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

The US Secretary of Energy said that the commercialization of nuclear fusion may be achieved in the next few decades, but there is a good chance that it will not be 50-60 years as previously mentioned.

Human beings seem to be one step closer to the goal of "artificial sun".

On December 13, local time, officials from the US Department of Energy announced that the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, funded by the US government, had successfully achieved "net energy gain" in nuclear fusion for the first time.

The net power gain is the ratio of the fusion power generated to the power used to heat the plasma.

It is reported that the experiment input 2.05 megajoules of energy to the target, resulting in a fusion energy output of 3.15 megajoules, which is more than 50% more than the energy input.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granhom called the breakthrough a "milestone achievement" in a statement.

What does "net energy gain" mean? Why is this a "milestone achievement"?

Because nuclear fusion ignition, as a key step in the realization of controllable nuclear fusion, is the premise and basis of controllable nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion is the process of fusing light nuclei into heavier nuclei and releasing large amounts of energy.

At present, there are two kinds of nuclear fusion that we can learn about: one is the fusion of stars, such as the sun. Stars rely on strong gravity to complete their nuclear fusion. Strong gravity not only brings high temperatures (the sun's central temperature is as high as 15 million degrees Celsius) and high pressure (the sun's internal pressure is more than 300 billion times atmospheric pressure), but also provides a perfectly enclosed space. In such a high-temperature and high-pressure environment, the sun is like a huge controllable nuclear fusion reactor, endless output of energy to the outside.

Another form of nuclear fusion is the hydrogen bomb. It requires nuclear fission (atomic bomb explosion) to instantly create a high-temperature, high-pressure and short-term closed environment to trigger nuclear fusion.

However, the hydrogen bomb belongs to uncontrollable fusion and cannot be used to generate electricity, while controlled fusion keeps the nuclear fusion reaction within a safe range, also known as the "artificial sun".

However, there is a problem in the process of studying the artificial sun, that is, although the energy released by nuclear fusion is amazing, the whole process of controlled nuclear fusion also consumes a lot of energy. the trick to avoid this consumption is to make the reaction process self-sustaining, so that the output energy is more than the input energy, and let the process continue rather than briefly. Only in this way can nuclear fusion become an available source of energy.

In fact, humans have known how to produce fusion in thermonuclear weapons since the 1950s. Scientists have also been able to carry out nuclear fusion in the laboratory, but only intermittently, and with huge energy consumption.

In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences took reach ignition as the target of American Ignition device (NIF) fusion.

Scientists at the National Ignition device (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been trying to do this for decades. In this process, there are mainly two ways: one is inertial confinement fusion, the main direction is laser fusion, the other is magnetic confinement fusion, the main direction is tokamak, the more well-known ones include DIII-D in the United States, JT-60SA in Japan, JET in the United Kingdom, EAST and 2m (HL-2M) in China, KSTAR in South Korea, and ITER and SPARC under construction.

The LLNL experiment is the first way used, that is, by hitting a tiny plasma particle with the world's largest laser. The experimental device consists of nearly 200 lasers, the size of three football fields, bombarding a small spot with high energy to start the fusion reaction.

Although the industry is cheering LLNL's experimental results, Troy Carter, a plasma physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, also said through the media that NIF has made a huge breakthrough, but it is still far from meeting the needs.

In this regard, he put forward his own views: first of all, the key index put forward by the National Academy of Sciences is the fusion energy gain factor, also known as "Q". A gain of 1 indicates that the response reaches a break-even. The latest announcement from NIF shows a gain of about 1.5, which means the reaction has become positive. But this is only narrowly defined as the laser energy to hit the fuel target, which is still not enough in terms of the total energy required to charge and emit the laser (about 300 megajoules).

Second, NIF can only emit lasers a few times a day, while to run a real fusion reactor, it takes about 10 times per second.

02. Industry investment has soared 139%. Controlled nuclear fusion has attracted much attention precisely because it has many advantages such as almost unlimited reserves and clean zero carbon, and it is also regarded as the "ultimate solution" to solve all energy problems. For decades, the exploration of nuclear fusion has been carried out mainly through large government-funded projects, such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of the United States and the international ITER cooperation project built in France.

Although there have been sporadic startups in the early days, they have not been taken seriously. According to a previous report from the British Atomic Energy Authority, there were only two private fusion companies throughout the 1990s.

However, in recent years, the development trend of compact and miniaturization of fusion devices provides the possibility for the entry of commercial capital. Billionaires like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel have all begun to support fusion companies in their pockets.

In July, Google and Chevron announced that they had jointly led a $250 million round of financing for fusion startup TAE Technologies, bringing the company's cumulative financing to $1.2 billion.

Of course, it is not the only one to raise money, and it is not difficult to see from the continuous disclosure of financing news that capital is flowing into the field of nuclear fusion: Germany's Marvel Fusion received 35 million euros in financing led by Earlybird Venture Capital in February, followed by Japan's EX-Fusion in April, which completed an initial phase of financing worth 130 million yen. Zap Energy of the United States also announced the completion of a $160 million round C financing led by Lowercarbon Capital in June.

According to an industry research report released by the American Fusion Industry Association in July, investment in nuclear fusion has soared by 139% in the past 12 months, with private investment in nuclear fusion reaching $2.83 billion.

Domestically, there have also been two large-scale financing in the field of nuclear fusion this year.

In February this year, Energy Singularity received nearly 400 million yuan in angel round financing, invested by Miha you, Lulai Capital, Sequoia Seeds and Lanchi Venture Capital.

In June, Star Ring gathering can obtain hundreds of millions of yuan of angel round financing. Investors include Shunwei Capital, Kunlun Capital, Zhongke Chuangxing, Yuanjing Venture Capital, Heyu Capital, Sequoia seed, dangerous Evergreen, Jiuhe Venture Capital, Lenovo Star, Yingnuo Angel Fund, Yuanhe Origin, Huafang Capital and so on.

With the boost of capital, startups have set themselves development goals: Helion Energy expects its seventh-generation Polaris prototype to become the world's first fusion generator to demonstrate net power as early as 2024; TAE Technologies says it will be commercially viable by 2030; and CFS expects commercial fusion power by 2025.

Yuanfeng Changqing once wrote that controllable nuclear fusion has achieved the most difficult breakthrough from 0 to 1 in science, and we are actually on the eve of the ultimate energy change.

Even so, according to the most optimistic estimates, it will take more than a decade to achieve the initial commercialization of nuclear fusion power generation. A more pragmatic and optimistic view is that controlled fusion still has a long way to go, but it is also a must.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Tech diagonal (ID:TechDJX2022), article: Mia, editor: Fei Fei

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