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Nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion has become a laboratory joke: “Fusion is the energy of the future — and always will be!” All jokes aside, two facts are noteworthy. Unlike fission, which consists of splitting the nuclei of heavy elements like uranium, the energy produced by fusion is the result of light nuclei merging to form a heavier atom and releasing high-energy particles in the process. This reaction has numerous advantages: it involves light atoms, in particular hydrogen isotopes like deuterium, which is found naturally in seawater; it produces virtually no hazardous waste. Furthermore, the process is so delicate that it is physically impossible for a fusion reactor to spiral out of control.
Secondly, in nearly 60 years of research, no one has yet been able to master nuclear fusion. This is not surprising, considering that it involves controlling a deuterium-tritium gas heated to 150 million degrees (10 times the temperature at the core of the Sun, which transforms the gas into a plasma) and levitated by a magnetic field partially generated by the plasma itself. The process would require materials capable of withstanding temperatures that have never been attained on Earth as well as extremely intense flows of very fast neutrons. Lastly, fusion requires the production of tritium, an element that does not exist in nature, from lithium bombarded by neutrons generated by the reactor itself.
As of 2027, the experimental ITER reactor, under construction at the CEA’s site at Cadarache in southeastern France, will enable specialists to start learning how to control the stability of a fusion plasma. Even so, this colossal €15 billion installation is only the first step towards viable nuclear fusion. The next phase is scheduled to start in Japan in 2033, with another experimental reactor called DEMO, and then with PROTO, the first prototype of what could become an industrial fusion reactor. Only then, provided all these projects come to fruition, will fusion be considered the future of nuclear power.