Fusion Ignition

Summary

Big Ideas Lab: Fusion Ignition Episode Summary

Episode Title: Fusion Ignition
Release Date: October 15, 2024
Host/Author: Mission.org
Podcast: Big Ideas Lab

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Introduction: A Historical Milestone

The episode "Fusion Ignition" delves into a pivotal moment in scientific history, marking six decades of relentless pursuit. On December 5, 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) executed what was heralded as their most successful experiment to date, utilizing the most energetic laser ever created. Host Kim Budel sets the stage:

[00:04] Kim Budel: "It was a moment six decades in the making."

The experiment aimed to achieve fusion ignition—a breakthrough where the energy output from a controlled fusion reaction surpasses the energy input.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF): Engineering Marvel

Central to this endeavor is the National Ignition Facility (NIF), an architectural and technological marvel. The facility's immense scale is highlighted by experts:

[00:22] Michael Staderman: "It is enormous in scale. The laser facility is 10 stories tall."

[00:26] Jean Michel de Nicolas: "It's the size of three football fields."

Constructed with intricate structures of concrete, steel, and glass, NIF houses the 192-beam laser system designed specifically to achieve fusion ignition. Jean Michel de Nicolas elaborates on the precision required:

[15:14] Jean Michel de Nicolas: "Each beam is about a foot by a foot in size. It's very massive, but it needs to be also extremely precise."

The facility became operational in spring 2009, representing the culmination of over three decades of technological advancements and research.

The Science Behind Fusion Ignition

Fusion ignition involves merging light nuclei—primarily deuterium and tritium—to form helium, releasing substantial energy in the process. This reaction is succinctly explained by Michael Staderman:

[04:31] Michael Staderman: "Fusion is the process by which two hydrogen atoms fuse together. They create a helium atom and release a neutron which carries energy."

The distinction between fusion and fission is crucial. Unlike fission, which splits heavy atoms and generates long-term radioactive waste, fusion promises a cleaner and virtually limitless energy source without the associated safety and waste concerns.

Kim Budel emphasizes the potential of fusion energy:

[05:42] Kim Budel: "Fundamentally, fusion can generate potentially limitless power because the fuel sources, including something as common as seawater, are available in abundant quantities on earth."

Overcoming Scientific and Technical Challenges

Achieving fusion ignition is fraught with challenges, primarily overcoming the electrostatic repulsion between positively charged nuclei. Richard Towne provides a foundational understanding:

[08:38] Unknown Speaker: "It's very hard to force together two positively charged particles. They want to repel each other. They don't want to bind together. So you have to overcome that repulsion."

To mimic the sun's natural fusion processes, LLNL employs inertial confinement fusion (ICF). This method uses powerful lasers to compress and heat a tiny capsule containing fusion fuel to extreme conditions:

[11:46] Michael Staderman: "We have a tiny little capsule that's filled with deuterium and tritium. And we squeeze that capsule using the x rays we create with our laser."

The intricacy of this process was likened by Budel to simulating the sun's gravity on Earth:

[12:42] Kim Budel: "So all we have to do is simulate the force of gravity at the center of the sun here on earth, an object which is 100 times wider and 300,000 times heavier than our planet. How hard could that be?"

Historical Journey: From Concept to Reality

The quest for fusion ignition at LLNL traces back to the 1960s, spearheaded by pioneers like John Knuckles. His visionary idea in 1972—using lasers as drivers for fusion—set the groundwork for decades of research:

[13:55] Michael Staderman: "With the invention of the laser, he put two and two together, said I can use the laser to provide the driver to be able to compress the fuel to the conditions I need to get fusion."

Despite initial optimism, early attempts were met with repeated setbacks. Staderman recounts the National Ignition Campaign launched post-2009:

[15:47] Michael Staderman: "We started what was called the National Ignition Campaign. ... within the first two years of running the facility, we would get ignition and we did not. And we did not even get close."

This period was characterized by tremendous anxiety and relentless perseverance, as the team grappled with the complexities of achieving the necessary conditions for ignition.

Fusion Ignition and National Security

Beyond its energy potential, fusion ignition plays a crucial role in national security, specifically within the Stockpile Stewardship Program. Initiated in the 1990s post-Cold War, this program ensures the reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without physical testing:

[07:46] John Knuckles: "Ever since the 90s, we have a moratorium on nuclear underground testing. And that means if you want to understand how and if a nuclear weapon will work, you have to get to other ways of doing the certification."

Achieving fusion ignition provides invaluable insights into nuclear reactions, thereby supporting the maintenance and safety of the nuclear arsenal. However, as John Knuckles notes, ignition is merely a milestone rather than the final objective:

[08:31] John Knuckles: "Ignition is a nice milestone to reach in this endeavor, but it's not the end point."

