| In
laboratory experiments, the fusion reaction that is
least difficult to achieve is that between a deuterium
and a tritium nucleus, because it is the one that occurs
at relatively lower temperatures, as is evident from
the various reaction probabilities as shown in Figure
1. However, several fusion reactions are possible between
the lightest of nuclei, namely hydrogen (H) and its
isotopes (Deuterium (D) and Tritium (T) with one and
two extra neutrons respectively) isotope of helium,
He3 or even boron (B), Lithium (Li) and so on.. Some
of these reactions and their products are shown in Figure
3.
Unlike in the Sun, where particles
are tightly bound together by the enormous gravitational
pull of the huge mass of the Sun, on earth, it takes
enormous effort to keep the charged particles together
(note that like charges repel). This is the major area
of fusion research - that of confinement, i.e., how
to maintain a plasma of large enough density of
Deuterium and Tritium at a high enough temperature for
a sufficiently long time so that the particles fuse
and produce net energy, larger than that required to
produce and hold the plasma in the first place. |