Transatlantic Cooperation on Laser Fusion Energy
This morning came word that the American National Ignition Facility (NIF) is partnering with two British entities, the Rutherford Appleton Lab and AWE, to pursue commercialization of laser fusion energy. The NIF, based out of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Lab, is a large facility built to test Inertial Confinement Fusion, as well as to examine and secure America’s nuclear weapons. The deal was completed at a conference put on by the British Research and Development Society Thursday. You can read more background on how fusion is achieved in ASP’s White Paper, “Fusion Energy, An Opportunity for American Leadership and Security“.
Articles by the Daily Mail and the BBC give a good overview of the state of the NIF’s experments leading to ignition. I would also recommend listening to Dr Ed Moses, the Director of the NIF, when he went on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program on Friday morning.
Although I don’t know the extent of the agreement – beyond ‘cooperation’ – I am confident that this could be an important step. I’m sure that the British will bring a great deal to the partnership. The Rutherford Appleton Lab was where the idea of creating fusion for energy was first proved, and AWE is the UK government’s contractor for its nuclear weapons program: meaning that they will bring much of the same expertise that the NIF has gained. Overall, the British have been leaders in fusion since the very beginning. The first fusion-related patents were filed at the University of London in 1946. More recently, they have been most active on the magnetic side. They are a part of ITER, the large-scale magnetic fusion power plant being built in the South of France, and they are hosts to the Joint European Torus (JET) reactor, the largest operational tokamak (magnetic confinement) reactor in the world. Also, in the inertial confinement field, the UK is host to the HiPER project, a laser-fusion project not unlike the NIF’s.
Achieving commercial-scale fusion is one of the most important things that the U.S. or the U.K. can do to secure their long-term energy security while also reducing the threat of climate change. This partnership could prove to be an important step in making that achievable.
