What are the pros and cons of nuclear fusion? Harnessing, rather than unleashing, that inherent power will require self-sustaining, controlled "break-even" fusion. Humankind has already witnessed the power of thermonuclear bombs, which produce effectively an uncontrolled release of fusion energy. That's the scale of the task scientists are tackling – as well as keeping the whole thing under tight control. On Earth atmospheric pressure is roughly 1 bar, the interior of a fusion reactor will need to reach 150 million degrees Celsius – 10 times hotter than the Sun's core. Overcoming that innate repulsion happens in the Sun's core because it is under immense pressure of gravity as well as heat – around 15 million degrees Celsius and 265 billion bar of pressure. But forcing two nuclei together is difficult because they're both positively charged, so they strongly repel one another. That’s what happens in the Sun's core, where hydrogen atoms fuse to produce helium and energy. "Thermo" here simply means heat, because that method relies on achieving fusion via extremely high temperatures. There are several theoretical methods to attain fusion, but the one most exciting the modern scientific community is thermonuclear fusion. Eager scientists have pursued the harnessing of nuclear fusion's power-generating capacity for almost three-quarters of a century –the UK Atomic Energy Authority patented a fusion reactor in 1946 – but without reliable success. Each reaction releases energy, which can be harnessed for destruction – the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 were fission, but fusion was behind the second-generation "H-bomb" and can generate vast amounts of power. In fission, the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei in fusion, two or more nuclei combine. There are two types of nuclear power: fission and fusion.
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