Nowadays, What Problem is going on with Nuclear Fusion?

Nuclear reactions have been a dream for decades. But until now, it is no longer the top concern of many countries, especially with nuclear power plants, it is almost no longer invested in construction. What's going on with nuclear fusion?
Let's watch our video analyze some of the factors involved, and hopefully, by the end of this video, you won't be bored and have some idea of the potential of it.
1:40 Nuclear fusion technology
Since the beginning of the cold war, nuclear fusion tests have been carried out, and the first functional generators appeared in both the US and the USSR in the 1950s.
While the Americans employed a slightly different strategy, the star device, the Soviets attacked the issue through the Tokamak design.
Every design aims to address the same issue. Merging is not a very difficult process. By fusing lesser elements, we can produce new ones while also releasing a lot of energy.

We need to use a lot of energy to bind them together, but we can't just take individual atoms and bind them like a magnet. Instead, we produce plasma, which is essentially a cloud of changed ions that can be controlled by a magnetic field because of their electrical charge.
The temperature of the plasma rises, causing the ions to accelerate. Increase the ions' kinetic energy to a point where their speed is sufficient to overcome electromagnetic repulsion and collision.

3:47 Nuclear
Deuterium and tritium are frequently combined. Deuterium has one proton, one electron, and one neutron, while Tritium has one proton, one electron, and two neutrons, where Hydrogen typically has one proton, one electron, and no neutron.
There are several uses for this combination.

First, it has the best chance of providing us with the precise outcome we seek.
Others, like the reaction of hydrogen with ordinary hydrogen, have a very high likelihood of producing Helium 2, which is unstable and virtually instantly breaks down to 2 ordinary hydrogen while producing very little energy.
The reaction we truly desire, the combination to create Deuterium, has a reduced chance of happening.
After that, it continues to combine to create helium 3 and ultimately helium 4. The sun is propelled by a series of events like this. On Earth, we have successfully produced several fusion reactions.
5:40 Problem
Our current challenge is to maximize the energy we can extract while minimizing the energy we must put in.
First, we need fuel that releases more energy while requiring less energy input. Deuterium and tritium are useful in this situation.
With each fusion event, they have a very high possibility of producing helium 4 and releasing an average of 17.6 Mega Electrovolts (MeV).
For comparison, the energy released by one fission event of uranium 235 is approximately 11.4 times higher (200 MeV), however on a mass basis, the energy released by the fusion of deuterium and tritium is four times higher and does not result in any radioactive byproducts.
In fact, helium is a very important by-product that is used to cool MRI machines' superconducting magnets, to fill rocket tanks after their fuel has run out to keep them from exploding, and occasionally to give your voice the Wendover Productions sound from six years ago.
Deuterium, Tritium, Uranium, and Helium are examples of nuclear matter that are difficult to synthesize and find in nature because of their minuscule proportions and high costs, even temporarily. long.
9:49 Tritium Synthesis
We want the high-energy neutron from the fusion reaction to strike an atom inside the blanket and release two neutrons when it enters the blanket wall. The blanket is able to generate heat by adding a second neutron, and Tritium Beryllium is the leading contender right now to play that part.
It divides into two helium atoms, four neutrons, and two after being struck by a neutron.
Increasing our first Neutron will enable our blanket to produce Tritium and produce additional heat.
Because helium's waste does not pollute the plasma and, more crucially, because beryllium keeps some tritium inside itself, it was chosen as the material for the James Webb telescope mirror. . Tritium must naturally exit the metal for two reasons: first, we must trap the gas to refuel; second, Tritium is explosive like regular hydrogen.
However, because there is a finite supply of the element and it is radioactive, beryllium is quite expensive.
14:00 Helion
One business is operating differently, according to smart CEO David Kirtley:
In the field of nuclear fusion research, they are taking an entirely unique approach. They do not require costly beryllium blankets because they are not powered by steam. They are working on a way of producing fuel locally that doesn't require lithium and instead creates it during the synthesis of cheap, easily-accessible deuterium.
Additionally, they are achieving the fusion temperature by magnetic confinement using a totally new technique.