Essay by Eric Worrall
An American first on a par with the historical significance of the moon landing – scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have exceeded fusion break even.
National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the achievement of fusion ignition at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) — a major scientific breakthrough decades in the making that will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power. On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility(NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it. This first-of-its-kind feat will provide unprecedented capability to support NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program and will provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting our world-class scientists — like the team at NIF — whose work will help us solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”
“We have had a theoretical understanding of fusion for over a century, but the journey from knowing to doing can be long and arduous. Today’s milestone shows what we can do with perseverance,” said Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the President’s chief adviser for Science and Technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“Monday, December 5, 2022, was a historic day in science thanks to the incredible people at Livermore Lab and the National Ignition Facility. In making this breakthrough, they have opened a new chapter in NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program,” NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby said. “I would like to thank the members of Congress who have supported the National Ignition Facility because their belief in the promise of visionary science has been critical for our mission. Our team from around the DOE national laboratories and our international partners have shown us the power of collaboration.”
“The pursuit of fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity, and achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people,” LLNL Director Dr. Kim Budil said. “Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capability, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that emerged. These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.”
“This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,” U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (NY) said. “I commend Lawrence Livermore National Labs and its partners in our nation’s Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program, including the University of Rochester’s Lab for Laser Energetics in New York, for achieving this breakthrough. Making this future clean energy world a reality will require our physicists, innovative workers and brightest minds at our DOE-funded institutions, including the Rochester Laser Lab, to double down on their cutting-edge work. That’s why I’m also proud to announce today that I’ve helped to secure the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.”
“After more than a decade of scientific and technical innovation, I congratulate the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Ignition Facility for their historic accomplishment,” said U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (CA). “This is an exciting step in fusion and everyone at Lawrence Livermore and NIF should be proud of this milestone achievement.”
“This is an historic, innovative achievement that builds on the contributions of generations of Livermore scientists. Today, our nation stands on their collective shoulders. We still have a long way to go, but this is a critical step and I commend the U.S. Department of Energy and all who contributed toward this promising breakthrough, which could help fuel a brighter clean energy future for the United States and humanity,” said U.S. Senator Jack Reed (RI), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (CA). “While there is more work ahead to harness the potential of fusion energy, I am proud that California scientists continue to lead the way in developing clean energy technologies. I congratulate the scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for their dedication to a clean energy future, and I am committed to ensuring they have all of the tools and funding they need to continue this important work.”
“This is a very big deal. We can celebrate another performance record by the National Ignition Facility. This latest achievement is particularly remarkable because NIF used a less spherically symmetrical target than in the August 2021 experiment,” said U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren (CA-19). “This significant advancement showcases the future possibilities for the commercialization of fusion energy. Congress and the Administration need to fully fund and properly implement the fusion research provisions in the recent CHIPS and Science Act and likely more. During World War II, we crafted the Manhattan Project for a timely result. The challenges facing the world today are even greater than at that time. We must double down and accelerate the research to explore new pathways for the clean, limitless energy that fusion promises.”
“I am thrilled that NIF — the United States’ most cutting-edge nuclear research facility — has achieved fusion ignition, potentially providing for a new clean and sustainable energy source in the future. This breakthrough will ensure the safety and reliability of our nuclear stockpile, open new frontiers in science, and enable progress toward new ways to power our homes and offices in future decades,” said U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (CA-15). “I commend the scientists and researchers for their hard work and dedication that led to this monumental scientific achievement, and I will continue to push for robust funding for NIF to support advancements in fusion research.”
LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and businesses, and DOE is currently restarting a broad-based, coordinated IFE program in the United States. Combined with private-sector investment, there is a lot of momentum to drive rapid progress toward fusion commercialization.
Fusion is the process by which two light nuclei combine to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing a large amount of energy. In the 1960s, a group of pioneering scientists at LLNL hypothesized that lasers could be used to induce fusion in a laboratory setting. Led by physicist John Nuckolls, who later served as LLNL director from 1988 to 1994, this revolutionary idea became inertial confinement fusion, kicking off more than 60 years of research and development in lasers, optics, diagnostics, target fabrication, computer modeling and simulation and experimental design.
