Laser Nuclear Fusion Enter a New Regime

Hi ATS!

We have some exciting laser fusion news that I would like everybody to know about!

But first, some mansplaining...

The real name is "inertial confinement fusion" where laser beams are used to heat and compress "pellets" (really called a "hohlraum") of hydrogen isotopes to conditions where nuclear fusion can happen. Each temperature range along the way is known as a "regime" with each stage having a specific name. First is "break even" where the amount of energy put into the laser blast equals the amount of energy output from the reaction. Next is "ignition" where the reaction begins to stay hot long enough, and produces more energy than put in. Last, is a full on "burning plasma" where you just toss another log on the fire to keep the fusion reaction going!

The fuel is deuterium and tritium (in the articles they are referred together as "D-T"). The output is an alpha particle (a helium nuclei) and a fast neutron particle. The frozen fuel is encased in a heavy metal shell of either/and palladium or gold. Using basic physics and our our good friend, PV = T, as the volume decreases and the pressure increases, the temperature increases. The aim is to reach a reach a regime where nuclear fusion can occur with enough regularity to produce net energy.

National Ignition Facility (NIF) is part of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Armed with a bit of an ICF glossary (see what I did there?), let's go see what the fuss is about!

NIF’s approach, known as inertial confinement fusion, uses a giant laser housed in a facility the size of several U.S. football fields to produce 192 beams that are focused on a target in a brief, powerful pulse—1.9 MJ over about 20 nanoseconds. The aim is to get as much of that energy as possible into the target capsule, a diminutive sphere filled with the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium mounted inside a cylinder of gold the size of a pencil eraser. The gold vaporizes, producing a pulse of x-rays that implodes the capsule, driving the fusion fuel into a tiny ball hot and dense enough to ignite fusion. In theory, if such tiny fusion blasts could be triggered at a rate of about 10 per second, a power plant could harvest energy from the high-speed neutrons produced to generate electricity.

(First attempts created 1 kJ of energy, same source, and then they reached 100 kJ last year. This fusion thing, the joke goes, always is 30 years away!)

Earlier this year, combining those improvements in various ways, the NIF team produced several shots exceeding 100 kJ, including one of 170 kJ. That result suggested NIF was finally creating a “burning plasma,” in which the fusion reactions themselves provide the heat for more fusion—a runaway reaction that is key to getting higher yields. Then, on 8 August, a shot generated the remarkable 1.35 MJ. “It was a surprise to everyone,” Herrmann says. “This is a whole new regime."

Science (magazine), 17, Aug, 2021 - With explosive new result, laser-powered fusion effort nears ‘ignition’

Phys.org: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as 'ignition' triggered in a lab

About every other headline uses the word "ignition"!

How ICF works (NIF at linl.gov): How ICF Works

Since they are a research facility, they would like to investigate which of the several changes they made created this yield. But as the article goes on to say, this is inspiration to facilities around the world chasing the fusion dream! The results are being checked at other facilities in the UK.

This is great stuff! Because now it is just engineering to squeeze out the last few mega Joules and reach, or even pass, break even!!

Ah, what dreams may come!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

This is potentially good, however, when I read;

slow progress have raised questions about whether laser-powered fusion has a practical future.

Backed up by the miracle breakthrough, maybe, just in the nick of time .... phew .....

And then .......

Exactly which improvements had the greatest impact and what combination will lead to future gains will take a while to unravel, Herrmann says, because several were tweaked at once in the latest shot.

......... can we have some more money please?

Pardon my cynicism, but the $cience just doesn't seem to be Science anymore. Not only that but we are talking about the LLNL which is essentially part of the brain of the MIC.

Pretty cool news. Obviously a long way off still from fusion being a reliable source to replace the ones we have now. But progress is always promising. I believe we'll get there one day. S&F

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

This is pretty cool, but it mentions helium. Isn't there a helium shortage. Great thread👍🏼👍🏼


Ok, I thought you were going to post this 👇👇
www.foxnews.com...

