Basically they use huge magnets to hold the fuel in the middle so it doesn't melt the sides of the container and loose too much heat.
Powerful lasers are used to heat up the Hydrogen fuel. (deuterium and tritium)
Nuclear Reactors
Current nuclear reactors:
-
Current Nuclear power reactors (Generation 3) use about 1% of the available energy.
-
Their waste lasts for in the order of 250,000 years.
Fast Breeder and Thorium nuclear reactors:
-
Fast Breeder, Thorium and other variations can use about 99% of the available energy.
-
There waste lasts mainly in the order of centuries, about 600 years for a lot of it.
-
They are also capable of using up most of the current waste from Gen 3 power stations.
-
We don't have them because they are harder to build, more expensive and there are still some technical details to solve, some involving safety.
Generation 4 reactor general description. Read more..
Currently there are 4 operating, 2 under construction and another 18 or so that were operating. Read more...
Fusion Reactor
For the first time (in about 50 years) a human made fusion reactor actualy made a power gain. Up until recently, its taken more energy to make the reaction happen than energy gotten back. see... and Nature journal
Australia: Its thought that it will take 15 years at least to get a Gen 3 nuclear power station running in Australia. That gets us to about 2030. That's about when it's thought that Gen 4 reactors will become economically viable. And possibly by 2050, fusion reactors may come on line.
So why bother building a Gen 3?
Link to page..