Fusion News: Nature – Two- Laser Boron Fusion Lights the Way to Radiation-Free Energy
Presently, fusion energy releases radiation that can be a health hazard. However, scientists at one lab have produced fusion at an accelerated rate without harmful radiation, according to an article in Nature titled “Two-laser boron fusion lights the way to radiation-free energy.”
Physicists have now produced fusion at an accelerated rate in the laboratory without generating harmful neutrons. A team led by Christine Labaune, research director of the CNRS Laboratory for the Use of Intense Lasers at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, used a two-laser system to fuse protons and boron-11 nuclei. One laser created a short-lived plasma, or highly ionized gas of boron nuclei, by heating boron atoms; the other laser generated a beam of protons that smashed into the boron nuclei, releasing slow-moving helium particles but no neutrons. The researchers describe their work in Nature Communications today1.