China is building a mega-laser that's so powerful it could literally tear space apart.

Physicists in Shanghai are constructing what they call a 'Station of Extreme Light', which could be operational as soon as 2023.

The end goal is to create a laser so powerful it can produce 100-petawatt laser pulses –that's 100 million billion watts.

a reply to: myselfaswell

The other side is, "how much energy does it take to make the pellets??"

The flip side being, once every nerd has a laser driven fusion device, the price on everything drops.

And the whole MIC thing is a a draw back (Hey Lockheed, where is your fusion reactor??!! It has been over 7 years and we have not even seen the results of T3!! LM made the claim in 2014).

Honestly, I do not care who makes it first. USA, China, South Korea, UK, Canada... as long as we make it there! The whole ITER thing is joke (1980s technology), even tokamaks are kind of out dated (1990s), the future is all super computer driven with wild new ideas and ultra precision. And, I hope, a plan on what to do with all this energy (instead of farting it out the back of your automobile, lets say).

I have been saying this for years: we need efficient energy transmission (room temperature superconductor transmission lines); we need an efficient energy storage methodology (my guess, usher in the new Hydrogen Economy; and only then, will nuclear fusion take center stage. Actually, they will happen piecemeal but around the same time.

Then nothing them bug eyed greys can say about keeping us on the surface of this planet!

We are heading to the stars!



PS - In other fusion news, and to support my super computer claim, 15 Aug 2021 - The Wendelstein 7-X Nuclear Fusion Device Concept Proves Its Efficiency

This is way over my head, but interesting nonetheless. Thanks for posting

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

The other side is, "how much energy does it take to make the pellets??"

LOL, that was actually my first thought before I fully read the article.

a reply to: Bigburgh

That laser will be used to hit the US and other countries. China will put rotating mirrors in space and use it to hit targets beyond the horizon.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

Please, please, please, please...

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: Bigburgh

That laser will be used to hit the US and other countries. China will put rotating mirrors in space and use it to hit targets beyond the horizon.

What a waste...

And I doubt very much that they would point it up. It's probably targeting something in the lab, just like the NIF does.

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: Bigburgh

That laser will be used to hit the US and other countries. China will put rotating mirrors in space and use it to hit targets beyond the horizon.

Interesting, but not very practical

You can draw water from electricity, we just don't understand the hydrogen bridge correctly yet

Once scientists work out that hydrogen is actually positive 1 balanced with a invisible (outside our perceivable spectrum) negative balance, they will work it out

They still think the H2 in water is two separate Hydrogen, when it's actually 2 vortices "sides" (or poles) of the same hydrogen in phase conjunction

Like the poles of the planet, that connect in the middle

Nitrogen is the same thing as Hydrogen in octave binary state, except that the invisible balance is visible within the bridge medium offset

Hydrogen has a invisible 1 counter balance. Nitrogen takes -1 from 8, to be 7

For every +1, there is -1

Water is the bridge. When you unravel its conjunction vortices (turn it inside out) it becomes electricity

Water and electricity are literally two sides of the same coin

We don't even understand that every element on earth can be made from water yet

We look at other planets and wonder if there is water there, when it's impossible for any matter to exist, unless it originated from water

It was the best of times and the worse of times… Definitely interesting times!

Exciting news! Will keep an eye on this thread for developments.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
Very interesting article! There's a grammar / semantic error in your OP though. I think it's important to clear up that:

"pellets" (really called a "hohlraum")

Hohlraum is a German word and it literally means "hollow room" or in this case "hollowed out space". The inside of a bubble is a hohlraum as well as the inside of your tires. If you knock at the wall and you hear it's hollow, that space the hollowness occupies, is the Hohlraum.

The pellet is still the pellet, but it contains a Hohlraum. The xrays bounce inside that Hohlraum.

The next fitting English word would be cavity.