The Road Ahead: Future Prospects and Innovations

Despite the challenges, the pursuit of fusion ignition continues to drive technological and scientific innovation at LLNL. Kim Budel underscores the broader implications:

[05:54] Michael Staderman: "Fusion could fill that gap [in clean energy]... It could be a way to have a very clean, stable, reliable energy system at the kind of scale you would need."

However, Budel remains pragmatic about the timeline:

[07:02] Kim Budel: "Even with decades of research behind us, it could still be decades more before fusion energy is fueling the power grid."

The episode concludes by highlighting the unwavering commitment and visionary leadership within LLNL, setting the stage for future breakthroughs that may one day transform energy production and national security.

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Notable Quotes

• Kim Budel [00:04]: "It was a moment six decades in the making."
• Michael Staderman [04:31]: "Fusion is the process by which two hydrogen atoms fuse together. They create a helium atom and release a neutron which carries energy."
• Richard Towne [08:38]: "It's very hard to force together two positively charged particles. They want to repel each other. They don't want to bind together."
• John Knuckles [07:46]: "Ever since the 90s, we have a moratorium on nuclear underground testing."

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Conclusion

"Fusion Ignition" offers an in-depth exploration of one of the most ambitious scientific quests of our time. Through expert insights, historical context, and detailed explanations, listeners gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and triumphs in achieving fusion ignition. As LLNL continues to push the boundaries of what's possible, the episode underscores a future where fusion may revolutionize energy and ensure national security.

Transcript

[Kim Budel]

It was a moment six decades in the making. On December 5, 2022 scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory initiated their most successful experiment yet, using the most energetic laser ever created.

[Michael Staderman]

It is enormous in scale. The laser facility is 10 stories tall.

[Jean Michel de Nicolas]

It's the size of three football fields. Inside it, you have also structures in concrete, steel, and glass.

[Kim Budel]

The stage was set, and the destiny of a scientific quest spanning generations was waiting to be realized.

[Jean Michel de Nicolas]

Each beam is about a foot by a foot in size.

[Michael Staderman]

We concentrate all the energy into a little tiny target that's about a centimeter in diameter and create the most extreme conditions in the universe.

[Kim Budel]

In less than a blink of an eye, billionths of a second, the experiment unfolded. In that brief moment, the fate of a decades long scientific pursuit hung in the balance. Would the impossible finally happen? The teams could only speculate as the raw data began rolling in. But one thing was clear. They stood at the precipice of a potentially historic achievement. Success or failure, the attempt itself marked a milestone in the long scientific trek toward fusion ignition. But the days ahead would determine if this moment would be one for the.

[Richard Towne]

History books or fade with the whisper.

[Kim Budel]

Like so many attempts before it.

[Michael Staderman]

Certainly the story of ignition is a long story of both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

[Kim Budel]

Welcome to the Big Ideas Lab. Your weekly exploration inside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hear untold stories, meet boundary pushing pioneers, and get unparalleled access inside the gates.

[Richard Towne]

From national security challenges to computing revolutions, discover the innovations that are shaping tomorrow, today.

[Kim Budel]

Since its inception in 1952, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's defining responsibility has been national security work. In the early days of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was centered around splitting the atom, a process known as fission, as well as merging the atom known as fusion. The science was the backbone of powerful weapons like the atomic and hydrogen bombs. But as scientific understanding of these reactions evolved, so too did the lab's vision for the future. What if, instead of exploring the process of fusion in detonating weapons, you could create it in the laboratory using lasers? This new direction is all about fusion ignition. It's a mix of hardcore science and a dream of a cleaner future. Ignition refers to the moment when the energy from a controlled fusion reaction produces more energy out than in. It provides unprecedented capabilities to support the U.S. stockpile stewardship program, which keeps our nuclear deterrent safe, secure, and effective. In the absence of testing. It's also a crucial first step in a fusion energy future.

[Michael Staderman]

Fusion is the process by which two hydrogen atoms fuse together. They create a helium atom and release a neutron which carries energy. So you get more energy out than you put in if you can create a self sustaining fusion reaction. So the other nuclear process that creates energy is fission, and nucleus splits apart, and again you get two fission fragments and you get a neutron which carries energy away from the reaction. If you can make fusion reactions net energy positive, so more energy out than it took to create the fusion conditions in the target that you're working with, you can create clean energy. So energy at the scale that a fission power plant could produce, for example, but without many of the long term radioactive waste challenges that fission has.

[Kim Budel]

That's Kim Budel, director of Lawrence Livermore national laboratory. She'd be the first to tell you that ignition was long considered by many to be unachievable.

