Fusion shows progress – Peak Oil
Fusion energy experiments at Lawrence Livermore Labs have finally produced more energy than they consumed, a huge step forward in turning fusion into a viable source of energy.
The researchers, led by physicist Omar Hurricane, described the achievement as important but said much more work is needed before fusion can become a viable energy source. Hurricane said that the reaction did not produce self-heating nuclear fusion, known as ignition, that would be needed for any fusion power plant.
Researchers have faced daunting scientific and engineering challenges in trying to develop nuclear fusion – the process that powers stars including our sun – for use by humankind.
“Really for the first time anywhere, we’ve gotten more energy out of this fuel than was put into the fuel. And that’s quite unique. And that’s kind of a major turning point, in a lot of our minds,” Hurricane told reporters.
“I think a lot of people are jazzed.”
Ignition is needed to make fusion energy a viable alternative energy source, but has yet to be achieved1. A key step on the way to ignition is to have the energy generated through fusion reactions in an inertially confined fusion plasma exceed the amount of energy deposited into the deuterium–tritium fusion fuel and hotspot during the implosion process, resulting in a fuel gain greater than unity. Here we report the achievement of fusion fuel gains exceeding unity on the US National Ignition Facility using a ‘high-foot’ implosion method2, 3, which is a manipulation of the laser pulse shape in a way that reduces instability in the implosion. These experiments show an order-of-magnitude improvement in yield performance over past deuterium–tritium implosion experiments. We also see a significant contribution to the yield from α-particle self-heating and evidence for the ‘bootstrapping’ required to accelerate the deuterium–tritium fusion burn to eventually ‘run away’ and ignite.