The researchers induced fusion reactions with giant lasers

Researchers at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, using the world’s most powerful laser, have succeeded in releasing energy from small nuclei together. The fusion of hydrogen nuclei into a large nucleus is called fusion, and it is the reaction that gives energy to the Sun and all other stars.

– As a result of physics, it’s very exciting, says Goran Erickson, professor of applied nuclear physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Uppsala University.

Since the early 1970s, scientists have tried to design fusion power plants, where hydrogen is heated to a higher temperature than the sun’s interior, without success. Nuclear fission or fission, i.e. a process similar to that in nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons, is a way of extracting energy from the nucleus. A fusion furnace will give us clean, harmless, cheap and perennial energy. The fuel is easily accessible, and it does not produce greenhouse gases or any hazardous and durable waste that we have had to deal with for thousands of years.

But this process is difficult to suppress. It takes a lot of energy for two atoms to fuse together because they are both positively charged and therefore chase each other. So far, only large-scale fusion of hydrogen bombs has been possible.

NIF researchers The 192 laser beams operate on a lump of hydrogen, about the size of a pepper, which compresses and heats up to 100 million degrees Celsius. On August 8, they were able to start a connection reaction of one in ten to one in ten, According to a press release from the lab.

The results have not yet been published and reviewed by other researchers, and the energy of the fusion reaction is still only 70 percent of the energy supplied by the laser. But if there are results, it is an even more important development for research on fusion.

They seem to have received burning plasma, where the reactions continue without the need to add external energy. It can provide some parts of the puzzle in our understanding of the physics of this, says Goren Erickson.

The purpose of the research facility NIF is primarily to study the reactions that can occur in hydrogen bombs, and it is difficult or impossible to measure laser testing for large-scale energy production. In the fall, tests will be carried out on the same type of fuel in a fusion research facility jet in the UK, which could be very interesting to combine as a potential energy source in the future, says Goren Erickson.

– There is a type of furnace expected in future fusion reactors. Those results can directly translate how it works and what we need to learn more, he says.

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