LLNL physicist Tammy Ma shares fusion goals at TED conference

Livermore’s dream of abundant clean energy took the stage last week at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) 2024 conference in Vancouver, Canada.

In her Trailblazer TED Talk, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) plasma physicist Tammy Ma shares the lab’s latest efforts to bring fusion power to the commercial grid.

Jack Ma said that when we make fusion energy a reality, energy will become so abundant that it will no longer be a limited resource. This will change the world as we know it. When energy becomes essentially unlimited, there are no restrictions on the ways in which that energy can be used, and every country will become energy independent; standards of living will increase around the world; and we will be able to use energy in creative new ways.

Ma cited energy-intensive technologies such as high-yield vertical farming, desalination and direct carbon capture that would become more economically viable in solving the world’s food, water and climate problems given cheap, abundant electricity.

In December 2022, LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved its namesake ignition milestone, demonstrating a net positive fusion reaction.

Ma said that for the first time in history, we have produced a controlled fusion reaction in the laboratory that produces more energy than a laser can produce when turned on.

A year later, the Department of Energy awarded $16 million to a group led by LLNL tasked with accelerating the commercialization of fusion energy.

Jennifer M. Granholm, then U.S. Secretary of Energy, said that utilizing fusion energy is one of the biggest scientific and technological challenges of the 21st century. We are now confident that fusion energy is not only possible, but likely to become a reality. Scientists at these centers will be at the vanguard of game-changing and planet-saving breakthroughs.

The four-year project, led by Ma and known as the Science and Technology Accelerated Research in Fusion Innovation and Reactor Engineering (STARFIRE) Center, will establish workforce plans and develop early-stage supply chains to lay the foundation for prototype commercial power based on NIF laser confinement designs. plant.

Jack Ma said that new fusion startups have emerged around the world.

STARFIRE is coupled with ongoing developments at NIF, such as LLNL scientist Alison Browar’s recent work developing shadow cone blockers that shield optical defects caused by powerful lasers. While microscopic surface damage previously increased with each laser shot, the new shield protects these areas from further enlargement, extending the life of the optic and increasing the number of shots between required maintenance.

Nuclear fusion is the process of merging two atomic nuclei into a single, heavier nucleus, releasing large amounts of energy without the risk of carbon emissions, long-lasting nuclear waste, or runaway reactions.

One pound of fusion fuel has the energy equivalent of 5,000 barrels of oil or 3.5 million pounds of coal, Ma said, adding that at today’s electricity usage levels, there is enough fusion fuel on Earth to last 30 billion years. If you ask me, I’d call it energy security.

NIF’s fusion burns deuterium, a type of hydrogen that occurs naturally in seawater.

The 10-story NIF, which covers an area about three football fields, amplifies the power of 192 laser beams that travel through a mile of optics before converging on a single target the size of a peppercorn. . The impact on the target is enough to fuse atoms.

Ma said the laser is a thousand times more powerful than the entire U.S. power grid. It is the most powerful laser in the world. With our giant lasers, we can actually create miniature stars on Earth.

Since ignition, NIF has repeated this feat four times, with the most recent and largest reaction on February 12, which used 2.2 megajoules of laser energy to produce 5.2 megajoules of energy.

But to move toward a fusion energy future, we must figure out how to harness this energy in operating fusion power plants, Ma said.

LLNL is responsible for protecting the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile and has been working to generate controlled fusion reactions for about 60 years. Although NIF has since demonstrated ignition, the facility was never designed as a power plant, but rather as a way to study nuclear fusion reactions without detonating a nuclear weapon.

The Mas team is now working to leverage NIF’s achievements to build a fusion power plant connected to the commercial grid.