The Sun is powered by the strongest source of energy in the universe - nuclear fusion - and teams of scientists and engineers around the world are working toward harnessing fusion to power the long-term future of civilization. In effect... they are working to "create a star" on earth.
This excellent (and well-produced!) piece by the BBC takes a look inside the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, home of the world's most powerful laser. The goal? To use the laser to compress a pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point of "ignition" - when a self-sustaining fusion reaction releases more energy than what was required to initiate it.
Media reports during the murkiness of the US government shutdown indicated that "breakeven" was achieved at NIF last month... well maybe, maybe not. Regardless, there is still a long way to go and there remain challenges to overcome. But then, NIF also has lots of company in the race for fusion energy...
Nuclear fusion “might actually be on the cusp of commercial viability” today, says a recent article in Fortune magazine. The article offers a brief review of recent technical and...
Research by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and collaborating institutions has the potential to improve plasma performance in tokamak...
Government policies and innovative technologies are the key to fusion energy economics
May 27, 2022, 4:38PMNuclear NewsBart Gordon, Tim Peckinpaugh, Mike O’Neill, and Molly Barker
Fusion energy is attracting significant interest from governments and private capital markets. The deployment of fusion energy on a timeline that will affect climate change and offer another...
Findings regarding the corrosion resistance of two promising structural materials for fusion reactors were recently reported by ScienceDaily. The research, published in the April 1 issue of...
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is celebrating the yield from an experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of more than 1.3 megajoules of energy—eight times more than the...
Our Friday Matinee for today is the latest of the excellent Vogtle Timeline videos produced by Georgia Power to document the construction progress of Vogtle Units 3 and 4. The series stands...
This week's Friday Matinee features an update on the construction progress at Plant Vogtle's Units 3 and 4, the new AP1000 units being built in Georgia. This is the First Quarter 2016 update...
This week's ANS Nuclear Cafe Friday Matinee features an update from South Carolina Electric & Gas on "A Year of Progress for V. C. Summer Units 2 and 3." These two AP1000 units are being...
This week's feature is a half hour documentary on the history of the National Reactor Testing Station, or NRTS (now part of Idaho National Laboratory) which has seen 52 different and largely...