[Michael Staderman]

The original idea that you could create fusion ignition in the laboratory using lasers was made 60 years ago, and that was shortly after the laser had been invented. So it was really quite an amazing leap of imagination to say, hey, here's this new tool. We don't really know much about it or what it can do, but we think if it was energetic enough, it could be used to create x rays, which could be used to compress this capsule. Turns out it was a little harder than anticipated and required an immense revolution in technology. And so over those 60 years, we've been learning a lot about what it takes to compress a little sphere very uniformly, how precisely it has to be manufactured so that the little imperfections in the capsule don't grow and send cold material into that hot fusion fuel. We've learned a lot about how to make these big lasers that deliver the amount of energy that's required to push hard enough and sustain that push for long enough to get to these conditions.

[Kim Budel]

Fundamentally, fusion can generate potentially limitless power because the fuel sources, including something as common as seawater, Are available in abundant quantities on earth.

[Michael Staderman]

So as we try to think about a clean energy future, Most of the sources we have of producing power at scale that is not variable have significant challenges. Either they use fossil fuels and produce a lot of greenhouse gases, or it's nuclear power, fission power, which is very efficient and generates a lot of power, but has long term nuclear waste, challenges associated with it, and safety concerns from the public. Solar and wind are great, but they're intermittent. And in order for them to provide energy at scale consistently, you need long term storage. So when the sun is shining and you're producing solar power, how do you store enough of it to power the grid when it's dark? Fusion could Fill that gap, it generates power like fission. It doesn't have the same kind of safety or long term waste considerations that fission has, and it doesn't produce greenhouse gases. So it could be a way to have a very clean, stable, reliable energy system at the kind of scale you would need. And it would work anywhere in the country.

[Kim Budel]

Even with decades of research behind us, it could still be decades more before fusion energy is fueling the power grid. Thankfully, fusion ignition has more immediate benefits and applications as well, most notably the stockpile stewardship program, which was initiated in the 1990s following the end of the cold war. Physical testing of nuclear weapons ceased in 1992. In order to ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, the lab had to get creative with how to learn more about these weapons. One way to understand what happens inside a nuclear reaction is, you guessed it, to achieve fusion ignition.

[John Knuckles]

Ever since the 90s, we have a moratorium on nuclear underground testing. And that means if you want to understand how and if a nuclear weapon will work, you have to get to other ways to doing the certification.

[Kim Budel]

Michael Staderman is the program manager for target fabrication at the lab. He's been at the lab for 20 years and worked alongside the team studying both fusion ignition and stockpile stewardship.

[John Knuckles]

And so we have models that predict how a material will behave and how it will react. But without a way of testing those, those models don't take us very far. And ignition is a nice milestone to reach in this endeavor, but it's not the end point.

[Kim Budel]

Richard Towne is the lab's associate program director for inertial confinement fusion science, or icf.

[Unknown]

Fusion, working backwards is basically combining light ions together, fusing them, pushing them together to form a new element. So typically native, we use deuterium and tritium. We bang them together to produce helium. That helium is actually lighter than constituent parts, and that releases a bunch of energy. So through the Einstein's famous E equals mc squared.

[Kim Budel]

Let's pause there. For those of us who aren't physicists, here's what Richard means. Imagine you have two gallons of paint, one gallon of blue paint, and one gallon of yellow paint. If you pour both gallons in the same bucket, the two paints mix or fuse to create a new color, and you get green paint. In the case of fusion, your blue and yellow cans of paint are deuterium and tritium. When fused together, they form helium. Your green paint. Simple enough, right? But here's the special thing about fusion. Imagine that in the process of combining the two gallons of blue and Yellow paint. The resulting green paint actually weighed less after mixing than its two original parts. How is that possible? Where did that extra mass go? Here's where. As Richard mentioned, e mc squared comes in. In this famous formula, E stands for energy, M stands for mass, and c stands for the speed of light. So e mc squared is saying energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. What does that mean in our story? It means that the little bit of lost mass didn't just vanish. It had to go somewhere. It was converted into energy and released. At this point, you may be wondering if it's as simple as mixing two gallons of paint, Then what's all the fuss about? What makes achieving fusion power and fusion ignition so challenging? Why have researchers spent 60 plus years trying to figure it out without success? Well, it turns out that combining the deuterium and tritium needed for achieving ignition requires near ideal circumstances and a heck of a lot of energy.

[Unknown]

It's very hard to force together two positively charged particles. They want to repel each other. They don't want to bind together. So you have to overcome that repulsion.

[Michael Staderman]

The way the sun creates fusion and fusion ignition is through gravity. So there's a lot of deuterium and tritium, which are heavy isotopes of hydrogen. And the immense gravity of the sun pushes them together and causes them to fuse. And that drives this energy process.

[Unknown]

The sun does it by being massive and big. And it uses gravity to keep the fusion fuel and compress it together.

