Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A fusion energy gain factor, usually expressed with the symbol Q, is the ratio of fusion power produced in a nuclear fusion reactor to the power required to maintain the plasma in steady state. The condition of Q = 1, when the power being released by the fusion reactions is equal to the required heating power, is referred to as breakeven , or ...
This corresponds to a total scientific energy gain of 0.7 and a capsule energy gain of 6. [14] While the experiment fell short of ignition as defined by the National Academy of Sciences – a total energy gain greater than one – most people working in the field viewed the experiment as the demonstration of ignition as defined by the Lawson ...
Energy per reaction is the energy released in each fusion reaction; This equation is typically averaged over a population of ions which has a normal distribution. The result is the amount of energy being created by the plasma at any instant in time. Lawson then estimated [5] the radiation losses using the following equation:
The resulting plasmas are expected to generate at least twice as much energy as is required to sustain themselves at high temperatures (200 million K), [13] giving a fusion gain Q > 2, with an expected Q ≈ 11. [1] Construction site in May 2023
In order for them to fuse, they must be pressed together with enough energy to overcome this coulomb barrier. [1] The simplest way to do this is to heat the fuel to very high temperatures, and allow the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution to produce a number of very high-energy atoms within a larger, cooler mix. For the fusion to occur, the higher ...
In 1997, JET set the record of 16 megawatts of transient fusion power with a gain factor of Q = 0.62 and 4 megawatts steady state fusion power with Q = 0.18 for 4 seconds. [3] In 2021, JET sustained Q = 0.33 for 5 seconds and produced 59 megajoules of energy, beating the record 21.7 megajoules released in 1997 over around 4 seconds. [4]
For every volt that an ion is accelerated across, its kinetic energy gain corresponds to an increase of temperature of 11,604 kelvins (K). For example, a typical magnetic confinement fusion plasma is 15 keV, which corresponds to 170 megakelvin (MK). An ion with a charge of one can reach this temperature by being accelerated across a 15,000 V drop.
On October 31, 1996, JT-60U successfully achieved extrapolated breakeven with a factor of Q DT eq = 1.05 at 2.8 MA. In other words, if the homogenous deuterium fuel was theoretically replaced with a 1:1 mix of deuterium and tritium , the fusion reaction would have created an energy output 1.05 times the energy used to start the reaction.