On August 8, 2021, 192 laser beams pumped power far more than the entire U.S. grid into a tiny gold capsule, and for a fraction of a second, I lit a fire. The same thermonuclear flame that powers thesun.
Fusion power experiments conducted by the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, are explored in detail in three new papers. One of them is published in Physical Review Letters and Two papers published in Physical Review E — Seen in , researchers claim to have achieved "ignition". } Fusion is achievable. But definitions of what constitutes "ignition" vary, and no matter how it is defined, the 2021 results suggest that, despite producing very large amounts of energy, a practical fusion reactor could is still a long way off.
Nuclear fusion involves the fusion of two elements, usually isotopes of hydrogen, into the heavier element helium. It releases vast amounts of energy in a process that powers stars like the Sun.
Fusion power plants use only hydrogen from water as fuel, Produces abundant energy by producing helium as a waste product without the risk of down or radiation. This is in contrast to nuclear fission, a type of reaction in modern nuclear power plants that splits the nuclei of heavy elements like uranium to produce energy.
Fusion reactions occur in the Sun, and uncontrolled fusion occurs in thermonuclear weapon detonations, but controlling sustained fusion reactions to produce electrical power has been around for decades. , has avoided nuclear engineers. Experiments of various designs have been able to produce fusion reactions in very short times, but the energy released from a fusion reaction has the power to produce and sustain that reaction. It never reached an "ignition" greater than the amount of energy required to fire it.
What is nuclear fusion?
The team at the National Ignition Facility and the author of his paper, one of his three new papers, argue that: Allows high energy gain potential. So, fusion started with cold hydrogen fuel and the reaction magnified to produce far more power than previous experiments.
An experiment on August 8, 2021 required 1.9 megajoules of energy in the form of an ultraviolet laser to induce fusion reactions in small frozen pellets of hydrogen isotopes. Energy, or approximately 70% of the energy put into the experiment. In other words, its output was over 1,000 trillion watts of power, even though it was only released for a fraction of a second.
"The record-breaking shot is a major scientific breakthrough in fusion research, demonstrating that laboratory fusion ignition is possible at NIF," said Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Omar Hurricane }, lead scientist for the inertial confinement fusion program, said in a statement. "Achieving the conditions necessary for ignition is a long-standing goal of all inertial confinement fusion research, opening access to new experimental regimes in which alpha-particle self-heating exceeds all cooling mechanisms in fusion plasmas.
Subsequent attempts to reproduce the experiment produced much less output energy, mostly in the range of 400 to 700 kilojoules, with some researchers suggesting that the National Ignition According to a report by the news division of thejournal Nature, suggesting the facility's experimental design is a technical impasse.
"I think they should stop calling it a success," Steven Bodner, a physicist and former US Naval Research Laboratory laser fusion researcher, told Nature. .
The National Ignition Facility cost him $3.5 billion, more than $2 billion more than expected and behind schedule, and researchers initially suspected that ignition would not be possible using this design. We were aiming for 2012 as a deadline to prove it was possible.
The new research suggests that, unlike other fusion researchers, the researchers at this facility are not primarily focused on developing fusion power plants, but rather on developing better fusion power plants. It suggests that researchers are willing to continue exploring the National Ignition Facility's capabilities because of its emphasis on the development of a thermonuclear weapon understanding.
"We are operating in a regime that no researcher has had access to since the end of nuclear testing," said Dr. Hurricane. , is a great opportunity to expand our knowledge.”
