There were three forms of nuclear reactions known to mankind, namely, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and nuclear decay.
Among them, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion could provide energy for mankind. According to Einstein's mass-energy equation E = mc ^ 2, as long as there was mass attenuation before and after the nuclear reaction, it meant that a certain amount of energy was released.
The so-called nuclear fission was the mass loss caused by the splitting of heavy atomic nuclei, thus producing energy.
Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. It was the fusion of light atomic nuclei to form a heavier atomic nucleus, which would undergo mass attenuation, thus producing energy.
The reason why nuclear fusion was superior to nuclear fission was not only that the energy released by nuclear fusion was greater, but more importantly, the raw material for nuclear fusion could be extracted from seawater. Deuterium was abundant in the Earth's seawater, as much as 40 trillion tons. If all of it was used in fusion reactions, the energy released would be enough for mankind to use for tens of billions of years.
The common reaction material for nuclear fission, uranium-235, was scarce and the nuclear waste produced would affect the geology for hundreds of years. Therefore, whether in terms of reserves or cleanliness and safety, nuclear fission could not be compared to nuclear fusion.
Therefore, nuclear fusion energy was an unlimited, clean, and safe new energy source that countless people yearned for.
Of course, nuclear fusion did not just refer to the fusion of deuterium and tritium. As long as it was an element smaller than iron in the periodic table, nuclear fusion could occur. The reason why humans chose only tritium and deuterium as fusion materials was that the conditions for nuclear fusion were the simplest.
Compared to other elements, the hydrogen isotope deuterium and tritium nuclei only had one proton. For a fusion reaction between tritium and deuterium, they only needed to overcome the repulsive force between two protons. For other elements, they needed to overcome the repulsive force of a bunch of protons. The difficulty was incomparable.
Now that the next step to conquer nuclear fusion had been determined, Chen Chen returned to his office and found the nuclear fusion reactor technology in Elysium's dimension.
However, after a few glances, Chen Chen frowned. He had always specialized in medicine and biology. Although he had a slight understanding of nuclear physics, it was limited to the surface. At most, he knew a little more than ordinary people.
Therefore, Chen Chen raised his head and said, "X, immediately compile a document for me to quickly understand nuclear physics."
As he spoke, he took out an iron box of chewing gum and gently opened it. Suddenly, an NZT-48 flew into his mouth.
After that, Chen Chen's expression suddenly cleared up.
At the same time, Little X quickly sorted out a document on nuclear physics, from shallow to deep. Therefore, Chen Chen flipped through the technical documents provided by Little X while verifying the information on the nuclear reactor in Elysium's dimension.
This time, Chen Chen could more or less understand it.
"I didn't expect Elysium to use more than one type of nuclear fusion reactor technology."
Chen Chen smiled and flipped to the second drawing. "Inertial confinement nuclear fusion reactor and magnetic confinement nuclear fusion reactor, huh? Unbelievable … "
"In fact, the mainstream of the Earth Federation is also these two types."
Little X explained, "However, if these technologies are subdivided, they can be divided into multiple branches. There are even similar jokes circulating on the Internet..."
"What joke?" Chen Chen could not help asking.
"It divides all kinds of fusion branch technologies into nine DND camps according to their thickness. Each camp also has a personified speaker.
Little X explained, "For example, the stellarator represents' lawful good '. The personified speaker is: My heart and my actions are as calm as the stars, and everything I do is stable.
"And the neutral good magnetic domain, the personified speaker is: There's no magnetism worth leaking, there's no helium-3 to burn, because I'm not making a reactor anymore!
"And the chaotic good tokamak: Plasma current, I'm telling you again, don't make any more trouble!
"In addition, there's the spherical tokamak that represents lawful neutral, the field inverse configuration constraint tokamak that represents absolute neutral, and the magnetized target fusion that represents chaotic neutral, and so on..."
The more she spoke, the more excited Little X became. "And the funniest one is the laser fusion technology that represents chaotic evil — its personified speaker is: I'll f * cking shoot it up!"
"..."
Chen Chen looked up in shock. "X, did I hear that right? You're actually doing GHS?"
"I, I didn't..."
Little X suddenly stammered. "What kind of dirty talk is this? Only humans are dirty talk. I'm an intelligent life... How can the affairs of an intelligent life be called dirty talk? I'm just playing with a meme, a meme from nuclear physics! "
Chen Chen shook his head and did not argue about this issue. He just made a mental note of Little X's increasingly human-like changes. At the same time, he said again, "Now I basically understand why the development of nuclear fusion is so much more difficult than nuclear fission. In fact, it's because the physical laws of the two reactions are different.
"The mass of the nucleus in nuclear fission is larger and it's unstable, so fission reactions can be achieved as long as there's a normal temperature and pressure environment. However, nuclear fusion is different. It has to overcome the huge electrostatic repulsion between the nuclei. Without enough energy or a special environment to break through the critical point of this repulsion, the nuclei can't be fused together.
"So, the key is to create a high-pressure and high-temperature environment, right?"
"Yes."
Little X replied, "The most common nuclear fusion reaction in the universe is the sun. Due to its own mass, the sun can form an ultra-high pressure of 200 billion atmospheres in its core. Coupled with a temperature of 15 million degrees, it can fuse hydrogen atoms into helium atoms.
"However, if humans want to achieve the same nuclear fusion on Earth, ultra-high pressure conditions are completely impossible to achieve. Therefore, human nuclear fusion devices today need to work on high temperatures. They need to raise the core temperature from the sun's core 15 million degrees to more than 100 million degrees."
"The simplest and most direct method is to use a large number of electrified coils to encircle a ring around the ring, generating a strong magnetic field to form a magnetic confinement nuclear fusion reactor. This device that can generate a strong enough ring magnetic field is called a 'tokamak device'.
"The other kind of inertial confinement nuclear fusion reactor is a mixture of deuterium and tritium in milligrams and a small ball with a diameter of a few millimeters. Then, a laser beam is uniformly shot from the outside. The surface of the ball absorbs energy and evaporates outward. Due to its reaction, the gas in the small ball is compressed and the pressure increases, accompanied by a sharp rise in temperature. When the temperature reaches the required ignition temperature, the gas in the small ball explodes and produces a large amount of heat!
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