To pursue this concept, LLNL built a series of increasingly powerful laser systems, leading to the creation of NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser system. NIF — located at LLNL in Livermore, California — is the size of a sports stadium and uses powerful laser beams to create temperatures and pressures like those in the cores of stars and giant planets, and inside exploding nuclear weapons.
Achieving ignition was made possible by dedication from LLNL employees as well as countless collaborators at DOE’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories and Nevada National Security Site; General Atomics; academic institutions, including the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University; international partners, including the United Kingdom’s Atomic Weapons Establishment and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission; and stakeholders at DOE and NNSA and in Congress.
Source: https://www.llnl.gov/news/national-ignition-facility-achieves-fusion-ignition
A word of caution – there is a long way to go, between a lab demonstration of energy production, and a viable commercial nuclear fusion reactor. The break even claim only applies to the amount of energy pumped into the fusion target, vs the amount emitted, not the total energy expended to perform the experiment. Vastly greater amounts of energy were used to generate the final 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy which struck the target, to produce 3.15MJ of fusion energy. And that 3.15MJ of fusion energy was only enough to keep a 2KW plug in home heater running for 25 minutes.
To turn this into a fusion generator, the energy emitted by the target would need to be vastly scaled up, and the process would have to fire multiple times per minute, likely multiple times per second, rather than a single shot after hours or days of preparation.
Nevertheless this milestone is critically important – it provides a focal point of motivation, to solve the remaining problems.
And there are plenty of potential paths forward. Fusion processes can potentially initiate much larger fusion processes, as the Soviet Union proved when they set off the largest atomic bomb ever detonated – maybe the key breakthrough to commercialising this milestone will be a multi-stage fusion target, which releases vastly greater amounts of energy than were used to ignite the initial fusion reaction. Or there might be breakthroughs in ultraviolet laser technology.
The point is, now scientists have even more motivation to push forward – they know beyond doubt that their end goal is achievable.
Not so fast… The energy input to the lasers was 100 times the input to the reaction.
Hold the Nuclear Fusion Hype https://www.wsj.com/articles/hold-the-nuclear-fusion-hype-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory-energy-research-jennifer-granholm-11670961420
“on a par with the historical significance of the moon landing”
No, it’s not. Laser fusion will never be an energy source.
It’s mostly about photon science and testing for nuclear weapons.
This is in reality nothing, to get more funding. Wrote about NIF is essay ‘Going Nuclear’ in ebook Blowing smoke. Some facts:
Rud, do you see any promise in any of the compact fusion programs?
I looked at several a few years ago. They all are (IMO) suspiciously technically goofy in one way or another—shock wave, high beta confinement, plasma pulse. The fact that several of these private companies (plus the Skunk Works) have been at it for several years without showing any substantive progress is another tell. So no, I see little promise.
Put another way, the temperature and pressure needed to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion of like charges (protons) at such small distances is just stupendous. So, as as French physics Nobel laureate de Gennes said,
“The fusion idea is to put the Sun in a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is that we do not know how to make the box.”
Wow! This is like using a match as an ignition source and getting a fire that produces well, as much energy as the match. It should be noted that the amount of energy from the lasers that struck the target was just a small amount of the energy that was used to fire the lasers making the over-unity gain somewhat dubious.
It doesn’t seem free or inexpensive as the fuel costs $30,000/gram.
It took over 60 years to reach this point. The issues of containment, sustainability, and useful energy conversion still remain and they seem more dificult than producing a fusion reaction in the lab. After all we sucessfully produced over unity fusion reactions in the 1950s with hydrogen bombs.
I am not saying that fusion energy generation is not a worthwhile goal but, having installed fusion plants by 2030 as is the stated goal seems a bit over optimistic and this is being presented as “free energy” that will be available to everyone packaged in many sizes from AA battery size to full size generation facilities and everything in between.
The political hype far exceeds the achievement.
