by If it looks like it has a Hollywood science fiction show, it may be suitable, because what you do here does stars on earth. “We are able to make miniature stars, the cause of merger is the same reaction that makes the sun and stars,” said Tammy Ma, who runs the Fusion Energy Initiative in the national ignition device (NIF) in Livermore, California. It is part of the same government laboratory that guarantees the security and reliability of the country’s nuclear stock.
“Every time we carry out a fusion experiment on the NIF, we are actually the hottest place in the entire solar system, hotter than the center of the sun,” said Ma.
The scientists here use the largest laser that has ever been built. It is 1,000 times more powerful than the entire US electrical network and is located in a solid space the size of three soccer fields. 192 laser rays travel almost a mile here and then focus on a tiny destination or fuel pellet, smaller than a pepper grain. When the lasers met the pellet, the atoms “merge” together and fill energy.
Correspondent Ben Tracy with Tammy MA, who heads the Intial Fusion Energy Initiative, in the national ignition facility in Livermore, California, where the ignition ignition was achieved. / Credit: CBS News
This small fuel pellet has only about two millimeters in diameter. But the consequences could be huge.
Fusion is a process that merges atoms and releases more energy than the split (the atoms split apart). The split is used by today’s nuclear power plants and creates dangerous nuclear waste. Fusion not.
Theoretically, fusion would provide an almost limbless source for clean and safe energy that participate in our world without the fossil fuels that warm up the planet and contribute to climate change. It would make energy-intensive technologies such as vertical agriculture and water relaxation much cheaper and might solve the food and water problems of the world. Ma said: “It is completely clean. There is no carbon anywhere in the equation. There is no high -ranking waste of nuclear waste. You can use fusion power plants almost anywhere.
But fusion is difficult. After 60 years of research by scientists at NIF, they finally created a reaction (also known as the “ignition”), which used more energy than it used. The breakthrough in 2022Crucial for the creation of a merger power plant, made headlines worldwide. People had unlocked the power of the stars.
Within the breakthrough of the core fusion, which could be a step towards unlimited clean energy in the distant future (“60 minutes”)
You have reached ignition several times since then, and now the race is switched on to generate enough energy to consistently operate a commercial fusion system.
BOB MUMGAARD is CEO and co-founder of Commonwealth Fusion Systems outside of Boston, one of more than two dozen fusion startups received by the government and investors billions of dollars of funds. “It will take time, it will take work, but this is the birth of an industry,” said Mumgaard.
Instead of lasers, Commonwealth uses a cloud of overheated plasma, which is burning at around 180 million degrees Fahrenheit and is kept in place by massive magnets that the company produces on site. “The magnets in this machine will be the strongest magnets in the world,” said Mumgaard. “[They] Could lift an aircraft carrier. “
Construction of a merged energy chamber at Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Devens, Mass. / Credit: CBS News
Commonwealth expects to complete his demonstration reactor next year. It has just announced plans to build its first power of power in Virginia, but this will only be lending energy into the network in the next decade. The demonstration reactor, said Mumgaard, “is the penultimate step.”
Critics point out that the merger was a sacred grail that was always a sacred grail, always 20 to 30 years away. But startups like Commonwealth say that this time is different. The technology is as quick as the need for clean energy increases – stars who are looking for stars on earth.
“This is not a paper exercise for us,” said Mumgaard. “We put this machine together, we buy the parts, we edit the parts and everything comes at the time when the world really needs something like that. I think that’s a really cool story.”
For more information:
Fusion Energy Initiative, National Inflammation facility, Livermore, Calif.
History produced by Chris Spinder and John Goodwin. Editor: Emanuele Secci.
See also:
Big Tech’s big bet on nuclear power to fuel artificial intelligence (“Sunday morning”)Apple CEO Tim Cook when creating a clean energy future (“Sunday morning”) within Scotland’s hydropower Marvel (“CBS this morning: Saturday”) “Motor problems”: How greenhouse gases threaten our world (“Sunday morning”)Sue climate change: bring companies with fossil fuels to court (“Sunday morning”)Batteries and the new “Lithium Gold-Rush” (“Sunday morning”)
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