Nuclear fusion instead of so called unreliable, intermittent renewable energy like wind and solar! Renewable energy is largely such a waste of money and resources!
"A simpler technique for generating fusion energy with lasers promises to make the approach much more cost effective—provided it can be scaled up. ...
The best performing shot, scaled up 4.2 times to NIF size, would have produced 1.6 MJ from a 2.15-MJ pulse, the researchers describe today in a pair of papers in Nature Physics. Although that isn’t energy gain, it would have created a burning plasma. The team hopes further tweaks will get them to shots that, if scaled up, would yield energy gain. “That’s our goal and we should achieve it without major modifications,” says LLE chief scientist Riccardo Betti. ..."
From the abstract:
"Focussing laser light onto the surface of a small target filled with deuterium and tritium implodes it and leads to the creation of a hot and dense plasma, in which thermonuclear fusion reactions occur. In order for the plasma to become self-sustaining, the heating of the plasma must be dominated by the energy provided by the fusion reactions—a condition known as a burning plasma. A metric for this is the generalized Lawson parameter, where values above around 0.8 imply a burning plasma. Here, we report on hydro-equivalent scaling of experimental results on the OMEGA laser system and show that these have achieved core conditions that reach a burning plasma when the central part of the plasma, the hotspot, is scaled in size by at least a factor of 3.9 ± 0.10, which would require a driver laser energy of at least 1.7 ± 0.13 MJ. In addition, we hydro-equivalently scale the results to the 2.15 MJ of laser energy available at the National Ignition Facility and find that these implosions reach 86% of the Lawson parameter required for ignition. Our results support direct-drive inertial confinement fusion as a credible approach for achieving thermonuclear ignition and net energy in laser fusion."
From the abstract:
"Irradiating a small capsule containing deuterium and tritium fuel directly with intense laser light causes it to implode, which creates a plasma hot enough to initiate fusion reactions between the fuel nuclei. Here we report on such laser direct-drive experiments and observe that the fusion reactions produce more energy than the amount of energy in the central so-called hot-spot plasma. This condition is identified as having a hot-spot fuel gain greater than unity. A hot-spot fuel gain of around four was previously accomplished at the National Ignition Facility in indirect-drive inertial confinement fusion experiments where the capsule is irradiated by X-rays. In that case, up to 1.9 MJ of laser energy was used, but in contrast, our experiments on the OMEGA laser system require as little as 28 kJ. As the hot-spot fuel gain is predicted to grow with laser energy and target size, our work establishes the direct-drive approach to inertial fusion as a promising path towards burning and ignited plasmas in the laboratory. Additionally, we report a record (direct-drive) fusion yield of 0.9 kJ on OMEGA, which we achieved with thin-ice deuterium–tritium liner targets."
Demonstration of a hydrodynamically equivalent burning plasma in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (no public access)
Demonstration of hot-spot fuel gain exceeding unity in direct-drive inertial confinement fusion implosions (no public access)
OMEGA laser system
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