Nope and no. It’s not viable, not the first that has achieved the same thing. Containing the thing makes it impossible, the more you put in the more expensive it all becomes. This is just a PR move to ask for billions more….for another 50 years of research….it’s a giant waste of money and everyone knows it. But perverse incentives and all that….gotta get a pay check. Fission is here and available and cheap….it’s all just evil politics.
>> delivering 2.05 mega joules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output
>> To turn this into a fusion generator, the energy emitted by the target would need to be vastly scaled up,
Well.. I am guessing the “delivered” energy came in the form of ps laser pulses and the “resulting” energy was a cloud of high energy Gamma´s and fast Neutrons.
For a discussions sake let me make a guess on how many magnitudes this is away from anything useful.. please chip in if you know any better estimate
10kW is 5 orders of magnitude less than GW a building of that size should produce.
Conversion of electrical energy to large Ups laser 2 orders of magnitude.Conversion of fusion products to electrical energy 5 orders of magnitude, easily
While I understand that projects like this are a bit desperate after decades of research, this is seems aww a bit too optimistic to me and misleading people is always highly unethical.. this is why we are on this webpage, right?
Oh found this.. but those numbers also do not really help..
https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-breakthrough-nif-uh-not-really
Let’s keep this in its still 30 years away perspective – this process used 130 times the energy it made – we still need fossil fuels and existing nuclear technologies for decades to come
I think a lot more than 30 years, if ever.
It’s a pipe dream. Maybe it will become reality in 50 or 100 years, who knows. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we need fossil fuels and fission nukes to provide us with reliable, affordable electricity. Those pushing this fusion pipe dream have certainly latched onto the carbon myth. Wonder why.
We won’t see this type of fusion energy this century, most likely never.
Two really, really big problems. First, as has been pointed out by others, there is no real actual energy gain when you take the energy needed to fire the lasers into account. In fact, they are only getting 1% of what is put in out. Now, to commercialize this energy source they would need to get about a factor of 10 more energy out then they put in. So you need to improve the efficiency by a factor of 1000! They’ve been struggling for years to get factors of two or so. So a real breakthrough is needed.
Second problem is the fuel and its container (hohlraum). For a commercial reactor you would need to fire about 10 shots per second, or 300 million per year, each shot of course destroying the fuel pellet and container. To keep costs down you would want the fuel and its container to cost a dollar or less. Not easy for a gold-coated cylinder with a fuel pellet that is enclosed in a (manufactured) diamond. My guess is that the hohlraum and fuel pellet presently cost about $50,000 to make, so that cost would have to be reduced by a factor of 50,000!
Don’t get me wrong, what they have done is a very impressive technological achievement and they should congratulated. But we are much closer to having electric-powered airplanes flying us across the Atlantic, than inertial confinement fusion energy; after all we only need to improve battery energy densities by a factor of one hundred for that to happen!
The most despicable part of this announcement is the politicization of science; what does ‘The Biden-Harris administration’, that has been in office for 2 years, have to do with a 60 year frontier of physics project?
I do however know how to highlight the ridicule that such a statement deserves–put Kamala Harris in front of a camera and have her explain how fusion works. We will have copious quantities of cheap fusion energy long before anyone sorts out the word salad that brain will generate in such an attempt.
The progressives view fusion as “green” but fission as “dirty”.
The fact is both produce radioactive waste. What makes fusion stand out is the fact it’s a long, long, long way from practical realization.
“Maybe.” “Might be.” Yawn…
I exceed “break even” on energy production about half a second after lighting the wood pellets in my barbecue. Anyone want to throw me a few hundred million to scale that up to Drax levels?
The total energy provided to the 192 lasers used to heat the tiny pellet of hydrogen to fusion temperatures and pressures for a few billionths of a second was about 400 megajoules. This total input energy produced about 3.15 megajoules of fusion heat energy output. Thus it took about 130 times more energy input to create the fusion energy output over a few billionths of a second.Additionally if this fusion heat energy is to be converted to electricity significant additional thermodynamic losses will occur. Most of the press hype about this worthy accomplishment are lacking in appropriate engineering detail to inform readers.
