The NIF's lasers blast a tiny pellet containing isotopes of hydrogen to trigger fusion reactions.
Image: Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab.
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After an unsuccessful campaign to demonstrate the principles of a futuristic fusion power plant, the world’s most powerful laser facility is set to change course and emphasize its nuclear weapons research.
For the past six years, scientists and engineers at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) have been working flat out to focus 192 laser beams on a gold-lined ‘hohlraum’ capsule, just a few millimeters long, containing a pellet of hydrogen isotopes. As 500 terawatts of laser power hits the capsule, it generates X-rays that blast into the pellet, causing the atoms of deuterium and tritium inside to fuse. The fusion converts a tiny amount of their mass into a burst of energy (see ‘The NIF’s fusion strategy’).
The goal of the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) is reflected in its name: ‘ignition’, in which the fusion reaction generates as much energy as the lasers supply. Success, NIF officials say, could pave the way to developing a power plant that would implode nearly 1,000 pellets a minute (see Nature 483, 133–134; 2012). But unexpected technical problems left the NIF well short of its goal when the campaign finally ended in September.
Now federal officials and the US Congress are preparing to set a new direction for the US$3.5-billion facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. A series of reports commissioned by the government, Congress and the University of California, which administers the lab, are all due later this month. They are expected to outline plans to cut its time for ignition research from 80% to 50% and to give the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is responsible for maintaining the US nuclear arsenal, a more central role in determining the NIF’s priorities. The NNSA is planning to emphasize experiments that mimic conditions inside nuclear weapons, generating data to validate the computer codes used to check that the nation’s warheads remain viable — essential work, given the voluntary moratorium on underground testing that began in 1992.
Nobody has given up on ignition, declares Donald Cook, deputy administrator for defense programs at the NNSA. But a new program for generating net energy will take a slower, more methodical approach. “We’re now going to get right into the science of what issues are preventing ignition and work through them,” he says. “But we believe that’s going to take a fair amount of work.”
Significant progress has already been made towards ignition, according to physicist Robert Byer at Stanford University in California, who is leading the University of California’s review of the NIF. “The laser itself has been quite remarkable,” he says. One shot can deliver 1.85 megajoules of energy, roughly what the lab originally promised. The instruments used to study the pellet are also performing well, he says.
Yet on the basis of data obtained from the imploding pellets, researchers think that they are still far from reaching the conditions necessary for ignition. One problem seems to be that too much of the laser light is scattering back out of the capsule. Another is that the pellet is being squeezed asymmetrically, which lowers the pressure at its center. The asymmetry also causes the isotopes to mix unevenly, lowering the temperature in the pellet. “Nature pushes back: that’s my shorthand version of what’s going on,” Byer says.
Nature isn’t the only one pushing back — the NIF’s funders in Congress also want answers. “We’re disappointed,” says one congressional staff member, who spoke to Nature only on condition on anonymity. Critics say that the lab’s enthusiastic promotion of the idea that laser fusion could generate electrical power led many in Congress to believe that they were funding an energy project, when in fact laser fusion is decades from producing electricity. “The lab overemphasized and oversold the energy aspect of the NIF, at the expense of the very important and successful work it was doing in stockpile stewardship and basic science,” says a senior scientist familiar with the NIF program.
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20 Comments
Add CommentThe federal government should sue those who sold this expensive goat rodeo to congress for damages, and censure all those in congress who were involved in its approval - at least!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo much for Nuclear Non-Proliferation; this is direct violation of that treaty. If we can't respect international law, maybe they should back off Iran now. Pssht. Yeah right.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone needs a reminder: as long as the science was conducted correctly, experiments are always successful and beneficial, whatever their outcome. No one is saying the science was done badly, only that the results didn't confirm what was hoped for. This is still progress, just not "magic bullet" progress.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI only hope now that the US might put a little more emphasis on the ITER project so that it might move forward a little faster. All parties involved in ITER need to get past all-too-human bureaucratic nonsense and get moving. Ignition is still a worth pursuit, but the tokamak is a more likely candidate for sustainable fusion in the long run.
You are 100% wrong. The US stockpile stewardship programs are explicitly designed to NOT run afoul of nonproliferation treaties. If the nuclear stockpile we have is not a credible deterrent, it's worthless. If you don't think there is a reason for a nuclear detention, then I am truly amazed at the heights to which ignorance reaches.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's awful magnanimous of you, rationalizing wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer's hard earned tax 'revenue'. I can see how the researchers and perhaps 'basic science' benefited from the negative results, but how did this advance the nation's ability to meet its energy requirements with clean energy? How else did the general public benefit? Was it worth the enormous investment?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, it appears that this might have been a national nuclear security 'wolf in sheep's clothing' all along...
