r/fusion • u/ValuableDesigner1111 • 14h ago

Princeton UniversityEconomical Proton-Boron11 Fusion Cancelled

arpa-e.energy.gov

24 Upvotes

13 comments

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Nuclear Fusion

r/fusion

Discussion and news on advancements in the field of nuclear fusion energy and related technologies.

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Nuclear Fusion on Reddit

Focused on advancements in the field of nuclear fusion.

Submissions should be related to nuclear fusion or plasma physics as currently understood by the scientific community.

Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei collide together at a very high speed and form a new nucleus. For light elements like hydrogen or helium the fused nucleus weights less than the sum of the original nucleus. The missing mass is released as energy in accordance with Einstein's mass-energy equivalence equations. Fusion is the process that powers active or "main sequence" stars.

Primer on fusion power

Current mainstream approaches include:

Magnetic confinement, used in tokamak, spheromak and stellarator designs
Inertial confinement, used at the National Ignition Facility
Electrostatic confinement, used by the fusor and Polywell devices
Magnetized target fusion and Magneto-Inertial fusion, hybrid approaches used by General Fusion and Helion Energy