Next up for the ‘Big Ideas Lab’ podcast: a two-episode series on ignition
In December 2022, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) created a “mini sun” deep inside the National Ignition Facility (NIF), ushering in a new realm in scientific discovery. Lasting just a fraction of a second, this historic experiment marked the first time that a controlled fusion experiment achieved ignition.
In the next two episodes of the Big Ideas Lab podcast, delve into what it took to achieve ignition — an accomplishment that was over 60 years in the making — and what it means for national security and the future of clean energy. Listen here on Apple or Spotify.
“Certainly, the story of ignition is the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” Lab Director Kim Budil said.
In the 1960s, former Lab Director John Nuckolls and other pioneering scientists at LLNL theorized that lasers could be used to induce fusion in a laboratory setting.
“It was quite an amazing leap of imagination,” Budil said. “Turns out it was harder than anticipated and required an immense revolution in technology.”
LLNL embarked on developing a series of laser systems, culminating with NIF, which was constructed from 1997 to 2009. The National Nuclear Security Administration funded NIF as a key element of the science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program.
NIF experiments use 192 lasers to compress a tiny capsule of deuterium and tritium fuel, isotopes of hydrogen, in a process called inertial confinement fusion (ICF). If everything works perfectly, this causes the two light nuclei to combine to form a single, heavier nucleus, releasing large amounts of energy. This is the same process that powers the sun and the stars.
“It’s very hard to force together two positively charged particles. They want to repel each other, and you must overcome that,” said Richard Town, associate program director for ICF science. “The sun creates fusion through gravity and by being massive.”
This breakthrough enables stockpile stewardship experiments at new levels of high-energy-density conditions. It also demonstrated the basic scientific feasibility of inertial fusion energy, which could be a source of clean, safe and virtually limitless energy.
Listeners will hear from LLNL experts about the technologies that had to come together perfectly to achieve ignition — computer modeling and simulation, target design, laser performance, pulse shaping, optics, diagnostics and more.
In addition to Budil and Town, the episodes feature Associate Program Director of Weapon Simulation and Computing/Computational Physics Teresa Bailey, NIF Chief Laser Systems Engineer Jean-Michel Di Nicola, physicist Kelly Hahn, Target Fabrication Program Manager Michael Stadermann and Optics and Materials Science & Technology Program Director Tayyab Suratwala.
Listen to the latest two-part episode of the Big Ideas Lab (on Apple or Spotify) to explore the groundbreaking achievement of fusion ignition at LLNL. Delve into how this scientific breakthrough is advancing stockpile stewardship science and setting the stage for future clean energy solutions.
Hear from the dedicated team of scientists and engineers driving this innovative research forward.
