12 | MANE ENERGY | MARCH 2018
fusion power
MAY BEGIN
heating homes
in ONLY 20 years
There are 35 nations currently working together on developing the technology necessary to generate power from fusion reactions. The group has been working in France on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (Iter) and recently announced that it is now 50% complete.The team of scientists and engineers are expecting to produce the first plasma in the reactor in December 2025.
The plasma in the reactor’s core will be generated by the same process that fuels the sun – atomic fusion. This means that atoms will be fusing
together instead of splitting apart as in a traditional nuclear reactor. The difficulty will be how to contain the enormous temperatures that will reach hundreds of millions degrees Celsius within the core.
It is now believed that homes may begin to receive power from nuclear reactors by 2040 - originally planned for 2030. In just over years we may have one of the cleanest, safest and most abundant forms of energy powering our homes. Read more about fusion power in our previous issue - read more here.
Which UK community will say yes to nuclear waste?
The search has begun to locate a community which is willing to store nuclear waste underground. For years the government has been looking for a site with the right geology and a willing community to host the highly radioactive waste for thousands of years, the last effort in 2013 was rejected by the Cumbria county council, the final local authority in the running. Therefore ministers have relaunched the search, a £1m a year incentive is being offered to the host community.