The ultimate goal, Hurricane says, is a safe method of harnessing the force that powers the stars.
"Fusion is probably one of the most promising energy technologies that we could possibly develop. The resource, if we get it to work, is this deuterium we find in seawater—and that's essentially limitless, or more so than pretty much any other resource," he says. "And we're all scientists, and it's a very interesting puzzle to try to make this happen."
Humans have gotten pretty good at nuclear fission. But fusion, bringing two atomic nuclei together, has been much more tricky—at least for peaceful purposes. But In a new study out today in Nature, physicists from the National Ignition Facility report clearing a major hurdle toward harnessing the power of stars.
"For the first time anywhere, we've gotten more energy out of this fuel than was put into the fuel. That's a major turning point," said Omar Hurricane, lead author of the new paper and a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. To be clear, the NIF has not achieved its namesake goal of igniting a sustained fusion reaction. But these indications of a process called bootstrapping—in which particles created by the reaction feed energy back into the reaction—are a major step along the way.
Hohlraum geometry with a capsule inside through the cut-away of the hohlraum wall. Credit: Eddie Dewald.
"You can't see it. You don't have a map. You don't know what the terrain is … And someone calls you on your satellite phone and asks you, ‘How long is it going to take you to climb the mountain?'" he says. "You don't know. You look down at your feet, you see what the terrain is, you try to choose the best path based on what you see. That's what we hear when someone says, ‘How long is it going to take before you guys get to ignition?' It's anyone's guess."
A view inside the gold cylinder where hydrogen is compressed to incredible densities.
