Nuclear Fusion – Power for the Future?

The demand for energy is rising faster than the population growth rate. The vast majority of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuel. This cannot continue indefinitely as oil reserves are finite, and Global Warming means we may face a serious food shortage if the climate changes radically.

Renewables are providing only a few percent of the energy for the world and almost all renewable with the exception of hydroelectric dams, are “in addition” to power stations and not “instead of” power stations and so cannot be relied upon for “base-load” energy supply continuously.Nuclear fission has contributed a significant amount to the base-load supply, but there are issues with this technology, and so researchers are examining using Nuclear Fusion. The talk will cover this world energy issue and then move on to showing what Nuclear Fusion is, and how it is being researched using the machines in the UK (JET) and the latest machine in France (ITER).