6/30/2023 0 Comments Sun fusion vs fission![]() ![]() “The experiments on NIF demonstrate the scientific process of ignition and how this leads to high fusion energy gain, but to turn this into a power station we need to develop simpler methods to reach these conditions, which will need to be more efficient and above all cheaper in order for inertial fusion to be realised as a fusion power source.” “Anyone working in fusion would be quick to point out that there is still a long way to go from demonstrating energy gain to getting to wall-plug efficiency where the energy coming from a fusion reactor exceeds its electrical energy input required to run the reactor,” he added. “The efficiency of converting electrical energy to laser energy was not a factor in its design,” he said. ![]() However, Chittenden stressed the NIF was designed for a scientific demonstration, not as a power plant. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.Īnd there is another point: the positive energy gain reported ignores the 500MJ of energy that was put into the lasers themselves. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. ![]() Prof Justin Wark, professor of physics at the University of Oxford, added that while, in principle, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could produce such a result about once a day, a fusion power plant would need to do it 10 times a second. “We’ll also need to find a way to reproduce the same effect much more frequently and much more cheaply before we can realistically turn this into a power plant.” “To turn fusion into a power source we’ll need to boost the energy gain still further,” said Chittenden. To start with, 0.4MJ is about 0.1kWh – about enough energy to boil a kettle. “It proves that the long sought-after goal, the ‘holy grail’ of fusion, can indeed be achieved.”īut experts have stressed that while the results would be an important proof of principle, the technology is a long way from being a mainstay of the energy landscape. “If what has been reported is true and more energy has been released than was used to produce the plasma, that is a true breakthrough moment which is tremendously exciting,” he said. ![]() Prof Jeremy Chittenden, professor of plasma physics at Imperial College London, agreed. “In order to transform NIF’s result into power production a lot of work remains, but this is a key step along the path.” “The experiment demonstrates unambiguously that the physics of Laser Fusion works,” he added. The scale of the breakthrough for laser fusion research cannot be overstated. “This seminal result from the National Ignition Facility is the first laboratory demonstration of fusion ‘energy-gain’ – where more fusion energy is output than input by the laser beams. “Fusion has the potential to provide a near-limitless, safe, clean, source of carbon-free baseload energy,” he said. However, since nuclear fusion research began in the 1950s, researchers have been unable to a demonstrate a positive energy gain, a condition known as ignition.Īccording to a report in the Financial Times, which has yet to be confirmed by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California that is behind the work, researchers have managed to release 2.5 MJ of energy after using just 2.1 MJ to heat the fuel with lasers.ĭr Robbie Scott, of the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Central Laser Facility (CLF) Plasma Physics Group, who contributed to this research, described the results as a “momentous achievement”. ![]()
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