Puzzle Description:

Energy Source: Fusion - The sun is a huge fusion reactor, pumping out 100 million times as much energy in a single second as the entire population of Earth uses in a year!

#1: Teresa K (fasstar) on Jun 30, 2011 [SPOILER]

From an engineering website:

Human-engineered fusion has already been demonstrated on a small scale. The challenges facing the engineering community are to find ways to scale up the fusion process to commercial proportions, in an efficient, economical, and environmentally benign way.

A major demonstration of fusion’s potential will soon be built in southern France. Called ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), the test facility is a joint research project of the United States, the European Union, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, and India. Designed to reach a power level of 500 megawatts, ITER will be the first fusion experiment to produce long pulse of energy release on a significant scale.
While other approaches to fusion are being studied, the most advanced involves using magnetic forces to hold the fusion ingredients together. ITER will use this magnetic confinement method in a device known as a tokamak, where the fuels are injected into and confined in a vacuum chamber and heated to temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees. Under those conditions the fusion fuels become a gas-like form of electrically charge matter known as a plasma. (Its electric charge is what allows confinement by magnetic forces.)

ITER will test the ability of magnetic confinement to hold the plasma in place at high-enough temperatures and density for a long-enough time for the fusion reaction to take place.
Construction of ITER is scheduled to start by 2009, with plasma to be first produced in 2016, and generation of 500 megawatts of thermal energy by 2025. (It will not convert this heat to electricity, however.) Among ITER’s prime purposes will be identifying strategies for addressing various technical and safety issues that engineers will have to overcome to make fusion viable as a large-scale energy provider.

Read more about ITER here: http://www.iter.org/

Did you know that the lithium in your laptop battery could theoretically supply electricity for a household for 15 years? This is just a theory right now, but lithium could someday be the critical element for producing power from nuclear fusion, which is the energy source for the sun and for hydrogen bombs. Power plants based on lithium and hydrogen could in principle provide a major sustainable source of clean energy in the future.

At this time though, scientists have not yet been able to contain a fusion reaction long enough for there to be a net energy gain.

can't wait for this advancement....and not ALL those window like things....cool sun T, has an Aztecy flavor :)

Fantastic image and thx for the interesting facts.Who knows what the future holds for mankind but certain things look promising and give me hope for a better world for Destyny to grow up in.I love your puzzles Teresa,you are extremely talented.Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

To anyone who thought this image represented solar energy: You are absolutely correct. However, I have previously published and entire series devoted just to solar power, and I thought another power plant diagram would be too boring. So Mr. Sun can double as a symbol for both solar energy and fusion.

Very nice, Teresa. I love the sun! It's part of so much of our lives.

true enuf Lilly, we'd be dead without it

excellent excellent puzzle... and a reminder: if you want to colonize the sun, go at night...

Fantastic image! Thanks

:-D @ Al

I like the moderate smile

It's the smug smile of power. :-)

there are others, in Washington, who have that same smile

Very nice sun and interesting comments

lovely image!

Awesome! Thanks Teresa!

A fun puzzle, Teresa. Very elaborate and decorative.

another superb puzzle!

(a sad LOL, Tom! :-/)

Great fun. Rewarding solve.

Takes a lot of concentration, with no guessing. Quite a nice image.

Goto next topic

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