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Scientists at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced the long awaited magic breakthrough in the quest for nuclear fusion. The “very process that powers stars” is poised to provide “a viable energy source for humankind.” Just as soon as a few more bugs are worked out.
A magic moment for fusion
U.S. government scientists announced “they have taken an important step in the long trek toward making nuclear fusion.” The magic moment of “break-even.”
After firing up the world’s largest laser, “the researchers coaxed fusion fuel for the first time to heat itself beyond the heat they zapped into it.” Their achievement sparked “a phenomenon called a burning plasma that marked a stride toward self-sustaining fusion energy.”
They didn’t generate a whole lot of extra power but they got some and that’s the magic part.
“The energy produced was modest – about the equivalent of nine nine-volt batteries of the kind that power smoke detectors and other small devices.” That was enough for researchers who have been trying to do that for decades.
While everybody had a huge celebration over reaching the magic milestone, they soon swept up the lab and went back to work.
“Researchers cautioned that years of more work are needed.” What they did manage to do is light the pilot light. They produced “the self-heating of matter in a plasma state through nuclear fusion.”
A good analogy
The principle is the same as what happens in a camp fire. If you want to build one, “you want to get the fire hot enough that the wood can keep itself burning.”
Alex Zylstra, one of the experimental physicists in charge of producing the magic breakthrough for the Department of Energy, calls that “a good analogy for a burning plasma, where the fusion is now starting to become self-sustaining.”
To make the magic happen, the “scientists directed 192 laser beams toward a small target containing a capsule less than a tenth of an inch in diameter filled with fusion fuel consisting of a plasma of deuterium and tritium – two isotopes, or forms, of hydrogen.”
Once they hit the required super-high temperatures, “the nucleus of the deuterium and the nucleus of the tritium fuse.” They melt together into “a neutron and a positively charged particle called an ‘alpha particle’ – consisting of two protons and two neutrons.” When that happens, energy is released.
To make the magic happen, “we need about a hundred million degrees (Fahrenheit).” That’s not easy to hit. “For decades we’ve been able to cause fusion reactions to occur in experiments by putting a lot of heating into the fuel, but this isn’t good enough to produce net energy from fusion.” Until his team came along.
“Now, for the first time, fusion reactions occurring in the fuel provided most of the heating – so fusion is starting to dominate over the heating we did. This is a new regime called a burning plasma.”
