How many know that scientists have been working to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion and energy gain in the laboratory for more than half a century?
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore California was originally approved by congress as a cornerstone in the US nuclear weapons ‘Stockpile Stewardship Program’ to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear deterrent without full-scale underground testing. Wikipedia describes it as: “a laser-based inertial confinement fusion research facility that uses powerful lasers to heat and compress a small amount of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.” The Guardian describes it as: “a giant facility designed to recreate the power of the stars in an oversized warehouse in California.”
It describes itself as: “the ‘Crown Joule’ of laser science.”
The world’s largest laser is scheduled to be fired in earnest sometime within the next 12 months. When this happens the NIF’s 192 lasers will direct nearly two million joules of ultraviolet energy in billionth-of-a-second pulses at a frozen bead of hydrogen about 2 millimetres in diameter.
When all that energy slams into the miniature sized target it will generate unprecedented temperatures and pressures – temperatures of more than 100 million degrees and pressures more than 100 billion times Earth’s atmosphere. Just what the doctor ordered if your objective is to fuse hydrogen atoms and convert the excess mass to energy (E=mc²). Simulating these conditions, which occur naturally in the cores of stars and thermo-nuclear weapons, will give researchers an opportunity to understand the physics necessary to create fusion ignition and energy gain for future power production.
When one gets past the jargon the implication is startling – the world’s first perpetual motion machine! Well perhaps not quite, but it certainly comes close.
According to NIF one cubic kilometre of sea water has an amount of fusion energy equivalent to our entire remaining oil reserves. Should it work this could change the future energy map of the world and shatter the current concerns over energy security caused by vast amounts of our globe’s oil being locked-up beneath a few nations.
Apparently the world’s coastlines would be completely unaffected by this loss – good news for beach goers.
However, before our fusion powered automobiles are delivered with a complimentary bottle of seawater (enough to last a lifetime according to the manufacturers) there is a small problem to overcome.
“Every NIF experimental shot requires the coordination of up to 60 000 control points for electronic, high voltage, optical and mechanical devices. The motorised mirrors and lenses, energy and power sensors, video cameras, laser amplifiers and diagnostic instruments need to be precisely controlled by a large-scale computer system as sophisticated as any in government service or private industry.”
Is this too hot to be the next cool thing?
Lest there be confusion
We have received a number of queries from readers wanting to know if we will still be publishing articles by SAI&C contributing editor, Michael Brown, in the future. Since there were too many to answer individually we decided to respond in print.
Yes, we will be publishing Mike Brown’s case studies on a bi-monthly basis in the future – the next ‘Case History’ will appear in the August edition. Titled ‘The horrible flywheel effect’, Michael examines some of the control problems encountered at smelters with slow temperature loop dynamics.
Note: Features editor, Andrew Ashton, took his new Nikon along to the recent Process Expo held at Nasrec. Interested readers can visit www.instrumentation.co.za/process to view a selection of the photographs he took.
Till next time,
Steven Meyer, editor:
SA Instrumentation & Control
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