[Update: Confirmed] Unlimited* Powaaa! – Scientists achieve net positive nuclear fusion reaction
Well, it appears it has been confirmed by the Department of Energy,
QuoteOn Tuesday, the US Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed information that had leaked out earlier this week: its National Ignition Facility had reached a new milestone, releasing significantly more fusion energy than was supplied by the lasers that triggered the fusion. "Monday, December 5, 2022 was an important day in science," said Jill Hruby, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration. "Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering, and experimentation."
QuoteIn terms of specifics, the lasers of the National Ignition Facility deposited 2.05 megajoules into their target in that experiment. Measurements of the energy released afterward indicate that the resulting fusion reactions set loose 3.15 megajoules, a factor of roughly 1.5. That's the highest output-to-input ratio yet achieved in a fusion experiment.
Although there is a bit of a snag here, it appears that the lasers that produced the 2 MJ, used about 300MJ.
QuoteAs we noted above, the 3 MJ released in this experiment is a big step up from the amount of energy deposited in the target by the National Ignition Facility's lasers. But it's an enormous step down from the 300 MJ or so of grid power that was needed to get the lasers to fire in the first place.
But many speakers emphasized that the facility was built with once-state-of-the-art technology that's now over 30 years old. And, given its purpose of testing conditions for nuclear weapons, keeping power use low wasn't one of the design goals. "The laser wasn't designed to be efficient," said Herrmann, "the laser was designed to give us as much juice as possible to make these incredible conditions happen in the laboratory."
However she noted
QuoteTammy Ma leads the DOE's Inertial Fusion Energy Institutional Initiative, which is designed to explore its possible use for electricity generation. She estimated that simply switching to current laser technology would immediately knock 20 percent off the energy use. She also mentioned that these lasers could fire far more regularly than the existing hardware at the National Ignition Facility.
And there are a host of other issues with Intertial Confinement.
QuoteKim Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, mentioned the other barriers. "This is one igniting capsule one time," Budil said. "To realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things; you have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute. And you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that." Drivers like consistent manufacturing of the targets, hardware that can survive repeated neutron exposures, and so on.
Therefore, despite the fact that laser-driven fusion has achieved significant energy milestones, a long list of issues still need to be resolved before it can be commercialised. An alternate strategy, magnetic confinement in tokamaks, is considered to primarily deal with difficulties of scale and magnetic field intensity and, as a result, to be considerably closer to commercialisation.
Quote"There's a lot of commonalities between the two where we can learn from each other," Ma said optimistically. "There's burning plasma physics, material science, reactor engineering, and we're very supportive of each other in this community. A win for either inertial or magnetic confinement is a win for all of us." But another speaker noted that magnetic confinement works at much lower densities than laser-driven fusion, so not all of the physics would apply.
But Ma also suggested that, for laser-driven fusion to thrive, it may need to break away from its past in weapons testing. "Where we are right now is at a divergent point," she said. "We've been very lucky to be able to leverage the work that the National Nuclear Security Administration has done for inertial confinement fusion. But if we want to get serious about [using it for energy production], we need to figure out what an integrated system looks like... and what we need for a power plant. It has to be simple, it has to be high volume, it needs to be robust." None of those things had been required for the weapons work.
My thoughts
So while this has indeed confirmed that there was indeed a net positive energy output, this is only in relation to the power outputted by the lasers. Furthermore, it appears the NIF is having some difficulty reproducing what happened here, so yea. But there is hope that this milestone will be able to be carried forth to more efficient designs and bring commercial reactors. Although it is certainly some time away, this has certainly reduced the time that we will be waiting. Until it happens though, I seriously hope that governments start investing not only in fusion but fission and other renewables as well.
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