Focus on: Commercialising laser fusion by building on the historic success at the National Ignition Facility
In the December 2024 issue of the Fusion Energy Insights Quarterly, we featured an article about the historical event that unfolded on the 5th December 2022 at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL): the world's first demonstration of fusion with energy gain. More fusion energy was produced than the energy required to initiate the fusion burn.
But how do we go from an experiment like NIF to a commercial fusion power plant?
Here’s an extract of the article that featured in the Quarterly.
Fusion breakthrough
The historic demonstration at NIF, which has since been repeated several times, confirms the physics basis for fusion power production using the indirect drive target illumination approach. This is the ‘existential’ step on the path to enabling the once-radical idea that fusion energy could be commercialised and provide a safe, carbon-free baseload energy source for future generations.
Improvements needed in laser efficiency and repetition rate
NIF was designed as an experimental science facility, and it operates at extreme high energy density physics conditions not accessible at any other facility. NIF’s product is data, not electrons for the grid.
While NIF operates at full scale in terms of laser energy and target size for ignition and energy gain, NIF uses 1990s laser technology that is less than 1% efficient in converting wall plug electricity into laser energy.
The NIF laser also operates at a very low repetition rate, capable of firing only every few hours. These operating parameters are well suited to its science missions but are far from the requirements for commercial fusion energy, where the laser efficiency must be increased by a factor of about 15-20, and the laser firing rate must be increased approximately 200,000 times. Increasing the firing rate for the fusion targets is also required for commercial operation.
In the past 2 years since the NIF breakthrough announcement, there has been concerted effort by the private sector to build on those experiments and drive towards commercialisation. Laser efficiency, target mass production and other aspects that make for an economic power plant are all under consideration. The private sector companies featured here are not the only ones looking at laser fusion, but they give a flavour of the developments required and how the private sector is building on the important result from NIF to deliver clean fusion energy to homes and businesses as soon as possible.
For the Fusion Energy Insights Quarterly, we spoke to fusion companies Xcimer Energy, Marvel Fusion and Longview Fusion Energy Systems as case studies to find out how they plan to address the challenges of going from NIF to a commercial fusion plant.
Download the full Focus On: Commercialising Laser Fusion article from the December 2024 Quarterly.