Nuclear fusion

Arati Prabhakar, Marvin Adams and US secretary of energy, Jennifer Granholm, discuss the. 02:01.

Dr Mark Wenman, a reader in nuclear materials at Imperial College London, called the achievement a “fantastic scientific breakthrough – something we have not achieved in 70 years of trying”. “I understand that everyone wants to think of this as being the great solution to the energy crisis. However, the obstacles to be overcome to make anything like a commercial reactor are huge, and must not be underestimated.” The ones used in the US experiment cost tens of thousands of dollars, but for a viable power plant, they would need to cost pence. The implosion reaches speeds of 400km per second and causes the deuterium and tritium to fuse. The intense energy heats the container to more than 3m degrees celcius – hotter than the surface of the sun – and bathes a peppercorn-sized fuel pellet inside in X-rays.

Nuclear fusion does not rely on fossil fuels or produce harmful greenhouse gases, so could also help tackle climate change. What is nuclear fusion? Nuclear ...

It is the opposite of nuclear fission, in which heavy atoms are split apart. Widescale use of nuclear fusion could help countries The conditions required to start and maintain a fusion reaction are so extreme that it is impossible for it to run out of control. Nuclear fusion does not rely on fossil fuels like oil or gas, and produces none of the greenhouse gases which drive global warming. The lower level of radioative waste produced by the process compared with nuclear fission is also much easier to handle and store. Despite a series of promising breakthroughs in the last few years, large-scale nuclear fusion is still several years away. When two atoms of a light element such as hydrogen are heated and combine to form a single heavier element such as helium, the nuclear reaction produces massive amounts of energy which can be captured. The waste produced by nuclear fusion is less radioactive and decays much more quickly. Nuclear fusion is the process which gives the Sun its energy. Nuclear fusion breakthrough – what is it and how does it work? How does nuclear fusion work? Why is nuclear fusion so important?

The experiment involved 192 high-powered laser beams being fired at a capsule containing the elements deuterium and tritium, heating it to a temperature of ...

University of Oxford Professor Gianluca Gregori, a specialist in the kind of lasers used at the lab, stressed that the amount of energy produced was smaller than that needed to power a wall plug. "For a very short amount of time, a few billionths of a second, it exceeds the entire US power grid," he said. While the target was smaller than a pea, the lasers - part of the so-called NIF system - are powerful enough to deliver more energy than the whole power grid sustaining all of the US. "About two mega joules in, about three mega joules out - a gain of 1.5, the energy production took less time than it takes light to travel one inch." "For the first time, they designed this experiment so that the fusion fuel stayed hot enough, dense enough, and round enough for long enough that it ignited, and it produced more energy than the lasers had deposited," he said. The experiment involved 192 high-powered laser beams being fired at a capsule containing the elements deuterium and tritium, heating it to a temperature of more than three million degrees centigrade - thus briefly simulating the conditions of a star.

US researchers have announced a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough, hailing a "landmark achievement" in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power ...

The US Department of Energy described the achievement of fusion ignition as a "major scientific breakthrough" that will lead to "advancements in national defence and the future of clean power". The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California said an experiment it conducted this month "produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it". US researchers have announced a historic nuclear fusion breakthrough, hailing a "landmark achievement" in the quest for a source of unlimited, clean power and an end to reliance on fossil fuels.

Researchers in California briefly achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment using lasers.

Nuclear fusion research has been going on for 70 years and this is the first time scientists have managed to demonstrate ignition – a positive energy gain. As one helium nucleus has slightly less mass than the combination of one deuterium and one tritium nucleus, the difference in mass is released as a burst of energy. That’s about enough energy to boil a kettle to make a few cups of tea. These are used to heat the walls of a small gold can, called a hohlraum, to more than 3 million degrees Celsius, resulting in the emission of X-rays. At the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a weak laser beam is split and the energy amplified to give 192 laser beams. In brief, it involves light atoms being smashed together to produce heavier ones, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.

Researchers at the US National Ignition Facility created a reaction that made more energy than they put in.

