A star is built: New Zealand's first nuclear fusion reactor takes shape

 

Newshub

 

A star is built: New Zealand's first nuclear fusion reactor takes shape

Story by Finn Hogan

 

01 April 2024

Long considered the holy grail of energy generation, these Kiwi scientists are turning the dream of nuclear fusion into reality.© Newshub.

 

One of the most ambitious science projects ever attempted in New Zealand is underway as Kiwi scientists from Wellington-based Openstar Technologies race to develop a nuclear fusion reactor, harnessing the power of our sun here on Earth.

Unlike traditional nuclear fission, which splits atoms apart, fusion combines them together. The process has multiple benefits: it does not produce the same hazardous waste, primarily uses a fuel derived from seawater, cannot cause a meltdown and does not facilitate the creation of nuclear weapons.

 

 

While there are plenty of upsides, they come with a catch.

"One of the reasons why it's safe is related to the reason it's so hard," Openstar CEO Ratu Mataira told Newshub. 

"We have to get this plasma insanely hot to do anything. It's a very small amount of something at very high temperatures… basically if anything goes wrong, it just cools down immediately."

Scientists have been attempting to create commercial nuclear fusion for decades, with the promise of cheap, clean and abundant energy a potential game-changer for both the climate and geopolitics.

"I grew up in the '70s in the US and we had gas shortages at the time and it was very clear that those shortages led to global instability," said Darren Garnier, Director of Plasma Science.

"Being able to have energy independence, being able to produce energy anywhere, not just because it comes out of the ground somewhere. I think it will fundamentally restructure society." 

 

Related video: Could AI and fusion be the answer to the EU's debate over nuclear energy? (Straight Arrow News)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGREfqqQvds

 

And while being 'nuclear free' is deeply baked into our culture, Mataira believes fusion isn't against our identity, it's actually in our blood. If Openstar is successful, New Zealanders will be leading a nuclear power revolution that an iconic Kiwi began.

"I think people can tell the difference between what our country rejected, and what we're building here," says Mataira.

"We're already a world leader in this. Sir Ernest Rutherford is on our $100 dollar bill because he was the father of experimental nuclear physics, he was the first person to split the atom. He ran the lab where the first fusion was done. The types of things we fuse, deuterium and tritium, were named by him. Kiwis were here at the start, we'll be here at the end."

 

Openstar aims to have commercial fusion power on our grid by 2030 - as Maui did in myth, capturing the power of the sun, for the good of all.

 

어니스트 러더퍼드

Ernest Rutherford, Baron Rutherford of Nelson

(1871~1937)  

뉴질랜드 브라이트워터에서 태어난 영국 핵물리학자로서 핵물리학의 아버지로 불린다.

 

뉴질랜드 출생, 영국의 화학자이자 물리학자

British physicist (born in New Zealand) 

who discovered the atomic nucleus and proposed a nuclear model of the atom

방사능 및 원자핵을 실험적으로 연구하여 알파선에 의한 질소 원자핵의 인공 파괴에 성공. 

원자핵물리학의 아버지라 불림. 

노벨상 수상.(1871~1937)

In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 

"for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances."

 

nuclear fusion reactor  핵융합로

핵융합반응 시 발생하는 에너지를 이용해 전력생산이나 과학적 연구, 기술개발 등을 목적으로 개발하고 있는 원자로.

핵융합이란 두 개의 가벼운 원자핵이 하나의 무거운 원자핵으로 결합하면서 막대한 양의 에너지를 방출하는 핵반응이다. 이는 태양의 에너지원으로도 잘 알려져 있다.

태양을 포함하여 대부분의 항성에서 일어나는 핵융합반응은 수소원자를 중수소(Deuterium) 또는 삼중수소(Tritium)로 융합하고, 이들을 헬륨 원자로 융합시키는 연속적인 핵융합반응이다.

 

New Zealand one-hundred-dollar note

New_Zealand_one_hundred-dollar_banknote,_Series_7

Reserve Bank of New Zealand - Original publication: The Reserve Bank issued this banknote in May 2016 as part of its Series 7 banknotes. The image in question was published on Flickr by the Bank designed for use for educational, informational or illustrative purposes. 

 

$100 Note – Sir Ernest RutherfordAwarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1908 due to his work on the disintegration of elements, Rutherford remains an enduring part of scientific history and a true Kiwi icon

 

The New Zealand one-hundred-dollar note is a New Zealand banknote. It is issued by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and since 1999 has been a polymer banknote. It was first issued on 10 July 1967 when New Zealand decimalised its currency, changing from the New Zealand pound to the New Zealand dollar. The note originally had an image of Queen Elizabeth II on the front; since 1992 it has had an image of Ernest Rutherford.

 

Ernest Rutherford

 

Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM, PRS, HonFRSE (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. Rutherford has been described as "the father of nuclear physics", and "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday". In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances."

 

He was the first Oceanian Nobel laureate, and the first to perform the awarded work in Canada.

