Word: deuterium
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...splitting them as in fission-still remains what it has been for a generation: a possibility. But in a number of laboratories and one private company-KMS Industries of Ann Arbor, Mich.-scientists are moving closer to doing what they know can be done: fusing the nuclei of deuterium and tritium to create a powerful burst of energy. At KMS and the Government's Los Alamos lab, lasers are being used to "implode" deuterium pellets. Energy has been produced, but not enough to be measured accurately or drive the laser. Within three to five years, scientists hope to reach...
Inside the Princeton doughnut-shaped Tokamak, deuterium and tritium (both isotopes, or different forms, of hydrogen) will serve as fusion fuel. In the form of a plasma (a high-temperature, ionized gas), the fuel will be suspended within powerful magnetic fields. Thus the gas will be supported by nothing but magnetic force and will be insulated from the steel walls of the reactor. If the plasma touched the wall, the wall would be heated, the plasma would be contaminated and its temperature lowered. The powerful magnetic fields will be manipulated to squeeze the plasma, raising its temperature and increasing...
Once that has been done, ERDA officials hope to build more advanced experimental reactors, followed by a 500-megawatt demonstration power plant in the 1990s, and working fusion power plants that use only deuterium as a fuel by the end of the century. If that scenario can be successfully followed, the term "energy crisis" will become obsolete. There is enough deuterium in the world's oceans to fill mankind's energy needs for untold centuries to come...
...controlled fusion can occur only under conditions of very high temperature and density that researchers have tried for years to produce by using powerful magnetic fields to squeeze or confine isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. But even the best of these "magnetic bottles" -which require tremendous amounts of energy to operate-have so far been unable to provide the necessary temperature and density for more than a tiny fraction of a second...
Lately scientists have been turning to a more efficient tool for creating fusion: the laser. By heating a tiny pellet of deuterium or tritium with a powerful pulse of laser light, they cause the explosive evaporation of the pellet's surface. As the material sprays off, the rest of the pellet implodes. The hydrogen nuclei are thus forced together. As early as 1968, a team of Soviet researchers under Physicist Nikolai Basov, a Nobel laureate, reported that they had used lasers to ignite a brief but clearly detectable fusion reaction. Since then, their experiments have been repeated-and improved...