PHYS 1061 Lecture Notes - Lecture 40: Nuclear Fission Product
Document Summary
Lecture - 40: practically none: not like radioactive fission products, building stable nuclei (like 4he) Maybe our voices would be higher : tritium is the only radioactive substance. Energy is low, half-life short: not much worry here: extra neutrons can tag onto local metal nuclei (in surrounding structure) and become radioactive. But this is a small effect, especially compared to fission: why don"t we embrace fusion, then, believe me, we would if we could, it"s a huge technological challenge, always 50 years from fruition. Must confine plasma at 50 million degrees!! All the while providing fuel flow, heat extraction, tritium supply, etc. Hurdles in plasma dynamics: turbulence, etc: still pursued, but with decreased enthusiasm, increased skepticism. But man, the payoff is huge: clean, unlimited energy: fusion successes, fusion has been accomplished in labs, in big plasma machines called tokamaks. Got ~6 mw out of princeton tokamak in 1993.
