Engineers develop 7 cutting-edge technologies to double solar cell efficiency?

　　Energy Technology:

　　Scientists and engineers are developing a series of new technologies that may seem slim but have the potential to completely solve the energy crisis.

　　Using originally dangerous nuclear waste as fuel, a nuclear fission reactor is built - it is first driven by a laser to produce a nuclear fusion explosion, and then the explosion triggers a fission reaction, thereby producing a new energy; and a new device can convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into fuel, replacing gasoline.

　　A magnet that will revolutionize refrigeration machines and a memory alloy that can reduce automobile fuel consumption will significantly improve energy efficiency.

　　Perhaps there is only a 10% chance that these new technologies will ultimately succeed, but if any of them become a reality, energy efficiency and safety levels will be greatly improved.

　　Many people are researching how to use renewable energy more effectively and how to improve energy efficiency, which is great. However, most research results may only be some limited improvements to existing technical equipment. We need to fundamentally change the status quo of energy development and utilization.

　　Over the years, scientists and engineers have imagined wonderful pictures for us: in space, satellites absorb the energy of sunlight and then transmit the energy beam back to receiving stations on the ground; wind turbines floating in the atmosphere... However, Fantasy always has to be implemented into reality. Significant government and private funding has recently been invested in these studies to aid the development of a variety of long-term technologies in key areas. The projects described next are examples of the ones most likely to pay off. That is, of course, if their inventors can overcome the hurdles and eventually bring their scientific achievements into mass production.

　　new reactor

　　Fission triggered by fusion

　　Using lasers to extract electricity from nuclear waste

　　New reactor triggers fission with fusion

　　In nature, the sun's light and heat come from nuclear fusion; the energy of hydrogen bombs also comes from nuclear fusion. Physicists and engineers have also been working for decades on how to generate electricity through nuclear fusion. Now, researchers can easily create controllable nuclear fusion reactions—just slam hydrogen nuclei together hard enough and they will fuse, releasing neutrons and energy. However, for nuclear fusion to be used to generate electricity, it must be made more efficient so that the energy released by the reaction is greater than the energy required to trigger the reaction (called ignition), a conundrum in the scientific community.

　　Therefore, scientists at the National Ignition Facility (National Ignition Facility) of the Livermore National Laboratory in the United States have designed a new solution: using nuclear fusion to drive fission, and using the energy generated by the splitting of atoms to drive traditional nuclear reactors. Edward Moses, director of the laboratory, claims that experimental specialties operating using this mechanism are expected to be built within 20 years.

　　According to the concept of Livermore Laboratory, a thick layer of uranium or other nuclear fuel is first discharged on the inner wall of a reaction chamber, and then laser pulses are used to trigger a nuclear fusion explosion in the reaction chamber, and the emitted neutrons bombard the particles on the inner wall. After nuclear fuel is released, the atoms in it will split. This can increase the energy output of the reaction chamber by a factor of three or more.

　　The concept of peaceful use of nuclear fusion-driven fission dates back to the 1950s. At that time, Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, first proposed this idea.

　　Since most of the energy still comes from fission, why not continue to use traditional specialties, but bother to study the triggering by fusion? The reason is that fission reactors rely on a chain reaction, in which the neutrons released by fissioning atoms trigger the fission of more atoms. To keep the chain reaction going, it must be fueled by plutonium or enriched uranium, both of which can be used to produce nuclear weapons.

　　The fusion-fission hybrid reactor triggers the fission reaction by the neutrons produced by the fusion explosion, and there is no need to maintain the chain reaction. This design expands the range of nuclear fuel options that can be used, including unenriched uranium, depleted uranium (a rich source of waste after enriched uranium is used), and even waste from other nuclear reactors - waste that would otherwise have to be stored After thousands of years, or requiring complex and dangerous reprocessing, it can be reused as fuel for fission power plants.

　　Another reason is burnup. In a conventional nuclear reactor, only a small fraction of the fissile atoms fission occurs before the fuel must be replaced. Moses said that fusion-fission reactors can consume 90% of nuclear fuel. Therefore, its fuel requirements may be only 1/20 of those of ordinary fission reactors. The reactor has a lifespan of about 50 years, the last decade of which is called the incineration phase, during which the electrical output gradually decreases. Even so, it can consume about 2,500 kilograms of long-half-life nuclear waste down to just About 100kg left.

　　At the same time, researchers are also working on fusion-fission designs based on magnetron fusion, which is another way of controlled nuclear fusion that uses ultra-strong magnetic fields to constrain the fusion reaction. In 2009, scientists from the University of Texas at Austin proposed a hybrid reactor design with a compact magnetron fusion trigger device. Chinese researchers are also evaluating designs for optimizing energy generation, traditional nuclear reactor fuel production, and using nuclear waste to generate electricity.

　　Using nuclear fusion to generate energy in any form is a very forward-thinking idea. Even if Moses' lab successfully achieves ignition this year, some major technical obstacles to this special hybrid remain. For example, tiny, finely machined fusion targets must be mass-produced at an acceptable cost; a series of untested new technologies are also needed to ensure an ignition frequency of 10 times per second (currently the National Ignition Facility fires 10 times a day). The number of times I hit the target was very small).

　　Building a hybrid reactor also requires technologies that are not used in pure fusion devices. Specifically, the fission fuel layer, which contains fuel that can withstand much higher temperatures and much more violent neutron bombardment than in traditional nuclear reactors. Candidate designs range from solid multi-layered pebble-like nuclear fuel to liquid molten salts containing thorium, uranium or plutonium.

　　This is undoubtedly a huge challenge, but Moses has envisioned an ambitious research and development route to achieve this goal. Although, the first task of their laboratory must still prove that laser nuclear fusion can ignite successfully.

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