“A result like this will bring increased interest in the progress of all types of fusion, so it should have a positive impact on fusion research in general,” says Luce. “I don’t want to give you a sense that we’re going to plug the NIF into the grid: that is definitely not how this works,” she said during a press conference in Washington DC. NIF was not designed with commercial fusion energy in mind — and many researchers doubt that laser-driven fusion will be the approach that ultimately yields fusion energy. Once the reactor starts working towards fusion, currently planned for 2035, it will aim to reach ‘burning’ stage, “where the self-heating power is the dominant source of heating”, Luce explains. Nevertheless, Campbell thinks that its latest success could boost confidence in the promise of laser fusion power and spur a programme focused on energy applications. In addition to boosting the laser’s power by around 8%, scientists reduced the number of imperfections in the target and adjusted how they delivered the laser energy to create a more spherical implosion. It took more than a decade, “but they can be commended for reaching their goal”, says Stephen Bodner, a physicist who formerly headed the laser plasma branch of the US Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. On one level, it’s about proving what is possible, and many scientists have hailed the result as a milestone in fusion science. The facility used its set of 192 lasers to deliver 2.05 megajoules of energy onto a pea-sized gold cylinder containing a frozen pellet of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium. The laser’s pulse of energy caused the capsule to collapse, reaching temperatures only seen in stars and thermonuclear weapons, and the hydrogen isotopes fused into helium, releasing additional energy and creating a cascade of fusion reactions. Ultimately, scientists scrapped efforts to replicate that shot, and rethought the experimental design — a choice that paid off last week. “It’s an incredible accomplishment,” says Mark Herrmann, the deputy programme director for fundamental weapons physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which houses the fusion laboratory.

At the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a weak laser beam is split and the energy amplified to give 192 ...

Nuclear fusion research has been going on for 70 years and this is the first time scientists have managed to demonstrate ignition – a positive energy gain. As one helium nucleus has slightly less mass than the combination of one deuterium and one tritium nucleus, the difference in mass is released as a burst of energy. That’s about enough energy to boil a kettle to make a few cups of tea. These are used to heat the walls of a small gold can, called a hohlraum, to more than 3m degrees Celsius, resulting in the emission of X-rays. At the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a weak laser beam is split and the energy amplified to give 192 laser beams. In brief, it involves light atoms being smashed together to produce heavier ones, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California confirmed the news of fusion ignition on Tuesday, marking a significant milestone towards ...

“Reaching ignition unlocks unprecedented capability to support the US Stockpile Stewardship Program, underscores US leadership in science and technology, and enables the next steps toward clean fusion energy for the future.” The process has been hailed as the “holy grail” of clean energy, as it is almost limitless, requires no fossil fuels, and leaves behind no hazardous waste. LLNL described the successful fusion ignition experiment as “one of the most significant scientific challenges ever undertaken by humanity”, with profound implications for the future of the planet.

The National Lab and Department of Energy announced a nuclear reaction that generated more energy than was required to power it -- a first for humankind.

"Now, the privately funded fusion industry will take the next steps, turning experimental results like this into a viable source of clean, safe energy," Holland told CNBC. "That is, you must show that a fusion experiment can produce more energy than it uses. The researchers at Lawrence Livermore have done this for the first time ever." [19 percent of its utility-scale electricity generation](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3) from those nuclear power plants in 2021, according to the U.S. "For the first time on Earth, scientists have confirmed a fusion energy experiment released more power than it takes to initiate, proving the physical basis for fusion energy. But it's proven extremely challenging to sustain a fusion reaction here on earth, and scientists have been trying for decades. This will lead fusion to be a safe and sustainable energy source in the near future." I think it's moving into the foreground and probably, with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant." "You have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that. "Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research, development, engineering and experimentation." [National Ignition Facility](https://lasers.llnl.gov/) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Fusion is the way that the sun makes power, but recreating a useful fusion reaction here on earth has eluded scientists for decades.

US scientists have carried out the first ever nuclear fusion experiment to achieve a net energy gain, but exactly how significant is it?

The fusion event they created lasted about 100 trillionths of a second and produced enough energy to boil about seven kettles. And is it yet sufficient to solve humanity's problem of finding a new source of energy to replace fossil fuels? But it's also important to say none of them are very close yet. And then somehow capturing that energy to convert it into electricity. It's an experimental tool whose primary function is to test atomic weapons for the US government. US scientists have carried out the first ever nuclear fusion experiment to achieve a net energy gain, but exactly how significant is it?

