Control laser fusion reaction

After years of research and manufacturing seem to have no stopping, finally, a giant laser complex worth $ 5 billion has been released by scientists and achieved the first step of success is possible. Currently the fusion reaction is similar to the Sun. This is money to usher in a new era of energy that is almost endless for future use.

At a detonation research facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, scientists paired 192 giant laser beams into a football-sized complex and shot simultaneously. Place a small cylindrical gold block containing fusion material and completely evaporate it.

Theoretically, this process creates an extremely powerful X-ray wave directed at a particle of size smaller than pepper, crushing the hydrogen atoms inside the helium and releasing extremely large energy. like the explosion of a miniature gas bomb.

However, in the last four years since the laboratory began operating in 2009, the last step is to convert the hydrogen atom into helium which has been unsuccessful or the amount of helium produced is very small.

Finally, according to a recent report in Nature, the final phase of the project has made great strides. In two experiments conducted in September and November last year, scientists found that bombarding molten hydrogen could produce more energy than normal conditions. However, the laser-controlled fusion reaction is still far from reality because only 1% of laser energy is accessible to hydrogen.

Scientist at Livermore is also the project leader, Dr. Omar A. Hurricane shared: "We were dancing and screaming because we were so excited. We made a big step forward compared to the past. This might be called a big turning point in the progress of the project, but it might be a bit superficial, but it really is, we have made the internal fuel release unmatched energy. compared to previous studies ".

Scientists in the project succeeded by changing the shape of laser pulses for hydrogen heating, a mixture of two heavier isotopes, deuterium and tritium. The next task of the scientists is to find ways to increase the pressure to overcome obstacles to create a more stable and large-scale thermonuclear reaction. One suggestion is to change the shape of the material chamber from cylindrical to similar to a rugby ball.

This is a promising result in being able to complete the fusion reaction. Initial success is that helium nuclei have been formed from the explosive energy of nearby hydrogen atoms. Currently, only a small amount of hydrogen in the fuel mass is combined and access to the energy from the laser to detonate. Scientists still have to find a way to activate the chain reaction so that all of the materials are involved in the reaction to maximize the energy.

The astronomer physicist, Professor Robert J. Goldston, said it was possible to imagine the entire cycle as a match of a match then set fire to a large pile of wood. And the initial success of the project could be understood to be "about to fire the match" . This is an important step of the project.

Scientists have long been keen to conduct fusion reactions to create a cleaner source of clean energy than fossil fuels or nuclear energy. The nuclear reaction still suffers from the creation of products that are difficult to decompose after the separation of uranium atoms.

The plan to set up a detonation laboratory at Livermore has been available for more than two decades to conduct energy research and maintain nuclear weapons for the United States. The project also aims to simulate and verify nuclear explosions with computers instead of actual implementation. However, continuous failure experiments show that scientists' understanding of fusion reactions is still incomplete.

In 2012, the laboratory failed in the project: activating a fusion reaction that could sustain itself and produce a greater amount of energy to supply the laser activation system. New developments in recent trials have helped scientists gain more confidence in future successes. At the same time, this is also the cause of maintaining this yearly multi-billion dollar laboratory.

However, lasers are not the only approach scientists think of to exploit eternal energy. Scientists also tested a donut-shaped reactor called tokamaks using magnetic fields to contain and compress hydrogen fuel. In the late 1990s, the Joint European Torus lab in the UK was able to generate 16 million watts of electricity in an instant from a fusion reaction. The level of energy produced is 70% of the energy required to produce a reaction.

A similar international project called ITER has just begun to build reactors in France and is expected to operate by 2020.