Speaker
Francesco Pegoraro
(Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa)
Description
The ultimate aim of the ongoing research effort into thermonuclear fusion is to bring processes similar to those that keep stars alight down to the scale of a power station. At fixed ”burned” mass, thermonuclear fusion produces approximately ten mil- lion times more energy than that produced by chemical reactions. Thermonu- clear fusion can thus be expected to provide, on a time scale of a few decades, an answer to the world’s energy needs which are expected to continue to grow at an increasingly faster rate. However, before addressing the design of a power station based on thermonuclear fusion, a number of physical and technological problems must be addressed and resolved.
In this presentation I shall briefly discuss the nature of these challenges and stress that solving them requires a well aimed and rapidly progressing research effort in different fields that range from plasma physics to material science.
Author
Francesco Pegoraro
(Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa)
