Reply To: would nuclear energy really be accessible to all?

[Ferret]

So where’s the nuclear fusion in the solar part? 🙂 I’m afraid I fail to see it.

Actually I’m really curious how solar-driven nuclear fusion can be achieved. A straightforward approach wouldn’t work: bombarding a target of anything with solar radiation would heat it to at most 5600 K, which is the Sun’s temperature and the solar radiation’s temperature too. Concentrating it would not help – the same maximum temperature holds. Yet I would not say it’s impossible to do it.

One way to achieve solar nuclear fusion would be to concentrate solar radiation on a laser. The laser radiation can next be used to achieve nuclear fusion.

Another would be to attempt to do inertial confinement on a fuel pellet with concentrated solar radiation. That way the bet would not go on the heating only.

The fact is solar radiation has a lot of energy and having a way to drive nuclear fusion with it could be very useful.

Any other ideas? Maybe some practical ones? Mine are not very practical, I would say.