Confining the Fusion Reaction

Unlocking this huge potential energy source of fusion on Earth requires mind boggling temperatures --100 million degrees or more-- and confining and controlling such a reaction is difficult. Three methods are currently known: gravitational confinement which is used in stars but is not possible on earth, inertial confinement, and magnetic confinement. Inertial confinement uses pulsed energy sources, laser beam, to concentrate energy on a small frozen pellet of fusion fuel. This pulsed energy source compresses the pellet up to a thousand times normal solid density and heats the fuel to ignition temperature. The other method, magnetic confinement, uses magnetic fields to hold a plasma (ionized gas) in place while it is heated to ignition temperature by external sources.

This graphic was taken from: http://fusioned.gat.com/SlideShowFolder/SlideShowGraphicsFolder/Confinement.GIF

The figure above shows the three known ways to confine a fusion reaction.

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