Rutherford's discoveries include the concept of radioactive half-life, the radioactive element radon, and the differentiation and naming of alpha and beta radiation. Together with Thomas Royds, Rutherford is credited with proving that alpha radiation is composed of helium nuclei. In 1911, he theorized that atoms have their charge concentrated in a very small nucleus. This was done through his discovery and interpretation of Rutherford scattering during the gold foil experiment performed by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, resulting in his conception of the Rutherford model of the atom. In 1917, he performed the first artificially-induced nuclear reaction by conducting experiments where nitrogen nuclei were bombarded with alpha particles. As a result, he discovered the emission of a subatomic particle which he initially called the "hydrogen atom", but later (more accurately) named the proton.  He is also credited with developing the atomic numbering system alongside Henry Moseley. His other achievements include advancing the fields of radio communications and ultrasound technology.

 

Rutherford became Director of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in 1919. Under his leadership, the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932. In the same year, the first controlled experiment to split the nucleus was performed by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, working under his direction. In honour of his scientific advancements, Rutherford was recognised as a Baron in the peerages of New Zealand and Britain. After his death in 1937, he was buried in Westminster Abbey near Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton. The chemical element rutherfordium (104Rf) was named after him in 1997.

Early life and education

Ernest Rutherford was born on 30 August 1871 in Brightwater, a town near Nelson, New Zealand. He was the fourth of twelve children of James Rutherford, an immigrant farmer and mechanic from Perth, Scotland, and his wife Martha Thompson, a schoolteacher from Hornchurch, England. Rutherford's birth certificate was mistakenly written as 'Earnest'. He was known by his family as Ern.

 

When Rutherford was five he moved to Foxhill and attended Foxhill School. At age 11 in 1883, the Rutherford family moved to Havelock, a town in the Marlborough Sounds. The move was made to be closer to the a flax mill the father was operating near the Ruapaka Stream.  Ernest studied at Havelock School.

 

 

Personal life and death

The young Rutherford made his grandmother a wooden potato masher, which was believed to have been made during the school holidays. It has been held in the collection of the Royal Society since 1888.

 

In 1900, Rutherford married Mary Georgina Newton (1876–1954),] to whom he had become engaged before leaving New Zealand, at St Paul's Anglican Church, Papanui in Christchurch. They had one daughter, Eileen Mary (1901–1930), who married the physicist Ralph Fowler. Rutherford's hobbies included golf and motoring.

 

For some time before his death, Rutherford had a small hernia, which he neglected to have fixed, and it became strangulated, rendering him violently ill. Despite an emergency operation in London, he died four days afterwards, at Cambridge on 19 October 1937 at age 66, of what physicians termed "intestinal paralysis". After cremation at Golders Green Crematorium,  he was given the high honour of burial in Westminster Abbey, near Isaac Newton and other illustrious British scientists such as Charles Darwin.

Legacy

Statue_of_Ernest_Rutherford

A statue of a young Ernest Rutherford at his memorial in Brightwater, New Zealand.

 

Rutherford is considered to be among the greatest scientists in history. At the opening session of the 1938 Indian Science Congress, which Rutherford had been expected to preside over before his death, astrophysicist James Jeans spoke in his place and deemed him "one of the greatest scientists of all time", saying:

In his flair for the right line of approach to a problem, as well as in the simple directness of his methods of attack, [Rutherford] often reminds us of Faraday, but he had two great advantages which Faraday did not possess, first, exuberant bodily health and energy, and second, the opportunity and capacity to direct a band of enthusiastic co-workers. Great though Faraday's output of work was, it seems to me that to match Rutherford's work in quantity as well as in quality, we must go back to Newton. In some respects he was more fortunate than Newton. Rutherford was ever the happy warrior – happy in his work, happy in its outcome, and happy in its human contacts.

Nuclear physics

Rutherford is known as "the father of nuclear physics" because his research, and work done under him as laboratory director, established the nuclear structure of the atom and the essential nature of radioactive decay as a nuclear process.[8][78][30] Patrick Blackett, a research fellow working under Rutherford, using natural alpha particles, demonstrated induced nuclear transmutation. Later, Rutherford's team, using protons from an accelerator, demonstrated artificially-induced nuclear reactions and transmutation.

 

Rutherford died too early to see Leó Szilárd's idea of controlled nuclear chain reactions come into being. However, a speech of Rutherford's about his artificially-induced transmutation in lithium, printed in the 12 September 1933 issue of The Times, was reported by Szilárd to have been his inspiration for thinking of the possibility of a controlled energy-producing nuclear chain reaction.

 

Rutherford's speech touched on the 1932 work of his students John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton in "splitting" lithium into alpha particles by bombardment with protons from a particle accelerator they had constructed. Rutherford realised that the energy released from the split lithium atoms was enormous, but he also realised that the energy needed for the accelerator, and its essential inefficiency in splitting atoms in this fashion, made the project an impossibility as a practical source of energy (accelerator-induced fission of light elements remains too inefficient to be used in this way, even today). Rutherford's speech in part, read:

We might in these processes obtain very much more energy than the proton supplied, but on the average we could not expect to obtain energy in this way. It was a very poor and inefficient way of producing energy, and anyone who looked for a source of power in the transformation of the atoms was talking moonshine. But the subject was scientifically interesting because it gave insight into the atoms.

The element rutherfordium, Rf, Z=104, was named in honour of Rutherford in 1997.