A succinct summary of the significant challenges to nuclear fusion as a power source.
When I studied plasma physics as a graduate student 35 years ago, plasma confinement and instabilities were the main challenges being investigated. At that time research was nowhere near close to addressing the materials challenges for a working fusion reactor.
My physics mentor Prof Bruce Liley said at that time, stability would likely just be a matter of scaling the reactor to be large enough. That might turn out to be true. In the meantime the significant materials challenges remain. When a plasma is hot enough to smash nuclei together, and fuse them, any solid structures even several metres away with be subject to intense ablation. The “wall” of such reactor will constantly be eroded and have to be replaced frequently. This replacement will have to be done by robots, because of the radioactivity emitted from any remaining material due to intense neutron bombardment. Every component near the reactor will have to somehow keep working as it’s being attacked by energetic neutrons. We can’t confine neutrons with a magnetic field because they have no charge.
That’s not to say that it can’t be done, but it remains a very significant challenge. It also means it’s not going to be anywhere near as cheap an energy source as we have by capturing Solar photons from the big fusion reactor in the sky that nature has already created for us.
[#]PlasmaPhysics #fusion #TheGuardian
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jan/22/nuclear-fusion-its-time-for-a-reality-check
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