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: Bigburgh

That laser will be used to hit the US and other countries. China will put rotating mirrors in space and use it to hit targets beyond the horizon.

What a waste...

And I doubt very much that they would point it up. It's probably targeting something in the lab, just like the NIF does.

anything the chinese do is based on weapons and conquering. It will be reposistioned eventually when it becomes a viable weapon.

originally posted by: yuppa

originally posted by: chr0naut

originally posted by: yuppa
a reply to: Bigburgh

That laser will be used to hit the US and other countries. China will put rotating mirrors in space and use it to hit targets beyond the horizon.

What a waste...

And I doubt very much that they would point it up. It's probably targeting something in the lab, just like the NIF does.

anything the chinese do is based on weapons and conquering. It will be reposistioned eventually when it becomes a viable weapon.

Yeah, they are so well known for their warrior troops, going into all countries of the world from Africa, the Middle East, South America, Europe, and Russia.

Just look at their record from those two world wars, when just about everyone was fighting with someone.

Oh, wait...

a reply to: chr0naut

China is big in laser space defense systems.

Yeah, they are so well known for their warrior troops, going into all countries of the world from Africa, the Middle East, South America, Europe, and Russia.

Just look at their record from those two world wars, when just about everyone was fighting with someone.

Oh, wait...

The Art Of war.

Read it. Understand it. Be ashamed.

a reply to: myselfaswell

Laser powered inertial confinement fusion as done in NIF does not have any practical future for energy production.

The NIF is primarily a nuclear weapons analysis project (most of it is run/funded by NNSA) with a little basic science on the side. Take it straight from LLNL's own words: "The central mission of NIF is to provide experimental insight and data for NNSA’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program."

The best hope is still probably magnetically confined fusion (tokamaks and the like) with machine learning models and active control systems to lower the complex nonlinear instabilities that result in failure and loss of confinement now.

The physical regime is different from NIF (much lower density, longer timescales). NIF simulates the implosion dynamics of fusion secondaries in thermonuclear weapons, right down to the 'hohlraum' (a german word! meaning hollow room) which was a key part of the Teller-Ulam breakthrough in the early 1950's. In the H-bomb the x-rays from the hot fission primary (literally black body radiation at a super high temperature --- so hot that it goes beyond 'white hot' all the way to X-rays!) flow to the hohlraum which surrounds the fusion fuel. Radiation pressure and more importantly ablation of a coating on the fusion fuel results in very sharp compression. The existence of the hohlraum and related process was classified until the early-mid 1990's!

There is probably still something classified in the fabrication of the fusion pellet.

originally posted by: ThatDamnDuckAgain
a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
Very interesting article! There's a grammar / semantic error in your OP though. I think it's important to clear up that:

"pellets" (really called a "hohlraum")

Hohlraum is a German word and it literally means "hollow room" or in this case "hollowed out space". The inside of a bubble is a hohlraum as well as the inside of your tires. If you knock at the wall and you hear it's hollow, that space the hollowness occupies, is the Hohlraum.

The pellet is still the pellet, but it contains a Hohlraum. The xrays bounce inside that Hohlraum.

The next fitting English word would be cavity.

To clarify a bit, the pellet has two parts like there is an outer shell of a high-Z metal material, a hollow space in between (hohlraum), and a sphericalish pellet of fusion fuel inside that. The metal generates x-rays when highly ionized electrons fall back into their orbitals as well as being high temperature plasma and those x-rays compress the fusion fuel inside.

How the center fuel pellet is held up is unclear or classified, rumors are of a light foam material which is easily ionized and relatively insensitive to the x-rays.

a reply to: mbkennel
So in simple terms:

That means the metal-alloy is able to convert the energy delta introduced, when they electrons fall back again and the atom/molecule want's to get rid of the energy this wiggles/vibrates in the x-ray frequency, thus emitting x-rays?

These x-rays then put pressure on the fuel pellet inside, because it can not take in the energy, it compresses, together with the heat from the plasma it finally ignites and fusion happens?