Curiosities: How to create an artificial sun
In a tokamak, to start the process, a shot of deuterium and tritium is injected in the torus or vacuum vessel
Did you know that the core temperature of the sun is about 15 million degrees Celsius and its massive mass creates a gravitational pull which is approximately 28 times that on Earth?
These two conditions enable the sun’s hydrogen atoms to fuse into helium emitting heat in the process.
But how are similar conditions created on Earth?
In a tokamak, to start the process, a shot of deuterium and tritium is injected in the torus or vacuum vessel.
The fuel mixture is heated up by a series of ohmic heating, neutral beam injections and radio frequency heating just like in a microwave.
Once the temperature is high enough, plasma is created.
Superconducting electromagnets assembled around the tokamak are switched on to create a powerful magnetic field that compresses the charged plasma particles, causing them to spin in circles following a helical path around the reactor.
The pressure on the plasma is large enough to cause the plasma particles to come so close together so that they collide and fusion occurs.
The neutrons, which are a product of the reaction, have no charge and so are uncontrollable.
They hit the water-cooled blankets lining the vacuum vessel, transferring their kinetic energy into heat which is eventually used in a conventional power plant to raise steam for a turbine and generate electricity.