By Anthony Lui
Fusion powers it all. It takes place in the heart of stars and provides the power that drives the universe. When two or more atomic nuclei combine to form one or more heavier atomic nuclei, a very small portion of its mass is converted into an immense amount of kinetic energy. The opposite of this process is called fission, which is the conventional method of all nuclear power plants today. However, after decades of research, in December 2022, American researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California recorded the first-ever net energy production with nuclear fusion, meaning that more energy was released than the amount used to cause this reaction. This was a major breakthrough, giving us the first glimpse of a potentially clean and efficient energy source, utilizing deuterium, which can be extracted from water, and tritium, which will be produced inside the power station, as fuel, and produced several times more energy as well as less radioactive waste when compared to fission. So, let's take a deeper look at this “nuclear fusion breakthrough” everyone’s talking about.
The first-ever "fusion ignition" was achieved on December 5th, at 1:03 am at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. National Ignition Facility, the world's largest and most powerful laser system, was used to fire 192 powerful laser beams at the center, squeezing isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium, and tritium within a 2mm wide diamond capsule that is 100 times smoother than a mirror. Although this experiment yielded 3.15 megajoules of energy by using 2.05 megajoules to power lasers, only about 4 percent of the fuel used was converted into energy. This process mimics the gravitational compression the Sun relies on to overcome the coulombic repulsion between atoms and achieve fusion. In this trial, within 8 nanoseconds, the fuel was compressed into half the width of a human hair, achieving a temperature of 100 million kelvin and 350 billion atmospheric pressure, basically making a mini star down on Earth.
Although there were already successful attempts with producing energy with nuclear fusion technology, real power plants, ones that aren't just prototypes, will mostly likely take a decade or so to construct. However, the future of fusion energy generators holds great promise compared to fission-based energy systems. As fusion energy production involves the fusion of light atomic nuclei to release energy. Unlike fission reactions, which involve splitting heavy atomic nuclei, fusion reactions do not have the same risk of runaway chain reactions or catastrophic meltdowns. Fusion reactors inherently have improved safety features, making them less prone to accidents and minimizing potential nuclear disasters. Although deploying practical fusion reactors is still several decades away, this offers the prospect of a safer, more sustainable, and virtually inexhaustible source of clean energy once the technological challenges are overcome.
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