Nuclear Fusion: Taming the Sun

When you look up at the cloudless night sky, you can see many thousands of shining points. The stars. If you’ve never wondered why the stars actually shine, now is the time to do so. Even during the day, we see a star that we call the “Sun.” It provides the light and heat that sustain our lives. If the Sun were to go out tomorrow, the Earth would turn into a dead, icy planet in no time. But don’t worry. Science tells us that our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old and will continue to provide heat for the Earth for roughly the same amount of time. Whatever it is that makes a star shine, it must be able to last for many billions of years. Obviously, neither a wood fire nor a coal fire can do this. In this book, I unravel the mystery of the stars’ fuel. How does this combustion work, and how and why have we humans, so far unsuccessfully, tried to harness the sun’s power on Earth? I’ll tell you about some of the fundamentals of nuclear physics, as well as the more than 100-year history of understanding and harnessing nuclear fusion. This topic affects us all given the current need to reshape our energy policy. You don’t need any prior knowledge, and you don’t have to be a math whiz to be able to discuss this topic knowledgeably in the future. In this book, you’ll find answers to the following questions:
• What is an atomic nucleus, and how was it discovered?
• What is nuclear fusion, and how was it discovered?
• Why do both nuclear fission and nuclear fusion produce energy?
• How does a hydrogen bomb work?
• Why do we want to build a fusion reactor? What promising approaches are there for this?
• Where do we stand today, and when will fusion reactors be available as sources of electricity? Will a fusion reactor ever be economically viable to operate?