Misael Macedo , The answer is, it doesn't work, or at least not efficiently.
The common fuel used in nuclear fusion experiments are Deuterium, Tritium and in some cases expensive Helium 3. When combinations of these atoms fuse they release relatively large amounts of energy compared to chemical and even fission reactions.
Actually carrying out fusion is not difficult, with a few thousand dollars and the right knowledge anyone can do it, but it's not efficient, i.e. the amount of energy required to fuse an atom is far more than we get back i.e. "bad business".
The typical approach is to create a high temperature plasma in high vacuum, which in itself is a contradiction. Further heating of the plasma is achieved using cryogenically cooled superconducting magnets, which is another contradiction.
The current thinking is that bigger is better and if these projects just get enough funding, we will have unlimited and almost free energy...
ITER is currently the worlds biggest fusion experiment and has cost 65 Billion to date (original estimate 6B), and as of today I have personally done more fusion than ITER. Solar panels currently cost less than 65 cents per kWh so one might wonder if Europe would have been better off with 100 TWh of solar panels instead ?
Fusion is a deep rabbit hole....
According to the IAEA and other sources, nuclear fusion is a process in which two nuclei of light atoms, usually hydrogen and its isotopes (deuterium and tritium), join together to form a heavier nucleus. In this process, a large amount of energy is released.
To understand it better, let's imagine that we want to emulate the reactions that occur inside the Sun or in any other star. In the Sun, uranium atoms are not fissioned (broken) as in nuclear fission reactors, but hydrogen atoms are fused (joined) to form helium. However, recreating these processes in a laboratory presents enormous technological challenges.
The main obstacles lie in the electrostatic repulsion forces of the nuclei. Unlike on the Sun, where gravity and high temperatures keep the fusion fuel (hydrogen isotopes) confined, on Earth, we must heat the fuel to extremely high temperatures, on the order of 150 million degrees Celsius. Additionally, it needs to be kept at high pressure for long enough for the nuclei to fuse. The most feasible fusion reaction with current technology is between deuterium (D) and tritium (T).
In short, nuclear fusion is a promising process that could provide clean, nearly unlimited energy, but we still face significant challenges before we can fully harness it.
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