Nuclear fusion research took a big step forward recently with the stunning announcement by the Department of Energy (DOE) that on August 8, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) — a powerful laser that fills a building the size of three football fields at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — had fired an intense pulse of light to heat and compress a bit of hydrogen weighing less than a grain of sand. The resulting fusion reactions, in which hydrogen nuclei combine to form helium, produced about two-thirds of the energy in the laser pulse. That’s triple what researchers expected and eight times the previous record set in February.
Scientists in the coming months will strive to repeat this result and to further increase the fusion energy produced. Fusion is sensitive to small changes and there are many aspects of the laser and the hydrogen target that can be fine-tuned. It is thus plausible to expect that experiments will soon produce more energy than the laser delivers. Achieving that elusive goal of “ignition” in laser fusion would open the door to tapping the energy stored in our planet’s most abundant resource, ordinary water, from which the hydrogen is derived. This would put the US far ahead of efforts in China, Russia, and France.
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