Two new studies have revealed the secrets behind the success of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) nuclear fusion experiment, which set the record for fusion energy production in August 2021. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL), located in the USA, they used the inertial confinement technique and obtained an output of 10 quadrillion watts of power during 100 trillionths of a second.
The studies also describe plasma-burning experiments carried out in the months prior to August, which resulted in the production of 170 kilojoules of energy (the record-breaking energy was 1.3 megajoules) from a pellet of just 200 micrograms of hydrogen fuel. .
To produce nuclear fusion energy, scientists create mechanisms to heat up a certain amount of hydrogen gas and apply a large amount of pressure to it. This process is a simplified version of what happens in stars, which also produce energy through the fusion of hydrogen and helium.
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The biggest difficulty in replicating this on Earth is that we don’t have any technology capable of mimicking the gravity and pressure that exists in the stars. Therefore, it is necessary to use external energy to initiate the fusion of the nuclei of hydrogen atoms. Unfortunately, the energy produced in the experiments is still less than the external energy used to fuse atoms.
Record-breaking nuclear fusion in energy
The NIF researchers got the 10 quadrillion watts by carefully molding the fuel capsule, a tiny spherical polycarbonate diamond shell that surrounded the tiny hydrogen pellet. They also had to create a small cylinder of depleted uranium (not very radioactive) coated with gold, called a hohlraum.
The tiny ball of hydrogen was hit by 192 high-powered lasers, which consume enormous amounts of energy and can only be fired once a day. This power source is not suitable for a real fusion reactor as it would have to vaporize several of these fuel pellets every second to have a satisfactory power output.
Even so, the experiment in August came close to producing as much energy as was used to carry out the fusion, thanks to the device’s new designs. The lasers were able to operate more efficiently inside the hohlraum, as the hot shell of the capsule rapidly expanded outward and the “ball” of fuel “imploded”.
As a result, the hydrogen atoms that were hit fused at such a high temperature that it heated other parts of the sphere into a plasma. The articles that describe the experiment may help other nuclear fusion physicists, regardless of the method they use. In other words, Tokamak reactors, like the one used in China, will also be able to use the studies for their own experiments.
The two articles were published in the journal Nature.
