In what some publications have hailed as a “breakthrough” in fusion energy research, the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) was able to use its focused laser technology to hit a tiny fuel target and generate some 1.3 megajoules of energy.
A Livermore press release proclaimed, “This advancement puts researchers at the threshold of fusion ignition, an important goal of the NIF, and opens access to a new experimental regime.
“The experiment was enabled by focusing laser light from NIF — the size of three football fields — onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second.”
Salon proclaimed in a headline that the experiment constituted “a major hurdle in nuclear fusion research.” CNBC said the Livermore experiment was “a ‘Wright Brothers moment’ in nuclear fusion.”
In the 70+ years since scientists proclaimed that commercial fusion generation of electricity was “25 years away,” there have been many proclaimed breakthroughs, although that has never really been the case. The Livermore experiment did not achieve fusion “breakeven,” where the amount of energy used to ignite the hydrogen fuel equaled the energy released. Until that happens, which physicists shorthand as Q=1, the fusion reaction will not continue on its own.
Neither the NIF laser approach nor the more conventional Tokomak plasma magnetic confinement technology at the base of the multinational ITER project in southern France, is close to breakeven. While the Livermore research has not been peer reviewed, and it will, the most optimistic estimates are that it achieved maybe 70% of breakeven.
Robert Hirsch, a nuclear physicist and engineer, who led the former Atomic Energy Commission’s fusion research program, told The Quad Report, “NIF was supposed to achieve breakeven soon after it came on line. Many expected that to happen but it didn’t and didn’t and didn’t. It was hugely embarrassing. The problem was some totally unexpected physics. What we have today is a positive result finally, after years of trying to unravel those unexpected problems. Today’s results are still short of achieving the ignition that the machine was designed for, as best I can tell.”
Tom Hartsfield, a physcist in Los Alamos, NM, writing in the Big Think web publication commented that the Livermore experiment “is just one small step toward fusion becoming a viable electricity source. We are still a long way away.
“The National Ignition Facility (NIF) was built for two missions: performing research in support of the Stockpile Stewardship Program for nuclear weapons is the foremost duty, but the sign over the door does not say “National Stockpile Research Facility.” NIF is named after its other task: to further our quest to understand and harness energy from nuclear fusion. A recent breakthrough in this fusion mission has made headlines across the world.”
Hartsfield added, “Transitioning inertial confinement fusion from NIF, a research facility, to a commercial power plant faces great obstacles.
“The laser drive energy delivered to the capsule (1.9 MJ) is only a fraction of the total energy required to create a single ICF implosion shot. Every step of energy conversion — from the (imaginary) NIF electrical plug to the laser beam — adds energy losses. This includes the world’s most energetic capacitor banks to store up the juice for the shot blast; the world’s 7860 largest commercial laser-pumping flash lamps; and other “world’s largest” systems. A lot more fusion energy (than 1.3 MJ) will be required to break even against the entire facility’s energy consumption. And a commercial power station would have to do much better than breaking even.
“Electrical plants that liberate energy in the form of heat must transfer it to a working fluid to turn a turbine that powers an electrical generator. A system that absorbs fusion energy and uses it to heat steam will need to be developed. Currently, the pellet is suspended in the middle of a 30-foot diameter vacuum chamber.
“A working power plant must also deliver its power continuously, or at least consistently. Each NIF pellet blast produces a sizeable amount of energy. Then, the machine sits cold for the rest of the day. If all the energy from the record 1.3 MJ experiment could be captured and sent to the grid continuously over a period of 24 hours, it would provide 15 watts of steady power — insufficient to power a light bulb.”
–Kennedy Maize