Also claims made that fusion energy schemes have no radioactive waste products are also completely wrong.
Bravo if they didn’t cook the results a little. Yeah, I’m very jaded from decades of manipulated science of climate and the 75% of higher education budgets for woke boutique, zero-information course content faculties. And, of course math is racist so that could taint the study if objective was really achieved.
How much did the LLlab with 192 high energy lasers cost? Get back to me when the output is six to eight times the total inputs or the reaction is sustainable. Yet again, a decade away just like the 12960s 70s 80s….
this story reminds me so much of Theranos…
Who’s going to convince the Econuts that electricity generation based on the Hydrogen Bomb is safer that that generated by the Atomic Bomb :<)
Trust Chuck Schumer to say something completely stupid:
This astonishing scientific advance puts us on the precipice of a future no longer reliant on fossil fuels but instead powered by new clean fusion energy,
So when do we get our Mr. Fusion powerplants for our DeLoreans, Chuck? Until they engineer one, we’ll be using fossil fuels for transportation for decades to come. Unless there’s an unforeseen breakthrough in practical power storage that rivals the power and energy density of fossil fuels so we can store power from the fusion powerplants of the bright future when they come online in the next…century or two?
For those that consider fusion the “perfect’ energy source consider the following.
A listing of the many science and engineering problems hidden by proponents of fusion as the “perfect” energy source with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists link addressing these problems in much more detail also provided.
“As noted above, fusion reactions in the sun burn ordinary hydrogen at enormous density and temperature, sustained by an effectively infinite confinement time, and the reaction products are benign helium isotopes. Artificial (terrestrial) fusion schemes, on the other hand, are restricted to much lower particle densities and much more fleeting energy confinement, and are therefore compelled to use the heavier neutron-rich isotopes of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium—which are 24 orders of magnitude more reactive than ordinary hydrogen. (Think of the numeral one with 24 zeroes after it.) This gargantuan advantage in fusion reactivity allows human-made fusion assemblies to be workable with a billion times lower particle density and a trillion times poorer energy confinement than the levels that the sun enjoys. Consequently, the proponents of fusion reactors claim that when they are developed, fusion reactors will constitute a “perfect” energy source that will share none of the significant drawbacks of the much-maligned fission reactors.”
“But unlike what happens in solar fusion—which uses ordinary hydrogen—Earth-bound fusion reactors that burn neutron-rich isotopes have byproducts that are anything but harmless: Energetic neutron streams comprise 80 percent of the fusion energy output of deuterium-tritium reactions and 35 percent of deuterium-deuterium reactions.”
“Now, an energy source consisting of 80 percent energetic neutron streams may be the perfect neutron source, but it’s truly bizarre that it would ever be hailed as the ideal electrical energy source. In fact, these neutron streams lead directly to four regrettable problems with nuclear energy: radiation damage to structures; radioactive waste; the need for biological shielding; and the potential for the production of weapons-grade plutonium 239—thus adding to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, not lessening it, as fusion proponents would have it.”
“In addition, if fusion reactors are indeed feasible—as assumed here—they would share some of the other serious problems that plague fission reactors, including tritium release, daunting coolant demands, and high operating costs. There will also be additional drawbacks that are unique to fusion devices: the use of a fuel (tritium) that is not found in nature and must be replenished by the reactor itself; and unavoidable on-site power drains that drastically reduce the electric power available for sale.”
“To sum up, fusion reactors face some unique problems: a lack of a natural fuel supply (tritium), and large and irreducible electrical energy drains to offset. Because 80 percent of the energy in any reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium appears in the form of neutron streams, it is inescapable that such reactors share many of the drawbacks of fission reactors—including the production of large masses of radioactive waste and serious radiation damage to reactor components. These problems are endemic to any type of fusion reactor fueled with deuterium-tritium, so abandoning tokamaks for some other confinement concept can provide no relief.”
https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/
Advances have been made in aneutronic fusion that elude these issues. Appalling ignorance all around.
“Advances” in hype is more like it.
