General, Research, Technology

What is Tokamak? Just about a fusion reactor

Can you imagine a world in which notdo you need any additional energy sources? A world in which you won’t have to think about how to save energy. It will be, if not free, then very cheap. Now imagine the Sun, which every second produces as much energy as humanity has not used up in its entire history and will not use up for a long time. How can we realize the receipt of the energy of the Sun on our planet? It turns out that for over 60 years there have been technologies that can provide us with almost inexhaustible energy sources for minimal money and using almost free fuel. A reasonable question: why do not we take this opportunity?

Inside this chamber, the temperature rises to several million degrees Celsius.

Content

  • 1 What is tokamak
  • 2 Who invented the tokamak
  • 3 How tokamak works
  • 4 The largest fusion reactor
  • 5 Is fusion reaction safe
  • 6 Why energy is not obtained from fusion

What is tokamak

The word "tokamak" does not mean anything - itjust an abbreviation, which later became a full word. It is used not only in Russia but also abroad, since it was in our country that this thing was invented and it was with us that they actively developed for a long time.

Tokamak - thenroidal kameasure s maugly toatoms. That's all.

The essence of tokamak is to createthe magnetic field in which the thermonuclear fusion reaction takes place. Since the temperature of such a reaction is not just high, but literally prohibitive (several million degrees Celsius), it cannot be carried out simply inside some kind of chamber - it will melt long before the working temperature is reached.

This temperature is achieved due to the fact thatinside the tokamak, the substance is in the fourth state of aggregation, which is achieved at such high temperatures. This condition is called plasma.

Who invented the tokamak

The first to propose using fusionsynthesis, including for industrial purposes, was the Soviet physicist O.A. Lavrentiev. He did this in his 1950 work. It was with his work that the study of methods for using thermonuclear fusion began.

O.A. Lavrentiev is also the father of the hydrogen bomb.

A year later, other physicists - A.D. Sakharov and I.E. Tamm - developed the idea and said that the thermonuclear reaction should be supported inside a closed toroidal chamber.

Thor (toroid) is a three-dimensional shape produced by rotating the ring around the center of the rotation.Rough examples of a torus can be a doughnut, bagel or bicycle camera taken out of the wheel.

The term for the designation tokamak was proposed by a student of Academician Kurchatov - I.N.However, in his version it was to be "Tokamag" (toroidal magnetic chamber), but later began to use the more sympathetic word "Tokamak".

A.D. Sakharov and I.E. Tamm

The first active tokamak was built in 1954year, but until 1968 they existed only in the USSR, since few believed in the existence of such a high temperature inside the chamber. Only after in the T-3 tokamak at the Institute of Atomic Energy named after I.V. Kurchatov was visited by British scientists and their equipment confirmed the existence of a temperature of 11.6 million degrees Celsius, which led to an explosive growth in popularity and research in this direction in the world.

Tokamak is still considered the most promising way to generate energy for thermonuclear fusion and study plasma as an aggregate state of matter.

On Earth, plasma in a natural environment is found only in lightning and the northern lights, in space it consists ofliterally everything - stars, nebulae, interstellar space.

How tokamak works

To create a magnetic field inside the tokamak, it is made up of sections inside which reels are reeled.Because they go along the entire length of the camera and createIt's a working zone.

Tokamak design.


Before starting work, the tokamak a chamber is pumped out and instead filledThey are the basis of the thermonuclear fusion reaction.

Deuterium is a hydrogen isotope whose nucleus consists of one proton and one neutron. Tritius is a hydrogen isotope whose nucleus consists of a proton and two neutrons.

The advantage of using these two elements is that they are very cheap.Deuterium is very easy to get from water, which on our planet is more than enough, and tritus is synthesized even in a slightly more complex way, but this is also not a big problem.

When the camera is full, it creates a vortex electric field that supportsplasma inside the chamber, and at the same time warms up, bringing to the same temperature of several million degrees.

Now people are working here, and soon it will be 150 million degrees.

Because the field and heating are created by increasing the current in the inducor, and it cannotincrease indefinitely, the time of plasma in a stable state does not exceedThis is the main reason that we can't yet use tokamaki as a source of industrial energyThere are ways to solve this problem, including using microwave radiation, but so far work in this direction is still underway.

