US FIRM PURSUES POWER PRODUCTION USING NUCLEAR FUSION

Realizing nuclear fusion as a practical energy source poses enormous challenges owing to the extreme physical conditions required by the known fusion reactions. These include temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius or more and astronomically high pressures, which must be maintained long enough to reach a net energy output. But what if there were a much easier approach, one that would not require such elaborate technical means to achieve the extreme temperatures and pressures required? A method in which nature would do most of the work for us? asked Jonathan Tennenbaum in an article published by Asia Times on July 13, 2020.

Amazingly, there does exist such an approach. It is based on a device called the dense plasma focus (DPF). The DPF generates an electric discharge that evolves rapidly in time and space, concentrating its energy into an array of filamentary structures and finally into a tiny knot-like entity called a plasmoid. Inside the plasmoid, the conditions are reached for fusion to take place.

It has long since been experimentally demonstrated that the DPF can generate large numbers of fusion reactions when operated in a chamber filled with deuterium gas. Nearly all investment into fusion power research today goes into funding large, expensive projects – topped off by the giant International Torus Experimental Reactor (ITER) now under construction in southern France, with a total price-tag estimated at over $40 billion.

The good news is that one laboratory in the United States – New Jersey’s private Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc, doing business as LPPFusion – has seriously taken up the challenge to develop the dense plasma focus into a practical source of fusion energy. A landmark was reached in 2016 when Lerner’s device achieved an ion temperature of 2.8 billion degrees – by far the highest such temperature achieved in any fusion experiment to date. This is over 200 times hotter than the center of the sun and more than 15 times the projected maximum temperature for the ITER. Most exciting, LPP Fusion intends to utilize hydrogen-boron instead of the standard deuterium-tritium fuel. The world-record temperatures already achieved provide an important precondition for taking this step. If the plan works out it will be extremely good news.