After 70 years of research, experts in California have for the first time proven ignition is possible.

As one helium nucleus has slightly less mass than the combination of one deuterium and one tritium nucleus, the difference in mass is released as a burst of energy. Nuclear fusion research has been going on for 70 years and this is the first time scientists have managed to demonstrate ignition – a positive energy gain. These are used to heat the walls of a small gold can, called a hohlraum, to more than 3m degrees Celsius, resulting in the emission of X-rays. At the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, a weak laser beam is split and the energy amplified to give 192 laser beams. These X-rays heat a millimetre-sized capsule within the hohlraum that contains two forms of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. In brief, it involves light atoms being smashed together to produce heavier ones, releasing vast amounts of energy in the process.

Harvard scientist Adam Cohen breaks down breakthrough that might prove major turning point in clean energy efforts — but not any time soon.

But if you look at the electrical energy that was used to drive the lasers to produce that light, that was vastly more than the energy that was released in the reaction, and if you imagine trying to build an actual power plant, then you would have to take the heat and the neutrons that were released from this reaction and use them to make steam and use that steam to power turbines. In this case, there was more energy released from the reaction than in the photons in the light that went into compressing and heating this capsule. Three megajoules of energy is about the energy you would get from eating a jelly doughnut, about 500 It’s the basis of the sun, and it’s the basis of thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs. So just to give you a sense of the scale — the energy released in this shot was about three megajoules. So, 500 kilocalories is a lot, but this is a multi-billion-dollar facility and it can fire one of these shots every eight hours. COHEN: Mass comes in discrete chunks, and if you add up the mass of a helium and the neutron that comes flying out too in this process, there’s a little bit of a difference. So the primary purpose of the facility is really for simulating the conditions in those bombs and understanding the physics there. So a little bit of the mass of the hydrogen isotopes that are getting fused together goes into energy, which comes out of this reaction. The primary purpose of the National Ignition Facility is not actually renewable energy; it’s around stockpile stewardship. And when the hydrogen isotopes fuse to make that helium nucleus in the process of them sticking to each other, that releases a lot of energy. [fusion](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough.html) with a net energy gain, the U.S.

Harvard scientist Adam Cohen breaks down breakthrough that might prove major turning point in clean energy efforts — but not any time soon.

But if you look at the electrical energy that was used to drive the lasers to produce that light, that was vastly more than the energy that was released in the reaction, and if you imagine trying to build an actual power plant, then you would have to take the heat and the neutrons that were released from this reaction and use them to make steam and use that steam to power turbines. In this case, there was more energy released from the reaction than in the photons in the light that went into compressing and heating this capsule. Three megajoules of energy is about the energy you would get from eating a jelly doughnut, about 500 It’s the basis of the sun, and it’s the basis of thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs. So just to give you a sense of the scale — the energy released in this shot was about three megajoules. So, 500 kilocalories is a lot, but this is a multi-billion-dollar facility and it can fire one of these shots every eight hours. COHEN: Mass comes in discrete chunks, and if you add up the mass of a helium and the neutron that comes flying out too in this process, there’s a little bit of a difference. So the primary purpose of the facility is really for simulating the conditions in those bombs and understanding the physics there. So a little bit of the mass of the hydrogen isotopes that are getting fused together goes into energy, which comes out of this reaction. The primary purpose of the National Ignition Facility is not actually renewable energy; it’s around stockpile stewardship. And when the hydrogen isotopes fuse to make that helium nucleus in the process of them sticking to each other, that releases a lot of energy. [fusion](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough.html) with a net energy gain, the U.S.

In today's newsletter: US scientists this week announced progress on a potentially revolutionary source of renewable energy. But there's still a way to go.

