Nuclear fusion

A controlled fusion reaction has generated more energy than was put into the system for the first time, bringing viable fusion power another step closer to ...

“In terms of clean energy, this [fusion research] is definitely the most ambitious route, but eventually will be the most rewarding because the amount of energy that you can unlock is potentially limitless.” “We’re at extremes of pressures, densities and temperatures that we’ve never been able to access in the laboratory before,” he says. There’s a lot of exchange of information between the two schemes,” he says. She said that now it has been confirmed, it is likely that a laser-based power plant could be constructed within a “few decades”, but that the technology for tokamak reactors was more mature. “If we stick at trying to do this through massive-scale projects, which take billions of dollars to construct and tens of years to develop, it could well be that fusion arises too late to have an impact on climate change,” says Chittenden. “There are very significant hurdles, not just in the science, but in technology,” she said. [Jeremy Chittenden](https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.chittenden) at Imperial College London says the experiment is a historic moment for fusion research. [nearing completion](/article/2280763-worlds-most-powerful-magnet-being-shipped-to-iter-fusion-reactor/) and its first experiments are due to start in 2025. [emerged on 11 December](/article/2350921-nuclear-fusion-has-there-been-a-breakthrough-and-what-will-it-mean/), but the news has been formally announced in a press conference today. Earlier this year, JET sustained a reaction for 5 seconds, producing a [record 59 megajoules of heat energy](/article/2307548-fusion-energy-record-suggests-we-really-could-build-artificial-suns/#:~:text=The%20experiment%20at%20the%20Joint,a%20second%2C%20set%20in%201997.). For the first time on Earth, a controlled fusion reaction has generated more power than it requires to run, researchers have confirmed. NIF uses the second approach, known as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), where a tiny capsule containing hydrogen fuel is blasted with lasers, causing it to heat up and rapidly expand.

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 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 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 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California said an experiment it conducted this month "produced more energy from fusion than the laser ...

It demonstrates and underpins our basic understanding of the physics and is an engineering triumph. Success, however long it takes, would be transformational." It cannot be understated what a huge breakthrough this is for laser fusion research." "This is a momentous achievement. Gianluca Gregori, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford who specialises in high power lasers and fusion energy, said: "For many years fusion energy has been described as the holy grail of the world's energy problems – a limitless and clean energy source that would address the ever-increasing demands free from carbon emissions. The US Department of Energy described the achievement as a "major scientific breakthrough" that will lead to "advancements in national defense and the future of clean power".

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.

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.

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.

'This is game-changing, world-improving, lives-saving history unfolding in real-time,' Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says.

“Combined with private-sector investment, there is a lot of momentum to drive rapid progress toward fusion commercialization,” the LLNL public affairs office said in a statement. The director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Kim Budil, said that to “realize commercial fusion energy ... This is a momentous achievement after 50 years of research into Laser Fusion,” said Dr Robbie Scott, of the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Central Laser Facility Plasma Physics Group, who contributed to this research. a clean energy future”. “It’s a century since we figured out it was fusion that was going on in our sun and all the other stars. Fusion does not produce greenhouse gases nor long-lived radioactive waste. “Ignition allows us to replicate for the first time certain conditions that are only found in the stars and sun. ... It’s also an engineering marvel beyond belief,” she said. Experiments at the National Ignition Facility are a bit like striking a match, with this experiment the match kept burning. It’s a scientific milestone. The fusion breakthrough has the potential to significantly impact the trajectory of the “This is what it looks like for America to lead, and we’re just getting started.”

A commercial nuclear fusion reactor is not expected to be possible before the 2030s despite US scientists achieving a net energy gain from a...

However, the impact to a clean energy switch is unlikely to be realised in the next decade, the Swiss bank understand. The US Department of Energy is expected to release an official update on the breakthrough today. A commercial nuclear fusion reactor is not expected to be possible before the 2030s despite

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?

In the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars, scientists have made a significant breakthrough. | ITV National News.

"We need to heat up isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) gas so they become the fourth state of matter, called plasma. "These x-rays then heat a sphere at the centre that contains the nuclear fuel. The reaction happens when two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus. "The subsequent ‘crunch’ at the centre is tailored in a specific way to make a hot spark in the middle, and the density of the compressed ‘fuel’ surrounding the spark is so great that the nuclear fusion reaction takes place in about a tenth of a billionth of a second - faster than the tiny hot sphere can fly apart." It could one day help shift the planet away from reliance on fossil fuels, which are contributing to the climate crisis. Because the total mass of that single nucleus is less than the mass of the two original nuclei, the leftover mass is energy that is released 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.

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.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have achieved fusion ignition in a nuclear reactor, it was announced on Tuesday.

Zylstra agreed, and said reactors would need to achieve higher energy gains at faster rates in reactors for nuclear fusion energy to be commercially viable in the future. The DoE noted that "many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable [ignition fusion energy] (IFE) to power homes and businesses", and is interested in relaunching a "coordinated IFE program" with the private sector. Although the results are worth celebrating, they still show nuclear fusion is very, very far from being a practical source of energy. By increasing our understanding of these fusion plasmas we will work towards producing even higher fusion output as well as exploring conditions relevant for the nuclear weapons stewardship mission," he told us. This nuclear fusion reaction forms helium nuclei and neutrons in the process. Last year, the LLNL said its researchers were close to achieving fusion ignition. The pea-sized capsule then turns into a super hot, high pressure plasma, providing the right conditions to fuse its atoms of deuterium and tritium fuel. The boffins said they had produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy as output, exceeding the 2.05 megajoules delivered by the 192 lasers that kickstarted the nuclear fusion reaction. Where the magic happens ... That's a milestone for the team, and a first-of-its-kind feat, according to the Americans. The NIF works by firing nearly 200 lasers to form beams of ultraviolet energy at a tiny pellet of fusion fuel held inside a hohlraum. The dream of generating relatively clean, fusion-based power has been pursued for decades.

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.