Someone once said that human energy may be hydrogen energy after oil and gas.
The era of hydrogen energy has not yet arrived, but shocking news has been heard from nuclear energy!
12-13, the US Secretary of Energy and LLNL jointly announced a major scientific breakthrough in unlimited clean energy!
For the first time in history, humans have achieved the net energy gain of nuclear fusion reaction.
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First human fusion ignition
htmlOn December 13, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced that a team from NIF successfully achieved "net energy gain" in nuclear fusion reactions for the first time, funded by the U.S. government.
What is the net energy gain? means that the energy output from nuclear fusion is greater than the energy input.
In this experiment, 2.05 megajoules of energy were input into the target, producing 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output, and the energy generated was more than 50% more than the energy input.
For a long time, fusion reaction has always been unable to achieve net energy increase, and the energy consumed always exceeds the energy generated by the reaction.
Therefore, this nuclear fusion experiment at LLNL Laboratory is the first time in human history to achieve static energy gain. The experimental process of
is like this. The experimenter placed the fuel particles the size of peppercorns in the cylindrical container shown in the figure below in advance.
Then, 192 laser beams are emitted into the container at the same time, and the container will generate a large number of X-rays .
These rays will cause the fuel in the container to explode like a rocket, producing nuclear fusion that can only exist in the sun, giant planets and nuclear explosions.
Nuclear fusion is the combination of two light nuclei into a heavy nucleus and releases a lot of energy.
Such reactions occur inside the sun every moment. It is precisely because of this nuclear fusion that the sun can release a large amount of energy every day, bringing a continuous stream of light and heat to the earth.
Therefore, Duke University Professor Chen Yiran also said concisely and clearly: Humans have taken a big step towards Artificial Sun .
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm also said in a statement that the breakthrough of is a "mileage achievement" that will help solve the most complex and urgent energy problems of mankind - providing a large amount of clean energy to deal with climate change.
LLNL Director Dr. Kim Budil said: "Pursuing fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most important scientific challenges humans have solved in history. achieves this goal as the most important victory in human scientific engineering. "
A senior U.S. official also said that this discovery will push mankind into a future that is no longer powered by fossil fuels, but is driven by new clean fusion energy.
What is the difference between nuclear fusion and nuclear fission ?
nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are both nuclear reaction , and a large amount of energy is released during the process.
. The difference is that nuclear fission is by splitting a large atom into smaller particles and releasing the energy of the nucleus binding during fission. The energy released by
also carries a certain amount of nuclear radiation , where heat is used to heat water into steam, thereby rotating the turbine and driving the generator to generate electricity.
We also see that nuclear radiation will be generated during nuclear fission, but nuclear fusion reaction will not produce long-term radioactive waste .
In addition to the difference in radiation, nuclear fusion has another advantage that the energy generated is usually several times that of nuclear fission.
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How long will it take for the "artificial sun" to realize
nuclear fusion is so excellent, is it really going to bring infinite clean energy to mankind? Let's take a look together.
First of all, from the perspective of energy. Nuclear fusion generated a 50% energy gain in the experiment, , but the actual energy consumed by the entire experiment is more than 3.15 megajoules, , for example, during the experiment, more energy is consumed to generate 2.05 megajoules of laser.
Some careful netizens have also noticed the issue of laser energy generation.
Therefore, in fact, the overall energy of this experiment is lost, but it is calculated after the laser enters the ring controller in the experiment, resulting in an energy gain. The operation mode of nuclear fusion power stations is also to use atomic reactions to generate heat to heat water, generate steam, drive turbines and generate electricity.
However, the energy generated by this reaction is only enough to heat 20 pots of water.
In this way, requires more complex technological upgrades to make this process commercialized.
Secondly, according to sources who understand the results of the experiment, the energy output of this experiment was higher than scientists' expectations, and some equipment in the laboratory were damaged, making subsequent analysis very complicated.
From this point of view, although energy gain is a great progress for human beings, how to safely extract huge energy and later equipment are also problems.
Therefore, the ignition process of to achieve nuclear fusion requires very accurate calculations and technical maintenance of between two laser emissions. Each emission requires more than US$100,000 and hundreds of hours of design calculations.
According to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy: Fusion ignition has been achieved after more than 60 years of research, development and experimental engineering.
If you want to commercialize this achievement, there are still "major obstacles" to be overcome in nuclear fusion technology, which may still require decades of efforts and investment.
Therefore, ideally, the arrival of the goal of nuclear fusion to provide humans with infinite clean energy may take decades.