Argh...mobile fat-fingering and autocorrect. That "detention" should be "deterrent", of course.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe chief purpose of the National Ignition Facility has always been national security (stockpile stewardship). Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't been paying attention.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat a load of Bull. Like the DOE has spent over $4 billion on this not-even-remotely-close to a viable commercial energy source when they won't spend $10 million on real viable fast-trak fusion projects that are supported by the #1 experts on REAL commercial fusion energy. The World's #1 authority on commercial Fusion power - Robert Bussard - concluded that the best route is polywell IEC fusion. So they get $2m/yr in funding from the US Navy along with a total GAG order forbidding release of all information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe DOE won't even spend more than $150M/yr on the international fusion effort - ITER. So there is NOT-A-CHANCE-IN-HELL NIF had ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with commercial Fusion Energy. The truth is that the primary goal is to develop pure fusion weapons, by learning how to duplicate fusion ignition with EMP pulses:
www.tfd.chalmers.se/~valeri/Mars/nukes.html
www.ieer.org/reports/fusion/fusn-toc.html
Here is an example of a REAL PRACTICAL Fusion project, funded by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen, that doesn't get ONE PENNY of funding from the criminal, Big Oil sycophants namely the federal gov't:
nextbigfuture.com/2012/10/tri-alpha-energy-nuclear-fusion-100mw.html
But the federal & state governments can afford to throw away 100's of $billions on nutty renewable energy scams, that will never amount to a hill of beans.
Robert Bussard explains the reality of fusion energy:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this".. We told the DoD from the beginning that the real program would cost about 150-200M..since the DoD has no charter to do such work, the political realities were that a big DoD program would attract the ire and power of the DoE to kill it, it was never funded beyond about 1/8 the level required.
So we did what we could and finally DID prove the physics and associated engineering physics constraints, scaling laws.. at 1/8-1/10 scale..same 200 M we have quoted to the DoD since the beginning.."
"..Yes, we would like to build the demo plant, and yes, it will cost about 150 (DD) to 200 M (pB11), and who knows if any investor singly or a group can or will come up with the money. One of the biggest obstacle is the world-wide tokamak lobby, which perpetuates the fraud that Hirsch, Trivelpiece and I foisted on the country in the 1970's when we started the big tokamak ball rolling.
Magnetic confinement fusion is a misnomer, as magnetic fields can NOT confine a plasma, only constrain its motion towards walls. The entire history of the MagConf program has been to reduce transport to neo-classical (not turbulent or instability-driven) losses. And THEN the machines are all inherently and inevitably huge and cost too much and make too much power to ever be economically useful --- as the utilities have been telling the AEC/DoE for 30 years. No matter, the global tokamak program provides jobs for hundreds of thousands of people in many countries, and is a safe place to put political pork funding, simply because it IS NO THREAT TO OIL - it won't ever work, but it sounds good to the untutored public.. "
"..As for energy companies "stampeding" to support us - It is clear that a view like this is ignorant of the reality of energy companies. There is only one thing the oil companies want, and that is to sell oil, and more oil. So long as the fields pump, the oil companies will squeeze. They have NO, absolutely NO interest in anything new, ins spite of all their foolish ads in magazines for wind mills and solar-PV roofs. It is all just show and tell. I know these guys, and there is no way they would support anything that might get in the way of oil. The only way to stop oil, from their view, is when it does run out. And then they''ll go for deeper drilling, new fields, Gulf geopressure gas, LNG, etc, etc, and keep raising the price, until finally foolish solar and windmills become competitive.."
www.askmar.com/Robert%20Bussard/1995-6-6%20Letter%20to%20Congress.pdf
Meeting the World’s Energy Challenge …
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRF Accelerator Driven Heavy Ion Fusion
There is a solution to the ‘energy need’ for the world and the US without generating green house gases or nuclear fission radioactive problems.
It is Heavy Ion Fusion (HIF) as developed in the late 1970's at Argonne National Lab under the Department of Defense (DOD).
You never heard of it, ... right, few people have, ... as HIF was set aside by the US DOD (& DOE) in favor of lasers.
Fusion was first suggested as a potential power source in the late 1920’s. The first fusion reaction on earth was demonstrated in 1952. Then shown potentially doable in a small size, in 1976-9, at Argonne National Lab and Hughes Lab. Since then it has been endorsed for 36 years by the scientific community "as the conservative way to go" to develop fusion as an energy generation source … but never funded, as it was and is still BIG (expensive, prolific and “benign”). In 1980, the world did not need a BIG new carbon fee source of energy, as it does now. Fusion cannot be done small and be economical.
The science has been done and it now is an engineering process. Fusion Power Corporation's SPRFD applies known and existing technologies, in unique and innovative ways, to provide the energy necessary for fusion to occur.
