The announcement sparked the enthusiasm of many scientists around the world. A public laboratory in the United States on Tuesday welcomed a “historic breakthrough” after it achieved thanks to the merger nuclear An energy never achieved before.
The experiment, conducted Aug. 8 at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, was “enabled by focusing laser light” of at least 192 “on a lead-sized target” for hunting, explains A. communication. This had the effect of “producing a hair-diameter hot spot, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts by melting, for 100 millionths of a second”. “That’s eight times
energy than during the last trials conducted in the spring.
Produces less waste
Proponents of nuclear fusion consider tomorrow’s energy, because it produces little waste and no greenhouse gases. It differs from fission, a technology used in nuclear power plants, which involves breaking the bonds of heavy atomic nuclei to recover energy.
Fusion is the reverse process: we “marry” two light atomic nuclei to create a heavy nucleus. In this case, there are two isotopes (atomic variants) of hydrogen, which gives rise to helium. This is the process that works in stars, including our sun.
“Historic breakthrough”
“This breakthrough puts the researchers very close to the ignition threshold,” according to the press release, the moment when the energy produced exceeds that used to trigger the reaction. Preparations are already underway to reproduce this experiment, which will take “several months,” reports the press release, which specifies that detailed data will be published in a scientific journal.
“This finding is a landmark achievement for self-contained fusion research,” said Kim Bodell, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which the NIF relies on. “This is the most significant advance in inertial fusion since its inception in 1972,” said Professor Stephen Rose, co-director of the Center for Research in this Area at Imperial College London. But “transforming this concept into a source of renewable electric energy is likely to be a long process and will involve overcoming significant technical challenges,” whatever the mood of Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the same center in London.
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