Nuclear Fusion

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2014

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars. In the 1920s physicists predicted that it might be possible to generate huge amounts of energy by fusing atomic nuclei together, a reaction requiring enormous temperatures and pressures. Today we know that this complex reaction is what keeps the Sun shining. Scientists have achieved fusion in the laboratory and in nuclear weapons; today it is seen as a likely future source of limitless and clean energy.

Guests:

Philippa Browning, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Manchester

Steve Cowley, Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

Justin Wark, Professor of Physics and fellow of Trinity College at the University of Oxford

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:43.2	UK slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program.
0:47.0	Hello we'll be talking about nuclear fusion. If you crash together two nuclei of
0:52.2	hydrogen with enough force you create a helium atom, a spare neutron and a great deal of energy.
0:58.0	This is nuclear fusion.
1:00.0	And you get an idea of just how much energy it produces when you consider that it's the physical
1:04.1	process that powers the sun. Nuclear fusion is a meeting point between research into atomic
1:09.6	physics, astronomy, magnetic fields and material science.
1:13.0	Scientists understand the physics of fusion well enough to make it happen in a laboratory,
1:18.0	but doing so involves heating gases to temperatures of more than 200 million degrees centigrade.
1:24.0	Enthusiasts for fusion say that it can make it,
1:27.0	that if we can make it work efficiently, it will provide as much clean, cheap energy
1:30.0	as we will ever need.
1:32.0	But putting the theory into practice turns out to be
1:34.0	extremely difficult. With me to discuss nuclear fusion now, Justin Walk, Professor
	...

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