Nuclear Fusion

Advantages: All the clones will have the same characteristics, so they are genetically identical. Organisms that are difficult or slow to breed normally can be reproduced quickly. Some plant varieties do not produce seeds; others have seeds that are hidden for long periods.

Disadvantages: If a clone is susceptible to disease or changes in environment, then all the clones will be susceptible. It will lead to less variation, and less opportunity to create new varieties in the future.

A protostar must reach about 10 million degrees Celsius for nuclear fusion to start in its core, triggering the transition into a true star. This marks the point where hydrogen atoms begin fusing into helium, releasing energy in the process. So, a protostar will become a full-fledged star after nuclear fusion begins at this temperature.

Nuclear fusion is used as a potential source of clean and abundant energy in research and experimental reactors, such as ITER. It has the potential to produce electricity with fewer greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels, and it generates energy by fusing atomic nuclei together at extremely high temperatures. However, commercial fusion power plants are not yet operational.

For production of electricity, possibly yes. This won't be for 50 years at least in my opinion, and what the oil sitution will be then is difficult to forecast. There is plenty of coal available. Natural gas may run out. Nuclear fission will expand to some extent, and renewables like wind will also expand. I think there will be a mixture of fuels used as far ahead as we can imagine. Fusion would have to be much easier to do than seems likely at present, to become the main source of energy.

Up to now the problem has been how to get it started at all. If and when technology has developed a way of establishing fusion as a routine operation, there would be two ways of controlling the power level of the reaction: the amount of fuel being fed in could be regulated, and the magnetic field that constrains the plasma could be adjusted. The power could be rapidly shutdown by turning off the magnetic field, so I don't think there would be any risk of the reaction getting out of control.

Sure, you can get a tan from it, since the Sun is a big fusion power reactor. In the near future we will be able to build fusion reactors here on Earth. Google "ITER" to see how it's going. In the meantime I suppose you can say the fusion power is actually solar energy.

Nuclear fission involves splitting large atomic nuclei into smaller ones, releasing energy. Nuclear fusion involves merging small atomic nuclei together to form larger ones, also releasing energy. Fusion is the process that powers the sun and other stars, while fission is used in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs.

One advantage of nuclear energy is that it can produce far more power than other sources of energy including wind energy. One disadvantage of nuclear energy is the radioactive waste that is produced.

"Hot" nuclear fusion (this is not the term normally used) is exactly what the name implies, the materials are heated, which provides them with enough energy to overcome the normal repulsion of protons.

Cold nuclear fusion requires no heating and has not yet been proved, although dozens of Physicists and Electro-Chemists have claimed to have created cold fusion. Cold Fusion relies on other forces, such as pressure, to overcome the electrostatic force of repulsion.

== No, and yes. As there is a finite amount of matter in the universe, only so much can be converted to make energy. There will be a limit, though it is a long, long way from where we are. At some point, all the matter might be converted into energy, and then we would have exhausted our supply of fusionable material. If we fission matter, we run out of energy sooner. If we fission what we fuse, we lose energy. Either way, fission won't last as long as fusion. Most of the universe is made up of hydrogen (dark matter aside), and with that much hydrogen around, we could power up fusion reactors for eons. (Stars are exactly this kind of fusion reactor.) Practically speaking, the limit may not be reachable in the lifetime of the universe as we know it. That's pretty close to an inexhaustable supply of nuclear energy.

Nuclear reactors are controlled by control rods made of a neutron absorbing material such as boron steel. These enable the reactor to be shutdown quickly in the event of a fault, and also to be brought back to criticality after a refuelling outage or some other reason for a shutdown. After new fuel has been loaded a neutron absorber is added to the water coolant to prevent the reactor being too active, and this poison is gradually removed as the fuel is burned up. The object of reactor control is usually to maintain a steady power level. As nuclear fuel is relatively cheap, but the investment in the plant is high, it pays to operate on base load, and allow other types of power plant to absorb the variations in power demand during the daily cycle.

During nuclear fusion, energy is released as a result of combining atomic nuclei to form heavier elements. This release of energy occurs due to the conversion of mass into energy, as dictated by Einstein's equation E=mc^2. This process is the same one that powers the sun and hydrogen bombs.

Stars operate on nuclear fusion. They operate on E=mc2, turning a little bit of mass into a whole lot of energy. Here's how: Hydrogen (atomic weight 1.008) is pulled into the star by gravity. Four hydrogen atoms get fused together to form one helium atom (atomic weight 4.003). If you look at the atomic weights (4H - 1He) there is a little bit of mass lost!. It turns to energy. Closer to the core of the star, helium fuses into heavier atoms like lithium and boron and carbon and oxygen. But iron is the last atom formed in regular stars by fusion. Fusion stops in all stars eventually as the fuel runs out. Because as smaller atoms get fused into larger atoms, it takes more energy and returns less at each step up until the atoms are iron. Then fusion would require more energy than the fusion could produce. This cooling results in a decrease of the cores' internal pressure that normally balances the force of gravity. Ultimately the star collapses and explodes. This process forms all the higher elements beyond iron. If it's heavy enough, the remnants become a neutron star, or even a black hole. If the star is big enough, it can reach a critical internal pressure that re-ignites the fusion process, but this normally happens suddenly and blows the star apart. Fusion stops in all stars eventually. Because as smaller atoms get fused into larger atoms, it takes more energy and returns less at each step up until the atoms are iron. Then fusion would require more energy than the fusion could return. This cooling results in a decrease of the cores' internal pressure that normally balances the force of gravity. If the star is big enough, it can reach a critical internal pressure that re-ignites the fusion process, but this normally happens suddenly and blows the star apart. == == Fusion is normally refferred to different objects combining.

