A source acquainted with the project verified to AWN that US researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California successfully achieved a nuclear fusion event that resulted in a net energy gain for the first time ever.
Tuesday’s official announcement of the discovery is anticipated from the US Department of Energy.
The experiment’s outcome would be a significant milestone in the long-term goal to release an endless source of renewable energy that may help end dependence on fossil fuels. Nuclear fusion, the process that drives the sun, has been replicated by researchers for decades.
According to a statement sent by the department on Sunday, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will reveal a “significant scientific discovery” on Tuesday. The Financial Times broke the news of the discovery first.
When two or more atoms combine to form one larger atom, this process is known as nuclear fusion, which releases a tremendous quantity of heat energy. It does not produce long-lived radioactive waste, in contrast to nuclear fission, which generates electricity throughout the world.
Researchers from all across the world have been edging closer to the discovery while employing various strategies to do so.
The National Ignition Facility project uses “thermonuclear inertial fusion” to produce energy from nuclear fusion. In actuality, US researchers use a system of over 200 lasers to discharge pellets containing hydrogen fuel, which results in a succession of extremely quick explosions that happen 50 times per second.
The heat created when the energy from the neutrons and alpha particles is removed is the key to creating energy.
Tony Roulstone, a fusion specialist from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, told AWN that they control the fusion reaction by pelting the outside with lasers. “They warm the environment, which produces a shockwave.”
The amount of energy gained via nuclear fusion is significant, but it is far less than what is required to run electric grids and heat buildings.
According to Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London, it takes roughly as long to boil 10 kettles of water. “We need to make a higher increase in energy — we need it to be significantly more — in order to turn that into a power station.”
To achieve the same goal, scientists in the UK are using a tokamak, a massive device with a donut-like form that is equipped with enormous magnets. The lost mass is converted into a huge amount of energy. The neutrons’ kinetic energy is converted to heat when they strike a “blanket” covering the tokamak’s walls after managing to leave the plasma. It is possible to use this heat to warm water, produce steam, and turn turbines to produce electricity.
The device that starts the reaction must endure intense heat. At least 150 million degrees Celsius, or ten times as hot as the sun’s core, must be reached by the plasma.
Last year, researchers in the Oxford area were able to produce a record-breaking amount of sustained energy. The duration was only 5 seconds, though.
The end outcome is the same whether magnets are used or lasers are used to fire pellets: heat sustained by the process of fusing the atoms together holds the key to helping produce energy.
The main difficulty in using fusion energy is maintaining it for a long enough period of time to power global electric grids and heating systems.
According to Chittenden and Roulstone, fusion researchers from all over the world must now seek to both scale up their programmes considerably and reduce their costs. Years of additional research will be required to make it commercially feasible.
For each experiment, we currently invest a significant amount of time and resources, according to Chittenden. “We need to significantly reduce the cost.”
The new chapter in nuclear fusion, according to Chittenden, is “a truly breakthrough moment that is incredibly thrilling.”
According to Roulstone, there is ample evidence that additional research is required before fusion can be used to produce power on a large scale.
According to the “opposing argument,” this result is far from the actual energy increase needed to produce electricity. Therefore, while being a long way from producing useful energy, we may declare that this is a scientific triumph.
