Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

LLNL laboratory in the United States for the first time to achieve a net energy gain in nuclear fusion reactions,"artificial sun" or will come true.

Explosive news! For the first time in history, humans have achieved a net energy gain from nuclear fusion reactions.

Net power gain is the ratio of the fusion power produced to the power used to heat the plasma.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, has produced more energy than it consumes in the process.

This means that mankind is one step closer to the goal of artificial sun.

Fossil fuels and conventional nuclear energy, or will withdraw from the stage of history!

What does the net energy gain of nuclear fusion reaction mean? What is "nuclear fusion"?

Simply put, it is a process in which two light nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus and release enormous amounts of energy.

We all know that all things grow on the sun, the sun is the source of all life on earth, where does the sun's energy come from?

is fusion.

In this thermonuclear reaction, two hydrogen atoms collide and fuse to form helium, which has a slightly smaller mass than the original hydrogen atom.

Thus, according to Einstein's signature E=mc² equation, this mass difference is converted into an explosion of energy.

620 million tons of hydrogen fusion is taking place every second at the core of the sun.

This energy allows us humans to survive.

In theory, a few grams of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) and tritium (extra heavy hydrogen) could produce one terajoule of energy, which is about what a person in a developed country would need in 60 years.

Since nuclear fusion can produce such a large amount of energy, can we humans DIY this process and create an "artificial sun"?

Yes, scientists have long since begun to think so.

Since mankind started the research on peaceful use of nuclear energy, how to use the energy generated by nuclear fusion reaction under controlled conditions has always been the ultimate goal of mankind (and the current nuclear power plant, the principle is nuclear fission reaction).

But one of the biggest problems with fusion is that the fusion process itself consumes a lot of energy. How do you make the fusion reaction release more energy than the input energy, and make this process sustainable?

Since the 1950s, countless physicists have hoped to produce more energy from nuclear fusion reactions than they consume.

If this biggest challenge is overcome, humanity will have access to massive amounts of carbon-free clean energy for the first time in history, completely changing the future energy roadmap.

That is to say, at that time, there will be no more greenhouse gases produced by coal and oil combustion, no more dangerous and long-lasting radioactive waste-mankind will have a real sense of "clean energy"!

Now it seems that the first step in this puzzle has been solved.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has achieved a "net energy gain" from an experimental nuclear fusion reactor, allowing nuclear fusion reactions to produce more energy than is consumed in the process, the Financial Times reported.

According to sources, the reaction produced 120 percent of the energy consumed, a fact confirmed by at least two researchers.

"For most of us, it's only a matter of time," a senior fusion scientist told the Washington Post.

The fusion reaction produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, about 120% of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the laser, and the specific data are still being analyzed.

Spokesmen for the Department of Energy and LLNL said they could not comment on the Financial Times report at this time, but US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said a "major scientific breakthrough" would be announced later today.

Fusion expert Dr. Arthur Turrell said,"If this result is finally confirmed, we will witness a historic moment."

All four reproductions failed. Human technology was locked down by Zhizi? In fact, scientists have witnessed this miracle before.

In August 2021, LLNL announced a major breakthrough: a record-breaking generation of more than 10 trillion watts of high-energy fusion energy-albeit for less than a second.

After amplifying and splitting the initial photon pulse into 192 ultraviolet laser beams, the device hits the target (containing frozen deuterium and tritium) with about 1.9 megajoules of energy in less than 4 billionths of a second, creating temperatures and pressures only seen in stars and thermonuclear bombs.

Faced with such a powerful pulse of energy, the nucleus will release a series of particles due to nuclear fusion, which will produce more fusion and more particles, thus forming a continuous fusion reaction.

By definition, a fusion reaction succeeds in "igniting" when it produces more energy than it consumes.

In the August experiment, the energy generated by nuclear fusion reaction has accounted for 70% of the input energy, which can be said to be very close to ignition.

However, in the next four experiments, the results were not reproduced.

The best of these was only 50 percent of the energy produced in August.

In this regard, the researchers believe that because it is currently near the critical point of fusion "ignition," small, accidental differences between different experiments will have a huge impact on the results.

It is not difficult to see from the failure of repeated experiments that researchers still cannot accurately understand, manipulate and predict such high-energy experiments for a long time.

Even the friend "chloromethane" joked: "I think human technology may really be locked up by Zhizi."

