I was just thinking about how deuterium and tritium are charged particles and so I couldn't help but wonder why we don't use the same process used in the LHC(electromagnetic fields to accelerate particles) for nuclear fusion?
[Physics] Nuclear fusion using electromagnetic fields
fusionlarge-hadron-collider
Best Answer
Oh, but we do! I'm assuming you mean using the fields to simply collide particles with each other, right? Then that's already being done. For example, take this neat little machine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor This one runs on the exact same principle you described (though I'm not quite familiar with the inner workings of the LHC).
For energy generation, most current approaches to nuclear fusion here in Europe heat up those exact particles to high temperatures, making them collide into each other due to their high kinetic energies, and then use magnetic fields to steer the particles (en masse in the form of plasma) to keep it confined, to keep it from running into the walls, damaging them and cooling themselves down. It's really hard to execute in practice for now, but we're getting there with projects like JET and ITER. Here you go for some further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_confinement_fusion