[Michael Staderman]

So we have a tiny little capsule that's filled with deuterium and tritium. And we squeeze that capsule using the x rays we create with our laser.

[Unknown]

You make it very hot, and it's not super dense. The particles circulate around and they collide. The approach that we use at Livermore is natural confinement fusion. And we use basically lasers to compress the fuel to extremely high pressures. And actually the fuel together, it's inertial because it's just the capsule that contains the fusion fuel is just using that inertia of that capsule to keep the implosion together just for long enough to enable this fusion reaction to occur.

[Michael Staderman]

That capsule, compressed enough so to a high enough density, fast enough, and hold it together long enough that we can create that same self sustaining fusion reaction that you see in the sun.

[Kim Budel]

So all we have to do is simulate the force of gravity at the center of the sun here on earth, an object which is 100 times wider and 300,000 times heavier than our planet. How hard could that be?

[Unknown]

John knuckles, who pioneered ICF research had this idea back in the 60s, like, hey, I can generate fusion yield. But he didn't have a driver. He didn't know he can't use high explosives or whatever. How could you get this to work? With invention of the laser, he put two and two together, said I can use the laser to provide the driver to be able to compress the fuel to the conditions I need to get fusion. NGO and he published this paper back in 1972 when I was not even at high school.

[Michael Staderman]

Right.

[Unknown]

But he published that paper and that really kick started, I would say, ICF research in the US and around the world.

[Kim Budel]

At the time that John Knuckles was sharing his research, it wasn't clear if ignition could be achieved. But what was clear was that in order to try, it would take technology and a facility that didn't yet exist.

[Michael Staderman]

When we started building the laser, there were seven core technologies that were required to make it work that didn't exist. So the team set out on this incredible journey to build this multibillion dollar laser facility while still trying to invent the components that would have to go into the building. So there were many moments during that journey where people were really pressing hard to find a technology breakthrough to make something possible.

[Richard Towne]

Over the next three decades, the lab.

[Kim Budel]

Manufactured a series of increasingly more powerful laser Systems.

[Richard Towne]

And in 1997, this work eventually culminated in the construction of the national ignition.

[Kim Budel]

Facility, or NIF, a state of the.

[Richard Towne]

Art 192 beam laser facility designed to achieve fusion ignition. In spring 2009, the building was completed, becoming the world's largest and highest energy laser system.

[Jean Michel de Nicolas]

It's actually a very impressive building. Inside it you have also structures in the concrete, steel and glass. It's literally a marvel of engineering.

[Kim Budel]

Jean Michel de Nicolas is the lab's program co director for laser science and system engineering.

[Jean Michel de Nicolas]

Some part of the building is buried under the ground. Laser bays are about 120 meters in length, and the beam traverses four times this amount of length to get amplified through stimulated emission and bringing their energy to a huge amount. Each beam is about a foot by a foot in size. It's very massive, but it needs to be also extremely precise.

[Kim Budel]

But building the facility was just the first step of an even greater hill to climb.

[Michael Staderman]

While we finally turned the laser on at full scale in 2009, we started what was called the National Ignition Campaign. So we'd been doing models and simulations throughout this whole time, designing our capsule and our little target assembly and really getting ready, fully anticipating that within the first two years of running the facility, we would get ignition and we did not. And we did not even get close. And so there was tremendous anxiety in the system because everything we tried netted the same result.

[Kim Budel]

The same result again and again and again. Was it even possible to achieve ignition? What would it take to tip the scales? In our next episode of Big Ideas Lab, you'll meet more of the visionaries challenging the boundaries of the possible and learn about the fascinating tools they are employing along the way. Stay tuned for a journey into the heart of scientific innovation, where the impossible becomes reality.

[Richard Towne]

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory invites you to join our diverse team of professionals where opportunities abound for engineers, scientists, IT experts.

[Kim Budel]

Welders, administrative and business professionals, and more.

[Richard Towne]

At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, your contributions are not just jobs, they're a chance to make an impact. From strengthening US Security to leading the charge in revolutionary energy solutions and expanding the boundaries of scientific knowledge, our culture at the lab values collaboration, innovation and a relentless pursuit of excellence. We're committed to nurturing your professional journey within a supportive workspace and offering a comprehensive benefits package designed to ensure your well being and secure your future. Seize the opportunity to help solve something monumental. Dive into Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's wide variety of job openings at LLNL.govcareers where you can also learn more about our application process. This is your chance to join a team dedicated to a mission that matters. Make your mark. Visit llnl.govcareers today to discover the roles waiting for you. Remember, your expertise might just be the spotlight of our next podcast interview. Don't delay. Uncover the myriad of opportunities available at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

[Kim Budel]

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[Richard Towne]

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[Kim Budel]

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