3 laser fusion research hubs picked by energy department

The U.S. Department of Energy is creating three research hubs in the hopes of harnessing miniature laser-driven thermonuclear explosions for future power plants, officials announced Thursday.

The three hubs — based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Colorado State University and the University of Rochester in New York state — will share a total of $42 million over four years.

The research effort will be “focused more on the underlying technologies needed for any inertial fusion system,” said Scott Hsu, the lead fusion coordinator at the Department of Energy.

Combining two small atoms — typically hydrogen — into a heavier one produces energy. This process, known as fusion, is what powers the sun and other stars. If controlled fusion could be re-created on Earth, that could lead to a bountiful energy source that does not generate planet-warming carbon dioxide or long-lived radioactive waste.

Most fusion energy research to date, and most of the department’s fusion science budget, has focused on reactors that use powerful magnetic fields to contain superhot hydrogen until the nuclei collide and combine. But a successful experiment last year at the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, at Livermore highlighted a different approach — firing powerful lasers at a single pellet of hydrogen, squeezing its atoms together to generate a flash of fusion.

NIF was not designed as a prototype for fusion energy generation. It has primarily been used to help maintain U.S. nuclear weapons since nuclear testing was discontinued in 1992.

The NIF science experiment fired one laser pulse at one hydrogen fuel pellet. A practical power plant would need to fire laser pulses repeatedly — at a cadence of perhaps 10 per second — with a new fuel pellet inserted for each pulse.

© 2023 The New York Times Company