The carbon-free energy of the future: this fusion breakthrough changes everything
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/13/carbon-free-energy-fusion-reaction-scientists
By Arthur Turrell, The Guardian.
Excerpt: This is a moment that scientists have dreamed of for well over half a century. The US’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) has smashed the longest-standing goal in the quest for carbon-free energy from fusion, the nuclear process that powers stars. Researchers from NIF used the world’s most energetic laser to fire 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy into a millimetre-sized capsule of hydrogen fuel. Reaching temperatures many times those found in the sun’s core and pressures 300bn times those normally experienced on Earth, a wave of nuclear reactions ripped through the fusion fuel, releasing 3.15 MJ of fusion energy – 1.1 MJ more than was put in – over a few tens of nanoseconds. ...it’s the first scientific proof that fusion can produce more energy out than is put in, also known as “net energy gain”. If the numbers check out, the experiment generated 54% more energy than was put into it. ...Fusion would complement renewables by providing baseload energy, rain or shine, while taking up little precious land. So the prize is big – which is why scientists and engineers have stuck with it for decades. ...that doesn’t mean fusion power that we can use is a reality yet. This is a single result on a single experiment. A commercially viable plant would need to produce 30 times energy out for energy in (30x), rather than the 1.54x seen in this experiment. Even with that magnitude of energy release, there would be engineering and economic challenges to overcome, such as firing the laser 10 times a second, rather than once a day. Gigantic lasers may not even be the best route to economical fusion power: promising alternative approaches are being explored that use magnetic fields to trap the 150mC fuel....