How does Tokamak work and how can it produce so much energy?

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How does Tokamak work and how can it produce so much energy?

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For elements lighter than iron, nuclear fusion (two atoms of one or more elements combining to create an atom of a heavier element) releases vast amounts of energy. This is in fact the process which powers the sun. In the sun, gravitational attraction compresses and heats hydrogen plasma sufficiently to develop the conditions under which it will fuse into helium, creating the energy release. Here on earth, we don’t have such immense gravity available, so we have to artificially create the conditions which will allow nuclear fusion to occur, and we do that by increasing the temperature. When hydrogen gas gets hot enough, its electrons are stripped and it becomes ionized. We call this ionized gas a plasma, and because it carries charge, it can be measured by its electric field, and steered using magnetic fields. This magnetic steering is what dictates the shape of a Tokamak reactor, because the plasma is at millions of degrees, and can’t be permitted to touch the reactor walls or it would melt them, so very strong magnetic fields are used to confine the plasma to a toroidal shape within the reactor. The extremely high energy plasma allows fusion reactions to occur, and the energy released is then theoretically used for power generation in the same way as any other power plant (e.g. running steam through turbines connected to electrical generators).