ARPA-E has encouraged FPC to write a full project proposal on ignition simulation for fusion, a $10,000,000 proposal, which FPC has done; FOA 0670-4536.
FPC’s SPRFD facility can produce per day, 500,000 bls of a carbon neutral synthetic liquid fuel (diesel-kerosene-gasoline), 15+ GW electric, and 2000+ ac/ft of potable water from sea water, all with no GHGs, no highly radioactive waste and no potential for a “run-away” nuclear meltdown, and all located where it is needed. FPC can also be eligible for carbon credits.
HIF is the ONLY practical answer for non-proliferation of atomic weapons and, may be the real way to world peace … non-aggression for national energy supplies and national security.
By 2050, fusion will be the source of most of the world’s energy. This is not wishful thinking, it is simply a way of stating that all other forms of energy that are based on the use of finite fossil fuel sources must decline . This decline will provide a major impetus for the rapid increase in the utilization of this new form of energy. Wind, solar, and bio fuels, are only “feel good solutions” of “We are doing something to solve the problem!”, when they have little possibility of generating the 14 TW needed in the next 40 years.
www.fusionpowercorporation.com
Really need to look at single Pass RF Driver as presented at Berkeley's "Accelerators for Heavy Ion Fusion Conference last year. SPRFD was presented by Dr. R J Burke and really makes sense. It is doable with current known technologies ... not more research.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave your eyes opened at www.fusionpowercorporation.com
I can't help wondering, where we would all be, had a fraction of these resources been invested into LENR research. No doubt we would understand this phenomenon now, for the benefit of all. Instead we are all left wondering if LENR has any reality at all, even as units are being constructed and demonstrated, without the comfort of scientific grounding. GK
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this...and queue in all the fusion quacks. I didn't bother reading but I'm betting someone will rant about cold fusion or Paul Allen's pet projects.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are a lot of fusion quacks, and a whole lot more of renewable energy quacks, and even more them that medical treatment quacks. However, if you bothered to do any reading on Tri-Alpha Energy, and you admit you haven't, you would know Paul Allen's is not one of them. In the real world an intelligent person, can separate the wheat from the chaff, but you admit to be incapable of doing that, so I hate to think what medical treatment you endear, given that for every rational science based treatment, there are probably a hundred quack treatments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, by far and away the highest level of quackery is in Wind & Solar energy, and other renewable fantasies, that unlike fusion, get over a $trillion in funding already although they haven't done zip, not even reduced emissions, some would argue have increased emissions. A total waste of money with no realistic future - not that is QUACKERY SUPREME.
Tri Alpha is a good medical isotope project but not an energy production (like electricity) facility. For an energy production form of Fusion learn more at www.fusionpowercorporation.com site. Few people have ever heard of RF Accelerator Driven Fusion. It was shown doable in the late '70's by research that was done at Argonne National Lab.!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTri Alpha is a good medical isotope project but not an energy production (like electricity) facility. For an energy production form of Fusion learn more at www.fusionpowercorporation.com site. Few people have ever heard of RF Accelerator Driven Fusion. It was shown doable in the late '70's by research that was done at Argonne National Lab.!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBull, you don't know ZIP about Tri-Alpha Energy and I checked out your link and just a bunch of hype about Fusion and ZIP for any tech info on their project. I ain't gonna bloody register for junk mail just so I can read tech data on a fusion method. Get some results first, do the long hard work and save the hype, propaganda & bull. I'm suspicious that a large portion of these Rossi style Fusion SCAMs are being promoted by Big Oil which just loves Bait-and-Switch SCAMs like Wind & Solar, Carbon Capture, Agro-fuels and Hydrogen economy as a brilliant and extraordinarily successful strategy to divert precious capital, resources, talent, media and political effort away from PRACTICAL, REALISTIC Energy Solutions. So far your RF Accelerator special is looking pretty much like it fits very well in Big Oil's disinformation program.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's sad - all the comments seething to assign blame and to disparage others when there is really only thing that matters: the achievement of sustainable fusion by any and all feasible means. This objective is so important, and would impart such a colossal boon to humankind, that we must all tolerate as many honest and well-conducted missteps as have and will come and *still* keep on funding it until it comes to be.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI will not condemn any approach unless the scientific community as a whole views it to be specious. If any approach is deemed to have merit - even if there is some disagreement and discussion about it - let it have its chance. Thinking out of the box (but within the laws of physics as we know them) should be encouraged and supported. Like anyone, I have my bets on certain horses, but I want to see a well-populated race.
It is a lame research weapon instead of fusion power to supply mankind energy needs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is still a hope, aneutronic fusion can be the ultimate endless source of clean and safe energy. http://youtu.be/ro5-QYqqxzM
Look at You Tube "StarPower for Tomorrow" and Google Tech Talk "Heavy Ion Fusion".
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