Controlled thermonuclear fusion
Can nuclear fusion reactions be harnessed in a reactor that produces more usable energy than it consumes, for practical power generation?
History and references
Partly settled. Some of it is understood, some is still argued about.
Ginzburg opened his list with fusion (problem #1), calling it 'no enigma, just a difficult engineering problem' already 50 years old. Since 1999, the US National Ignition Facility achieved fusion ignition (fuel energy gain > 1) in August 2021 and a record target gain in December 2022, where the fusion yield exceeded the laser energy delivered to the fuel capsule. However, this is target/fuel gain, not full wall-plug gain: NIF's lasers still consume far more electricity than the fusion reaction releases, and ITER (the flagship magnetic-confinement reactor) has faced repeated schedule delays. No power plant produces net electricity from fusion as of 2026.
It is the same reaction that powers every star in the sky, and for 70 years humans have been trying to light a tiny, controlled one on Earth.
References
- What problems of physics and astrophysics seem now to be especially important and interesting (thirty years later, already on the verge of the XXI century)?, V L Ginzburg, Physics-Uspekhi 42 (4) 353-373, 1999
- Lawson Criterion for Ignition Exceeded in an Inertial Fusion Experiment, H. Abu-Shawareb et al. (NIF/LLNL), Physical Review Letters 129, 075001, 2022
- Achievement of Target Gain Larger than Unity in an Inertial Fusion Experiment, A. B. Zylstra et al. (NIF/LLNL), Physical Review Letters 132, 065102, 2024
Solutions 0
Sign in or create an account to publish a solution