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Nuclear fusion scientists attempt to re-create the reactions which take place in the heart of the stars. The goal is to generate almost unlimited amounts of clean, cheap electricity solving, in one go, the world’s energy problems.

To date, it’s a dream which has proven expensive as well as discouraging, in the words of one fusion pioneer. Many scientists are looking to the international thermonuclear experimental reactor which was given the go-ahead in Paris on the 21st of November 06. The goal of this project is to prove fusion skeptics wrong by demonstrating that nuclear fusion is at least possible. The project will cost 10 billion Euro and will be built in France near Marseille.

In the mid 1970s scientists assured everyone that by the time their generation’s children grew up, nuclear fusion would be a reality. Unfortunately this reality has not been realized as yet. There have been various nuclear fusion projects on the table since the early 1980s.

Fusion power can actually be seen in action at an experimental laboratory in Oxfordshire, England. These boffins have built the prototype for the machine which is to be built in France.

In Oxfordshire, there are constant experiments on how to make fusion work and how to do better. It is the most successful fusion reactor known to the general media. So far, the scientists have spent 50 years trying to make nuclear fusion work. Billions of pounds have been sunk into various projects which, as yet, have not provided us with the answer.

Fusion power is attractive because it requires none of the mining and processing of uranium required by conventional fission power and the nuclear waste which that generates. Whilst the sun is one big constant fusion reaction, unfortunately it is very difficult to produce a fusion reaction here on earth.

Earthbound fusion requires temperatures of 100 million celcius which is 10 times hotter than the sun. To keep everything in equilibrium and to avoid a disastrous meltdown, magnetic fields must be generated which are 10 thousand times stronger than the earth’s own magnetic field. However, even with these seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the scientists are more positive now than they have been for many years. Now they tell us that the biggest problems they are facing are engineering problems as opposed to theoretical problems.

We still face tens of years of research and development into fusion power and even then we may still not know whether the technology is possible. The French project will take ten years to construct and there will then follow a period of 20 years of experimentation in order to simply find out whether nuclear fusion is viable.

As today’s carbon based fuels begin to run out there are many who are putting their faith in nuclear fusion as a global solution. There is an awful lot of time, energy and money which is going to be ploughed into what is essentially a gigantic experiment.

I cannot help but wonder what we could achieve if the same resources were ploughed into existing alternative energy research and development.

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