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Welcome to our Physics lesson on Thermonuclear Reactions and their Use in Technology, this is the ninth lesson of our suite of physics lessons covering the topic of Nuclear Reactions, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional physics learning resources below this lesson.
As explained earlier, fusion - as a merging process that occurs between two light nuclei - is a process that results in release of energy, as the sum of energies contained in every single nucleus involved in this process is greater than the energy of the daughter nucleus after fusion. However, these reactions cannot occur spontaneously; nuclei involved in a fusion process need a high amount of kinetic energy (we know that heat is related to the average kinetic energy of particles involved in a process). On the other hand, heat is directly proportional to temperature of objects or particles, so the temperature during a fusion process must be very high. That's why such reactions are known as thermonuclear reactions, as they cannot occur in low or normal temperature.
An example of thermonuclear reaction is the hydrogen bomb, in which the kinetic energy of light nuclei that merge with each other is ensured by means of high temperature produced by an adjacent nuclear bomb that explodes in advance.
Thermonuclear reaction processes are regarded as powerful producers of energy. From all possible fusion reactions, the reaction between deuterium (H-2) and tritium (H-3) has resulted as the most productive so far. The only drawback in this process is that it is very complicated, i.e. it is very difficult to create the suitable conditions for the reaction to take place.
Since the mass of individual nuclei when taken together is greater that the mass of merged nucleus, there is a release of energy in the environment during the fusion process as the extra mass converts to energy. As explained earlier, fusion is very common in bright stars, including the Sun. This process results in the release of high amounts of energy in the form of EM radiation (and heat obviously, but heat itself is IR radiation).
There is a considerable amount of deuterium available on Earth. It is estimated that nearly 1/5000 of all hydrogen atoms in oceans are deuterium isotopes. In total, there are 1018 kilograms of deuterium on Earth, practically an inexhaustible source of this material considering the actual demands for energy. However, the drawback consists on ensuring the necessary tritium, because it is a radioactive material that has a relatively long half-life (about 10 years). Hence, the tritium natural reserves are not sufficient and therefore, it must be produced though industrial methods in some way. The following reaction is commonly used for this purpose:
You have reached the end of Physics lesson 20.4.9 Thermonuclear Reactions and their Use in Technology. There are 11 lessons in this physics tutorial covering Nuclear Reactions, you can access all the lessons from this tutorial below.
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