[thanks to a first-half penalty from Lionel Messi](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/dec/13/argentina-croatia-world-cup-semi-final-match-report) and two further goals from Julián Álvarez set up by Messi. Nimo [In this week’s TechScape](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/13/techscape-twitter-files-elon-musk), Alex Hern read “the Twitter Files” so you don’t have to. [spent 33 hours in an NHS hospital](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/13/like-a-horrific-board-game-33-hours-inside-an-nhs-in-crisis), and their findings unveiled just how deep the crisis in the health service has gotten. [Sign up for TechScape here](https://www.theguardian.com/info/2022/sep/20/sign-up-for-the-techscape-newsletter-our-free-technology-email). And so long as it doesn’t become an excuse for ignoring the urgency of the only realistic solution to the climate crisis, a rapid transition to renewables, it’s not like it presents much competition for funding: the total investment in private companies working on fusion ever is about $4.8bn, the [Fusion Industry Association says](https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/copy-of-about-the-fusion-industry). “You’re not a billionaire worthy of the name unless you’re investing in ambitious devices. There are huge hurdles to overcome.” Kim Budil of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory said yesterday that “a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant”. It is cumulative emissions that matter to avoiding the worst impact of the climate crisis, and so even if fusion plants are online at scale by 2050, that is too late. “So, OK, the energy put in has resulted in a larger amount of energy coming out – but the big caveat is that it depends where you draw your perimeter: powering the lasers themselves required way more energy. [the power source for Iron Man’s suit](https://www.iter.org/mag/6/47), or the basis of the [Mr Fusion Home Energy Reactor](https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion) that powers the, er, flux capacitor in Back to the Future. Beyond the obvious virtue of a net energy yield, “It’s low carbon, it offers baseload [that is, consistent] energy unlike renewables at the moment, and you don’t have to worry about it melting down or producing nuclear waste to the same extent,” Bluck said. Today’s Grinch-like (but also very interesting!) newsletter, with Dr Michael Bluck, director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering at Imperial College London, is about the long distance from a remarkable breakthrough to an energy utopia – and why fusion won’t help us get to net zero.

For the first time, researchers said they were able to produce more energy from a nuclear fusion reactor than was put into it.

The experiment resulted in 3.15 megajoules of energy output. It is safer than nuclear fission – which involves the splitting of atoms – but has proven far more difficult to achieve. Importantly, the process does not produce greenhouse gas emissions. The team said this demonstrated for the first time “a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy”. This means they were able to produce more energy from the reactor than was used to trigger the reaction, which is a landmark step in the pursuit of clean energy. For the first time, researchers were able to produce more energy from a fusion reaction than was used to trigger it – a massive step in the pursuit of clean, efficient energy.

The fusion record was achieved at the National Ignition Facility at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which ignites fusion fuel with an array ...

The inner part of this capsule rapidly compresses to nearly a hundred times denser than lead—which forces the deuterium and tritium inside to reach the temperatures and pressures needed for fusion. [ Culham, England, set a record](https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2022/10/many-scientists-see-fusion-as-the-future-of-energy-and-theyre-betting-big) for the most fusion energy ever released during a single experimental run. In August 2021, NIF reported its best-ever experimental run up to that point: 1.32 megajoules of released fusion energy for 1.92 megajoules of inputted laser energy. If that tiny fraction ignites, the energy it releases is enough to ignite the rest of the fuel. NIF’s method of sparking the nuclear fuel starts with a peppercorn-size pellet that contains a frozen mix of deuterium and tritium, two heavier isotopes of hydrogen. In terms of energy released, nuclear reactions pack roughly a million times more punch than chemical reactions do—and are vastly harder to get going. In a tiny blaze lasting less than a billionth of a second, the fusing atomic nuclei released 3.15 megajoules of energy—about 50 percent more than had been used to heat the pellet. The spark isn’t massive, but it doesn’t have to be: All it has to do is ignite a small fraction of the gasoline-air mixture. While NIF’s reaction produced more energy than the reactor used to heat up the atomic nuclei, it didn’t generate more than the reactor’s total energy use. Since the late 1950s and early 1960s, fusion reactors have had the same basic goal: create as hot and dense a plasma as possible, and then confine that material for long enough that the nuclei within it reach ignition. Being able to study the conditions of ignition in detail will be “a game-changer for the entire field of thermonuclear fusion,” says Johan Frenje, an MIT plasma physicist whose laboratory contributed to NIF’s record-breaking run. [nuclear fusion, the power source of the stars](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/nuclear-fusion-powers-stars-could-it-one-day-electrify-earth), to generate abundant clean energy here on Earth.