why isnt the world not putting more research into fusion?

Question

wouldnt this be the way to go? america spent billions if not trillions on developing the atomic bomb, why not fusion, this iter project in my opinion is not getting the attention it needs, so why are they taking so long to get things going

Answer 1

Good question.

The answer is somewhat convoluted, but there are two big components to it. First of all, controlled fusion is a tough nut to crack. The basic problem is this, in layman's terms: you need a magnetic bottle to contain the fusion reactions to get them hot enough to sustain "break-even", the point where the reactions are self-powering. The hotter you get the plasma (the constituents of a fusion reaction are electrons and deuterium ions), the easier it is for the charges to escape before they fuse into helium. Worse yet, when things get _really_ hot and _really_ dense, the plasma changes the nature of the magnetic bottle in insidious ways, and makes plasma escape even more prevalent. Scientists spend money on theory and experiment to find ways to plug up the holes. Nature always seems to find new ways to leak.

Second, the fact is America has already spent billions on plasma research. We've known as well as any country that achieving a viable fusion source would provide virtually limitless energy at our present consumption into the foreseeable future, change the nature of our economy forever, and render the Arab states irrelevant. But American research funding agencies like to see at least some tangible return on their R&D investment, and when over fifty years and billions of dollars in research still proves that fusion is a tough nut to crack, those research funding agencies are compelled to reconsider where they want to put their valuable research dollars.

Here's an amusing antecdote which sets the political stage for why (the USA, at least) doesn't put as much money into it as they might. I'm a plasma physicist by background (some plasma physicists work on fusion, although I wasn't one of them). Back when I was in graduate school, the plasma faculty in my group had a running joke known as the Universal Constant of Fusion: "Break-even plasma fusion is twenty years away". They said it in 1951 in the days of Project Matterhorn. They said it in 1991, when I was a graduate student. A viable fusion reactor was always twenty years away. Well, somewhere in the early-to-mid 90s, the U.S. government got tired of it, and started kicking around cutting back its R&D funding in fusion way back, like by half or more, and in response the major fusion players in the country formed a committee to address the matter, and they delivered a number of their findings at the American Physical Society divisional meeting one year. Among the questions they committed to answer was, "how many years before we _really_ have break-even fusion?"

The panel confidently proclaimed, "Thirty years." I am not making this up.

After over 40 years of research and billions of dollars already invested after having been told all this time that the Universal Constant of Fusion is twenty years, our most prominent physicists went to the agencies who fund this stuff and told them that *now* they needed thirty.

A government-funding agent might listen to that proclamation and decide to call it a negative return on investment. And the reduction in funding that followed suggests that's exactly what they decided.

Yes, the US still funds fusion research, and they're even shelling out a few ducats to contribute to ITER. But the US probably figures that once the Europeans can prove viability, a few enterprising Americans will figure out how to make a buck off of it without the US government needing to buy in.

Good luck, work hard, and stay away from drugs.

Answer 2

As other answers have pointed out, achieving economically useful fusion poses problems that are very difficult to solve. The US had a well funded fusion program until the mid 80's. When it was decided to create SDI or star wars, many of the fusions programs were cut, not just to get the money but so the plasma physicists needed to work on the exotic laser weapons would be available. When star wars was abandon in favor of conventional missile interception programs, the funds for fusion was not restored to the previous level. In the intervening period many physicist retired or went on to other things and few new fusion scientist were trained, so we have a diminished capability even if more money would become available.

Answer 3

Actually, I think the first bit of funding given to he Manhattan Project was a few thousand dollars and eventually totaled maybe in the millions. Anyway, that's not the answer you're looking for. The real answer to your question is: politics. Like the late author Robert Heinlein said : "politics, from the Greek poly meaning many and tick meaning blood sucking parasite."
Exxon/Mobil last year had profits in the billions of dollars--not only income, but a clear profit in the billions of dollars. Do you really think they want to lose their way of making money? It is more cost effective to invest a little bit of money into finding more sources of the same types of energy fuels than it is to invest HUGE amounts into maybe only possibly getting a return on the investment. That's just not good for business. And, no matter who has been elected, good business means big business and that means influencing policy changes--or a lack of policy changes-- and funding.
And, personally for whoever out there that may care, I completely agree with you. Fusion power would be great to get to happen inside a reactor of a power plant instead of just inside a modern day fusion bomb. Not just fusion power either. We realised the potential of energy yields from fission and or fusion reactions thanks to Einstein's E=mc^2. Well, let's also try to realise the potential energy yields from the work Einstein did that won him the Nobel Prize: the photoelectric effect. Let's turn the Sun's fusion energy into a source of power on a large scale instead of just for things like solar water heaters or solar lights for the walk up to your house.

Answer 4

because we don't know enough about physics to make it work actually its more like contain it the fear is that if we start a fusion reaction we won't be able to control it as it would consume everything if its not kept in check, fusion is a sustaining reaction and once its turned on you can't just stop it it must consume. The power of the sun on earth is not something you can just fire up like starting your lawn mower. If you'll read some of Oppenhimer's notes from the manhattan project you'll see that those scientist were scared they would create a sustaining chain reaction that would destroy the universe. Fusion could actually do just that, read on black holes and the collapse of stars.

Answer 5

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Answer 6

The problem isn't creating fusion, it's controlling it.

The temperatures that one must reach and maintain are so high that any materials would melt away, so they've had to devise systems of magnetic containment to handle temperatures in the millions of degrees.

Lawrence Livermore Lab has been doing research on this for about 40 years as far as I know.

Answer 7

They're building that in France, and it will take several years still. We'll probably see some news once they start producing some results. But its huge project involving EU, Russia, Japan, Korea, US and others. I think it is because countries are awary of taking on all the expense, technical challeges. I'd also rather see countries corporate and not see single super power hide technology from everyone else. You can see timeline of their construction deadlines on web. I think the reactor is going into operation before 2020.

Answer 8

A LOT more time and resources have gone into fusion
research than ever went into making nuclear bombs
or energy successful and so far there has been little or
no success from all the research into fusion...