists need to heat up plasma inside tokamak reactors to 150 million degrees Celsius—a temperature roughly 10 times that of the Sun ...
A clean-up crew working to remove radioactive contamination after the Three Mile Island accident. Nuclear safety is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "The achievement of proper operating conditions, prevention of accidents or mitigation of accident consequences, resulting in protection of workers, the public and the environment from undue radiation hazards".
Its fusion reactor uses a different fuel combination, and the reactor itself is a totally different form factor from tokamaks or stellarators. (A tokamak uses a current to control the sun-hot ...
Magnetic confinement is one of two major branches of controlled fusion research, along with inertial confinement fusion. Fusion reactions for reactors usually combine light atomic nuclei of deuterium and tritium to form an alpha particle (Helium-4 nucleus) and a neutron, where the energy is released in the form of the kinetic energy of the ...