Robert Hirsch, former head of Fusion Research at DoE explains why magnetic confinement fusion systems are not amenable to serve eventually as commercial reactors. The critique equally applies to inertial confinement systems using lasers. These factors include fuels, radioactivity, energy gains, capital requirements etc.
Says Hirsch,
Note the language:
https://issues.org/fusion-research-time-to-set-a-new-path/
There are a number of new designs underway, such as Dense Plasma Focus. That’s where the future lies.
I’m not a physicist or a nuclear engineer, and won’t play one on the internet. Instead, I recall a conversation I had 19 years ago with someone who was. Met the guy on the QE2, having popped for a first-class ticket. You meet interesting people in first class on one of those crossings.
I asked him about fusion, and he replied that achieving positive “total Q” (aka positive EROEI) is the easy problem. He said the hard one is containment. The promoters fixate on the lack of spent fuel waste, but ignore the waste of the containment vessels themselves. He explained that the neutron bombardment of those vessels is orders of magnitude greater than what happens inside of fission reactors, and that no materials on earth can withstand it.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article, 2017, roughly matches what I was told in 2003. Thus, I am highly skeptical. They made the “breakthrough” announcement right smack at budget time, and relied on the media’s stupid, lazy stenographers to pass it along without even asking basic questions.
If my skepticism is going to be wrong, it’ll be wrong after I’m dead and gone. Frankly, I don’t think it’ll be wrong.
Something else. When I was in college in the 1970s, the Lyndon LaRouchies, who were conspiracy nutcases before conspiracy nutcases were cool, were hyping fusion along with their theories about the British royal family’s financial skulduggery. It was laughable then, and now we see the Biden administration and the media taking up the baton and running with it.
Apart from the science, which I admit to not understanding past a curious and reasonably intelligent yet non-specialist’s grasp, the heritage of fusion hype and the current reality offers good reason for cynicism.
Yes. And humans will never fly in aircraft powered by gasoline engines.
Aneutronic fusion does not generate neutrons ie radiation. The world has changed over the past 20 years.
No one has even come remotely close to demonstrating it. As you well know, but have curiously not menbtioned here, is that even the theoretical challenges are far greater with “aneutronic fusion” than with this form.
So… we can now update the delivery date on fusion to 10 years away?
Only if it can still be 10 years away 10 years from now? 😀
I am impressed that scientist that can not do an energy balance can fuse hydrogen atoms.
Smoke is coming out of my BS meter. Going out to the garage now to work on a patent for an energy producing device. From reading comments here all I need to violate the laws of is a garage.
The fuel pellet contains a diamond sphere encasing the fuel. They have to drop the pellets into the reactor (which clearly won’t work if they get any reasonable amount of fusion going) at a high rate to create heat. How much does each pellet cost?
This fusion “breakthrough” is such a colossal joke.
Fusion reactors are many decades, if not a century or more away from being viable.
it’s nearly impossible to hold 100 million C of heated plasma in a magnetic field 24/7/365.
Even the grant hounds admit “We’re decades away from fusion reactors being viable.”
This silly “fusion breakthrough” announcement was just a ploy to get $billions more in research grants, which will likely continue for a century…
The timing of this “fusion breakthrough” is also interesting….
Leftists will soon need to explain that the blackouts and cascading grid failures are being caused by their insane polices of shutting down far too many nuclear and fossil plants and futilely trying to replace them with expensive, intermittent and unreliable wind and solar energy.
Leftists will then say not to worry. We can still shutdown fossil fuel energy because fusion power is just around the corner so we can continue our insane wind and solar rollout to meet our Carbon Net-Zero target by 2035…
Not so much…
Leftists are truly evil…
Yes but if “fusion is just around the corner” then an equally justified position is that we should just keep using what works (fossil fuels) and not waste another dime on what doesn’t (wind and solar).
Then they either have to back off on their ‘necessary’ (read impossible) “transition” to (worse-than-useless) ‘renewables’ or admit that their “fusion is just around the corner” speculation is yet another steaming pile of manure.