Self-heating plasmas offer hope for fusion energy

Working at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the team created a burning plasma using the hydrogen isotopes deuterium, which can be extracted from seawater, and tritium, which can be made in a reactor. [...]although it is several times the e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2022-01, Vol.601 (7894), p.514-515
Main Author: Woolsey, Nigel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Burning
Chemical analysis
Deuterium
Energy
Experiments
Fuels
Heat
Hydrogen
Hydrogen isotopes
Isotopes
Lasers
Nuclear fuels
Physics
Plasma
Plasmas (physics)
Radiation
Seawater
Spherical plasmas
Symmetry
Tritium
Water analysis
X-rays
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Summary:Working at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the team created a burning plasma using the hydrogen isotopes deuterium, which can be extracted from seawater, and tritium, which can be made in a reactor. [...]although it is several times the energy injected into the imploding fuel, the output is actually rather modest. [...]the same size of capsule can hold a larger volume of fuel, which makes it more efficient in forming a central hotspot than capsules made from other materials4. Zylstra et at} demonstrated that a fusion reaction can self-heat the plasma in which it occurs. a, The team's apparatus comprises 192 lasers that heat the interior of a hollow cylinder, known as a hohlraum, which holds a spherical capsule containing a plasma of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/d41586-022-00124-4