A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and other stars: heavy hydrogen atoms collide with enough force that they fuse together to form a helium atom, releasing large amounts of energy as a by-product. Once the hydrogen plasma “ignites”, the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating.
Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity.
If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible. No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of.
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In this latest milestone at the LLNL, researchers recorded an energy yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) during only a few nanoseconds. For reference, one MJ is the kinetic energy of a one tonne mass moving at 100mph.
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In the experiments performed to reach this ignition result, researchers heat and compress a central “hot spot” of deuterium-tritium (hydrogen atoms with one and two neutrons, respectively) fuel using a surrounding dense piston also made from deuterium-tritium, creating a super hot, super pressurized hydrogen plasma.
“Ignition occurs when the heating from absorption of α particles [two protons and two neutrons tightly bound together] created in the fusion process overcomes the loss mechanisms in the system for a duration of time,” said the authors in a paper publishing the results in the journal Physical Review E.
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Source: Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition
Robin Edgar
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