The only net-positive merger experiment in the world has steadily the amount of strength it produces has techcrunch.
In recent attempts, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) team of the US Department of Energy increased the yield of the experiment, first to 5.2 megajoule and then again to 8.6 megajoule, according to a source with knowledge of the experiment.
The new results are significant improvements compared to the historical experiment in 2022, which was the first controlled merger reaction to generate more energy than the IT consumed.
The 2022 shot generated 3.15 megajoule, a small bump over the 2.05 megajoules that the lasers had delivered to the fuel pellet the size of BB.
None of the shots so far has been effective enough to feed back electrons in the grid, let alone compensate for the energy needed to provide the entire facility with electricity – the facility was not designed for that. For example, the first net-positive recording required 300 megajoules to only power the laser system. But they are constant proof that controlled nuclear merger is more than hypothetical.
The NIF uses what is known as slowness to produce fusion reactions. In the facility, merged brush is covered with diamond and then encapsulated in a small golden cylinder called a Hohlraum. That small pellet is dropped in a spherical vacuum chamber with a diameter of 10 meters, where 192 powerful laser rays converge on the target.
The cylinder is evaporated under the attack, so that X -rays are broadcast in the process that bombards the fuel pellet into it. The diamond coating of the pellet receives so much energy that it turns into a growing plasma that stimulates the Deuterium-Tritium fuel in the point to the point where their cores merge, which releases energy in the process.
The other main approach to merger, magnetic imprisonment, uses powerful super -conducting magnets to compress plasma and contain in a space that is tight enough to create the conditions needed for merger. Although no magnetic imprisonment experiments have yielded net-positive results, various are constructed or designed with the expectation that they will reach that milestone.
Various startups pursue inertial imprisonment, including Xcimer Energy and Focused Energy.
#Exclusive #Laserdriven #merger #experiment #doubles #power #Techcrunch