Is putting carbon-free laser-driven fusion energy on the grid by the 2030s possible? In August 2022, when the team of scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) fired a shot that achieved a yield of 1.35 megajoules (MJ) of fusion energy with 1.9 MJ of laser energy, it was a long-awaited scientific breakthrough signaling fusion burn.
Later that same year during another inertial fusion (a.k.a. laser-driven fusion) experiment, scientists achieved a yield of 3.15 MJ of fusion energy with 2.05 MJ of laser energy and attained ignition. It was a thermonuclear fusion reaction created within the lab—and it kicked off a global race to put carbon-free laser-driven fusion energy on the grid by the 2030s or 2040s.
“This was a turning point when NIF first successfully showed that inertial fusion was possible, and the key is having the right kind of fuel—deuterium-tritium—and using lasers to compress and fuse it to generate gain (more energy out than put in),” says Arianna Gleason, staff scientist and deputy director of SLAC’s High Energy Density Science division. “It’s like sustaining the fuel of a star—just for a fraction of a second within a laboratory.”
Laser Focus World