Research on nuclear fusion as a source of energy is ongoing, with progress being made in various countries such as the ITER project in France. While significant challenges remain in terms of achieving sustained fusion reactions and developing commercially viable fusion power plants, there is optimism about the potential for fusion to provide a clean and abundant source of energy in the future.

Nuclear fusion occurs naturally in stars. Artificial fusion in human enterprises has also been achieved, although it has not yet been completely controlled as an energy source; successful nuclear physics experiments have been performed involving the fusion of many different nuclear species, but the energy output is negligible in these studies. Building upon the nuclear transmutation experiments of Ernest Rutherford done a few years earlier, fusion of light nuclei (hydrogen isotopes) was first observed by Mark Oliphant in 1932; the steps of the main cycle of nuclear fusion in stars were subsequently worked out by Hans Bethe throughout the remainder of that decade.

(Text taken from Wikipedia.)

Carbon is a naturally occurring element on the earth. It is the "magic" chemical element that is the building block of all life we know. Carbon was made in stars during their lives when they fused lighter elements into heavier ones (stellar nucleosynthesis).

Animal cells give off carbon in the form of CO2 (carbon dioxide) or in waste materials.

The violent creation of the solar system. There where much heavy elements on this planet before are civilization started its climb. These elements that we have now will deplete further and will not leave much left for the next civilization. It is a act of constant depletion.

At the moment it's not because nobody has been able to get it to work for the sort of duration necessary for power production.

There are, however a couple of nice advantages over fusion:

- No radioactive waste products (the product is helium-4)

- No radioactive raw material (need heavy hydrogen)

- Theoretically large energy gain per reaction

On the down side it is technically very challenging, requiring extremely high pressure. Getting the inital reaction to start requires a lot of energy.

The term critical mass does not relate to nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the fusing, the joining, of two or more nucleons or nuclei to create a heavier nucleus. It takes enormous energy to set up the conditions that will make this happen. Fusion occurs naturally in stars, and is the mechanism that powers them up. Stars operate in an equilibrium wherein nuclear fusion tries to force everything apart and gravity holds everything together.

Nuclear fission is the splitting of atoms, the splitting of atomic nuclei, and it can be looked at as the opposite of fusion. In fission, certain materials - and of them, only uranium-235 occurs naturally - will, when a certain minimum amount is brought together, begin to fission. They will spontaneously begin to fission because that certain minimum amount, the critical mass, has been brought together. The natural decay of the radionuclide releases neutrons, and when a critical mass is brought together, the naturally released neutrons now can build a chain reaction. The material goes critical because critical mass has been reached.

Note: We're giving thorium the day off here (which does not fission well itself but is usually converted in a reactor to uranium-233), and plutonium can be found with uranium only in the most minute amounts.

A link is provided to an article on critical mass posted by our friends at Wikipedia, where knowledge is free.

Basically, critical mass is the level of mass that something reaches to make something happen.

As a solid metal sphere inside a sphere of uranium, the critical mass of plutonium is 6.4 kg, the core of the MK-III atomic bomb (Gadget at Trinity & Fatman at Nagasaki) was 6.2 kg and became a supercritical mass when imploded using chemical explosive lenses. To ensure a good yield and not depend on natural spontaneous neutron production (which might cause a fizzle) at the optimal moment of supercriticality, a neutron source fired a pulse of neutrons to start the chain reaction.

There is a sense where stellar fusion has critical mass: a protostar whose mass is too low cannot ignite fusion in the first place and becomes a brown dwarf. However the term critical mass is not normally used to describe this stellar mass threshold. There is also a sense where neutron star and black hole formation processes have critical mass, but that is a topic for a different category on another day.

During binary fusion, the parental identities of the two nuclei are lost as they merge to form a single nucleus with a new combination of genetic material. In multiple fusion events, such as in the fusion of gametes during sexual reproduction, the parental identities remain present in the resulting zygote, which inherits genetic material from both parents.

With nuclear fission, a large atomic nucleus (such as a uranium nucleus) breaks apart into smaller nuclei, and energy is released. With nuclear fusion, small atomic nuclei (such as hydrogen) join to become larger nuclei, and energy is released. Fusion of hydrogen releases much more energy than any other type of either fusion or fission. Note that the dividing line between heavy nuclei and light nuclei is the iron nucleus, which is at the perfect point of nuclear stability, so that neither fusion nor fission of iron nuclei would release any energy.

A theoretical distortion in the spacetime continuum that would "warp" space or time or both around an object.

In this theory, so far unsupported by evidence and running against Einsteinian law, the expenditure of energy or the generation of a "field" around an object would allow that object to "fold" space in front of it, leaping from one place to another without the tiresome business of actually spending time getting there; or to "fold" time around an object, allowing the object to cross space without anyone experiencing the time that it should have taken.

Various theories and millions of stories exist about how this could be achieved. So far as science currently knows, it is impossible by our accepted physical laws.

Nuclear fusion is the combining (fusion) of two or more nuclear units to form a heavier nuclear unit. Fusion is the mechanism that powers up the sun and other stars. The energies required to initiate fusion are almost unimaginable. More particulars can be found by using the link below.