Fusion

The Sun - Fusion ticking over nicely	I.T.E.R. - A planned international fusion reactor.

If some smaller nuclei fuse together then energy may be released. The binding energy of the products is greater than the reactants.

The advantages of fusion over fission are:

• The raw materials are in plentiful supply. It is virtually renewable.
• Any radioactive products have very short half lives

The problem with nuclear fusion is that we have not actually managed to generate a great deal of electricity from it yet. The main problem is that the nuclei involved repel each other and so to get them to merge they need to collide at very high speeds. This means very high temperatures are needed.

Fusion reactors which have been built involve heating hydrogen until it is stripped of its electrons ( a plasma) contained in a "magnetic bottle", i.e. using very strong magnetic fields to contain the super hot charged particles. Success so far has been limited though billions of pounds are being invested into research into commercial fusion by many governments.