Contact of tokamak walls with plasma neti so they do not melt, but they still experienceBecause of this, walls are made of beryllium and cut into small square plates. It's easier for them to take the heat away.

However, microwave radiation is already used inside the tokamak, as only the electromagnetic field is not enough to heat the plasma to the temperature necessary for the thermonuclear reaction.

Normal particle physics clearly tells us that nuclei with the same charge are repelled by each otherBut when they reach ultra-high temperatures, they begin to behave differently, forming a helium nucleus plus one free neutron.It is at this moment that a huge amount of energy is released.Under normal circumstances, it is spent on the interaction of atoms with each other.

Lockheed Martin patented a compact fusion reactor

Largest thermonuclear reactor

Of course, we can say that the biggesta thermonuclear reactor is the Sun, but all this is conditional, there are more stars. The largest fusion reactor on Earth is the International Fusion Experimental Reactor (ITER or ITER). It has been under construction in the south of France since 2007 and, like the Large Hadron Collider, is an international project.

Receiving the first plasma was scheduled for 2020, and the first electricity in the network - for 2027, but the deadlines are no longer fulfilled due to the fact that the project has many participants (each in its own way slows downproject) and because no one has ever done this before.

In order to describe his possibilities, it is enough to say that inside it will beIt's 10 million degrees Celsius.It is simply impossible to imagine such values.

Who builds the tokamak ITER.

When the ITER will be completed (which we will definitelywe will tell in our Telegram news channel), it will become the main study of thermonuclear fusion for further study of this reaction of atoms as a potential source of energy of the future.

Из интересных цифр ИТЭР можно отметить размер tokamak, which will be 28 meters in diameter and 28 meters in height. The design capacity is 0.5 GW (2.5 more than the most powerful of what is now). The magnetic field will be 10 Tesla (the Earth's magnetic field is 0.00005 Tesla).

The cost of the project is only 15 billion dollars.$53 billion, and about $130 billion to prepare for the 2022 World Cup.

Is thermonuclear fusion reaction safe

The main advantage of the thermonuclear fusion reaction passing inside the tokamak is its safety.One may wonder how this is possible when such high temperatures reach such high temperatures, but it really is.

All because plasma density is a million times less than the density of the atmosphere.Due to this peculiarity of work, an explosion due to internal pressure is simply impossible.And if the temperature starts to drop, the plasma will just be, as they sayPlus, the fuel is fed throughout the reaction and to stop it is enough just to stop its supply.For example, the nuclear power plant just can not be turned off and I already told why.

The only danger is that the tritium isotope hasa little radioactivity.However, it is not so high as to worry about it.It is significantly lower than that of fuel for a nuclear power plant.almost 5 billion years (i.e. almost never), and tritia - only 12 years.And its minimum amount is used.

A total of 80 grams of deuterium and tritia mixture in tokamak give outas much energy as 1,000 tons of coal when burned.Here's it.

And we can add that the technology of thermonuclear fusion reaction can not be used for military purposes.The creation of plasma outside the tokamak is not yet possible, and the use of it as a weapon is weakly feasible because it does not explode.

Why energy is not derived from thermonuclear fusion

Despite all the promise of the technology and the fact that it has been talked about for more than 70 yearsback, until it is possible to achieve the industrial operation of such devices.For example, the possibility of long-term work and further increase in plasma temperature.

Just imagine how this little sun will provide us with energy in the future.

When this problem is resolved, we will get a small piece of the Sun on Earth, and then we canto say that we have achieved perfection in energy generation.invent other even more efficient ways of generating energy, but it is thermonuclear fusion that can nowThe most important thing is that we get not only the opportunity not to turn off the lightsfor the sake of saving.

And the release of energy is knocked out: The Earth's oceans are heated as if every second in them fallsfive atomic bombs

The main advantage of switching to such a source of energy is that when all the energy will beextracted from thermonuclear fusion, we will reduce the impact on our planet as much as possible.We won't need fossil fuels, we'll do without nuclear power plants, and at the same time we'll switch to electric transport.Maybe we won't have to leave.