Fusion News: The New York Times- Machinery of an Energy Dream
The concept of fusion is to squeeze hydrogen atoms hard enough that they fuse together in helium. The recent production of energy, at the Livermore’s giant lasers, was tiny but five times the output of attempts the past couple of years. The fusion reaction occurred at the National Ignition Facility, a Livermore project,
The center of NIF is the target chamber, a metal sphere 33 feet wide with gleaming diagnostic equipment radiating outward. It looks like something from “Star Trek.” Indeed, it has been in “Star Trek,” doubling as the engine room of the Enterprise in last year’s “Star Trek Into Darkness” movie. (NIF’s vast banks of laser amplifiers also served as a backdrop for a starship commanded by a renegade Starfleet admiral.)
The laser complex fills a building with a footprint equal to three football fields. Each blast starts with a small laser pulse that is split via partly reflecting mirrors into 192, then bounced back and forth through laser amplifiers that fill a couple of warehouse-size rooms before the beams are focused into the target chamber, converging on a gold cylinder that is about the size and shape of a pencil eraser.
The laser beams enter at the top and bottom of the cylinder, their heat generating an intense bath of X-rays that rushes inward to compress a peppercorn-size pellet. The pellet contains a layer of carefully frozen deuteriumand tritium, the heavier forms of hydrogen, and in a brief moment — about one ten-billionth of a second — the imploding atoms fuse together.
Now the next step for fusion energy is the international collaboration International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER, with the European Union, China, Japan, Russia, the United States, India and South Korea. As reported by the New York Times in the article, “Machinery of an Energy Dream:”
Under a byzantine, dispersed management structure, the partners in the project (the European Union, Japan, China, Russia, the United States, India and South Korea) agreed to contribute pieces of the reactor, with the central Iter organization attempting to coordinate. A review criticized Iter’s management for delays and cost overruns. Iter officials, however, say they are fixing the problems.
“This is a risk we consider well managed,” said Carlos Alejaldre, an Iter deputy director general.
General Atomics, a company in San Diego, is responsible for a main piece of the American contribution, a stack of huge magnetic coils at the center of Iter that will help control the shape of the hydrogen gas within the doughnut-shaped ring. The company has spent the past few years rounding up the machinery it will need to produce the seven coils, each more than 13 feet wide and weighing 120 tons. It will begin manufacturing a test coil this summer, and company officials say they are on track to finish production on schedule.