Why is nuclear fusion so difficult to replicate? Why is it so difficult for humans to replicate nuclear fusion?

This starts with the conditions for nuclear fusion reactions.

Nuclear fusion reactions occur in a state of matter called plasma.

Plasma is a kind of high temperature charged gas composed of positive ions and free moving electrons, which has unique properties different from solids, liquids and gases.

From left to right: solids, liquids, gases, plasmas In order to achieve fusion, atomic nuclei need to collide with each other at extremely high temperatures of more than 10 million degrees Celsius in order for them to overcome their mutual electric repulsion.

Once the nuclei overcome this repulsive force and come into close proximity to each other, the nuclear attraction between them exceeds the electric repulsion, enabling them to fuse.

To do this, many nuclei must be confined to a small space to increase the chances of collision.

In the Sun, there is a huge gravitational force, and the extreme pressure generated by this gravitational force is creating conditions for nuclear fusion to occur.

Inside the sun, hydrogen atoms are heated to plasma, electrons stop spinning around protons, and the released atoms fuse to form helium atoms and neutrons, releasing enormous amounts of energy-but there is a huge gravitational pull in the sun that can induce nuclear fusion, which we humans do not have.

On Earth, fusion of deuterium and tritium requires temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius, intense pressures, and sufficient confinement to keep the plasma and fusion reactions going long enough.

Now, our human experiments are very close to the conditions required for nuclear fusion reactors, but there is still a need to improve confinement performance and plasma stability.

Scientists from more than 50 countries are constantly experimenting with new materials and designing new technologies.

However, as we have seen above, many experiments have achieved fusion without net power gain.

And does this breakthrough mean that we are going to use pure clean energy? It's not.

First of all, even from a purely statistical point of view, a 120% net increase in energy is still far from enough. Scientists estimate that if fusion technology is to be practical, the energy output must be at least several times higher than the energy of the incoming laser.

Moreover, the efficiency of the NIF laser in this experiment is extremely low, that is, only a small part of the energy supplied to the laser in the experiment actually enters the laser beam, and most of the energy is wasted in the reaction that actually excites nuclear fusion.

According to this conversion efficiency, even if future lasers (such as solid-state lasers) can further improve the conversion efficiency, it is still a long way from 100% nuclear fusion applications.

But at least, we've achieved a step from 0 to 1.

A new generation of "artificial sun" in Taiwan has made progress again. It is not only American scientists who have built artificial sun.

As early as the 1950s, China also began to study controllable nuclear fusion.

Unlike LLNL's "inertial confinement fusion" approach, most fusion research to date has used annular reactors called tokamaks.

It works by heating hydrogen gas in a reactor to a temperature high enough to strip electrons from hydrogen nuclei and form a plasma (positively charged nuclei and negatively charged electron clouds). The magnetic field traps the plasma in a torus-shaped device, fusing atomic nuclei together and releasing energy in the form of neutrons to fly outward.

On December 4,2020, a new generation of "artificial sun" independently designed and constructed by Southwest Institute of Physics of Nuclear Industry of CNNC was built and realized its first discharge.

In October 2022, significant progress was made again_HL-2M plasma current exceeded 1 million amperes (1 megaampere).

This not only creates a new record for the operation of controllable nuclear fusion devices in China, but also marks an important step forward in the research and development of nuclear fusion in China from fusion ignition.

HL-2M tokamak is the largest tokamak with the highest parameters in China.

Its core parameter is plasma current intensity, and plasma current up to 1 million amperes (1 megaamperes) is a necessary condition for its fusion energy. Future tokamak fusion reactor must operate stably under megaamperes.

The breakthrough means that the device can operate routinely at plasma currents of more than 1 megaampere in the future, which is of great significance for China's independent design and operation of fusion reactors.

To sum up, the major announcement for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is expected to be broadcast live by the U.S. Department of Energy at 7 a.m. Pacific time on Tuesday, which is around 23 p.m. Beijing time tonight.

Will human history be changed forever? See you tonight!

References:

https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589dc7

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/12/12/nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-benefits/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02022-1

https://www.163.com/dy/article/HF5BLDSD0511F2M4.html

This article comes from Weixin Official Accounts: Xin Zhiyuan (ID: AI_era), author: Xin Zhiyuan Editorial Department

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