PEA-SIZE POWER: Within this cylinder lies the pea-size NIF fusion fuel capsule.
Image: COURTESY OF LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
Federal researchers are slowly testing 192 lasers that they hope will set off the world's first controlled nuclear fusion reaction.
The lasers are housed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a $4 billion complex the size of three football fields that is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.
The facility's construction was completed this spring with tests directing more than a megajoule of energy at a target (a megajoule is the energy consumed by 10,000 100-watt light bulbs in a second). Now researchers are preparing for a first use of its full capabilities next year, when the battery of lasers will be trained on a small pellet of fuel in hopes of igniting it to trigger a brief but powerful fusion reaction.
While commercially operating nuclear fission reactors provide power -- and a host of controversy over weapons use and waste disposal -- nuclear fusion is a different process. A sustained string of uncontrolled fusion reactions can be used for military purposes such as a hydrogen bomb, and since the 1950s, scientists have chased controlled fusion reactions for potential civilian purposes.
NIF will offer them new opportunities to study the process in a laboratory setting.
Preparation for the big experiment next year involves gradually running the lasers at higher intensities. The team is wary of moving too fast for fear of seeing a dramatic flop like the one that happened with a similar project in Switzerland in September 2008.
The Large Hadron Collider, a massive European facility that runs similar experiments on superheated matter, was sidelined by engineering problems just days after it opened.
So the facility's scientists are working cautiously. "We don't want to break the world's biggest laser in its first month of operation," NIF researcher Mordecai Rosen said in an interview yesterday at the American Chemical Society's annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
Late next year, Rosen said, the full power of the lasers will be trained on a fuel capsule the size of a pea. The resultant implosion is expected to generate 10 times as much energy as was used to power the machines.
Rosen said the facility will provide new opportunities for astrophysicists to study the stars and other matter, and for nuclear scientists to run experiments that could eventually lead to fusion power production. Some classified work related to the U.S. nuclear stockpile will also be done there, according to Tom D'Agostino, administrator of the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration, which runs the lab.
One unique element of the Livermore facility is that it provides a view into the behavior of hot, highly pressurized matter, whereas the Large Hadron Collider works with heat but not high density.
Rosen likens the NIF apparatus to a giant microwave with a baked potato inside.
Next year, the microwave will be heated to 3 million degrees. What happens to the potato remains to be seen.
Reprinted from Greenwire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500
See what we're tweeting about
6 Comments
Add CommentFor more than 4 decades, I have been waiting for a piece of news of this kind -- the first controlled nuclear fusion reaction on earth. I sincerely hope that NIF's test next year will be a great success.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMore international funds ought to be pooled to intensify such research to bring about cheap and clean energy for the ultimate benefit of mankind.
This is a hugely inaccurate and misleading article showing no understanding of the underlying science. Controlled fusion reactions are routinely achieved on a daily basis, and have been for decades, in the dozens of tokamaks and other magnetic confinement fusion devices world wide. Neither is this the first inertial confinement experiment. Comparisons with the LHC are also wildly off, particularly when considering the far more relevant ITER fusion project which has more than half the world's population represented.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm with adlhancock, I'm afriad. Controlled Nuclear fusion has been around for decades, and trumpeting this as the solution to energy promlems is premature in the extreme.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven ITER, which is a much more mature technology for which we have already completed vast programs of research and testing to ensure that extracting energy is both possible and efficent.
Putting this up against the LHC is also questionable - fair enough your point is that the LHC had troubles and these guys are being careful to try an minimise their risks. But large projects like these are reliant on so many tiny, hairline things being perfect that problems are -always- going to occur on some level.
In other news, Good luck to the teams involved and I will continue to watch the progress of these experiments. The results can and will affect us all.
so having just heard of this program, where can i find out how this has progressed since the above comments appear to be from contributors well informed on the general field in september 09 hows it lookin' in may 1o
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissonorakis is an aussie - hop that explains the time lapse...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGentlemen ... Fusion is possible NOW, and no I have not been smoking!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUsing the known technology of Heavy Ion Fusion - the accelerator - it is possible and could be built in ten years to be producing 20 to 35 GWe!
This was first demonstrated in the 1950's and shown viable on a commercial scale in the 70's to 90's. At the 18th HIF Symposium in Germany August 30 the world will glimpse what it has been missing.
Go to www.fusionpowercorporation.com for an early education.
It would be worth your while too. As to magnetic confinement, z pinch, and laser fusion ... probably will never happen. Cold fusion a novelty, and compression and induction fusion are not stable, they too are far into the future, if at all. But HIF is known and is here TODAY! HIF was shelved because it was too big then but now that is what the world needs (and the DOD wanted to keep LLNL alive).
Check it out.
California Hal