Big Ideas Lab - Beyond Ignition

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

Over millennia, humanity has mastered fire, wind, steam and even the atom to fuel its progress. Now, we stand on the brink of the next monumental leap: fusion.At the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a team of scientists and engineers has been working tirelessly to achieve Fusion Ignition, an achievement that could redefine energy as we know it. The road has been long and filled with challenges, but the promise of unlocking the energy that powers the stars is within reach.As we revisit the groundbreaking efforts at NIF, the question remains: Can they overcome the final hurdles to create a fusion breakthrough, and what will that mean for the future of power on Earth?---Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series. Executive Produced and Written by Lacey Peace. Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Daniel Brunelle. Story Editing by Daniel Brunelle. Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell. Narrated by Matthew Powell. Video Production by Levi Hanusch. Guests featured in this episode (in order of appearance): Kim Budil, Director of LLNLMichael Stadermann, Program Manager for Target Fabrication at LLNLTeresa Bailey, Associate Program Director for LLNL's Computational Physics in the Weapons Simulation and Computing TeamTayyab Suratwala, Program Director for LLNL’s Optics and Materials Science and Technology TeamRichard Town, Associate Program Director for Inertial Confinement Fusion Science at LLNLJean-Michel Di Nicola, Program Co-Director for Laser Science and System Engineering at LLNLKelly Hahn, Experimental Physicist and Diagnostician at LLNLBrought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

Over the millennia, humans have tamed fire to light the night, captured wind to cross the seas, harnessed steam and internal combustion to power the Industrial Revolution, and wielded the energy of the atom with nuclear fission power. What's next? Fusion. Previously on Big Ideas Lab, we met the scientists, engineers, and innovators working at one of the most remarkable facilities in the world, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

We left the Lawrence Livermore team as they struggled to move the needle toward achieving a scientific first. Fusion ignition. The team at the National Ignition Facility had the tools, the talent, and the drive. But creating the ideal conditions to enable ignition was proving to be a Herculean, possibly impossible task. When we finally turned the laser on at full scale in 2009, we started what was called the National Ignition Campaign, fully anticipating that within the first two years of running

the facility, we would get ignition. And we did not even get close. Welcome to the Big Ideas Lab, your weekly exploration inside Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Hear untold stories, meet boundary-pushing pioneers, and get unparalleled access inside the gates. From national security challenges to computing revolutions, discover the innovations that are shaping tomorrow, today. The National Ignition Facility, also known as NIF, is a 10-story tall building that runs the length of three football fields. Inside are two parallel laser bays, each containing 96 beam lines for a total of 192 of the world's highest energy lasers, each one over a foot wide. Located on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory campus, construction of the facility

began in 1997 and finished in 2009. And since operations began, one of its primary purposes has been to achieve fusion ignition. Fusion ignition refers to a condition in nuclear physics where the energy generated by the fusion process itself produces more fusion energy than the amount of laser energy delivered to the NIF target. These experiments represent not only the initial strides toward a potentially infinite source of clean energy, but also generate crucial data that ensures the reliability, safety, and security of the United States nuclear deterrent. As Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's director Kim Budell mentioned at the top of this episode, after NIF began experimentation, the expectation was that ignition would be achieved within a few years.

A decade later, and they were still coming up short. So what was in their way? Variable? The laser energy is so high that if you design the target wrong, you can actually bounce light into areas where it shouldn't go and in between shrapnel and stray light, damage optics or glass or other expensive pieces that we don't want to damage. After variable. Supercomputing is essential.

The ICF program uses modeling and simulation to drive their understanding of design forward. But that experimental loop also informs the codes. So you can't really do one without the other. After variable. There are probably around 10,000 what we call large optics and around 30,000 or so smaller optics. When I say large optic, we're talking about half meter scale and larger. You usually don't have components of that scale, but we have 10,000 components that are of that size.

A facility like NIF involves virtually all types of teams within Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. A combination of expertise and technologies brought together in hopes of finding that elusive, ideal environment for ignition. There's many disciplines that come to play in order to make a successful experiment. Richard Town is the lab's associate program director for inertial confinement fusion science. And that starts with code developers who develop the code that we then use to simulate and make predictions of the experiment. There's the laser builders themselves. There's TargetFab,

who have to assemble these precision targets. We have to fuel these targets, right? We have to put deuterium, tritium in that. How do we get that in there? So we drill this tiny hole, sit it on a human head. Then we have to attach a fill tube to that. And we have a guy who does that.

I'm just impressed. I can't see the fill tube. And he works day in, day out. Then there's all the support people that go into making the laser function. So there's all the infrastructure that goes on delivering that very tailored condition. Skilled craftsmen, technicians, physicists, computer scientists, the list is endless. There is a big multidisciplinary, multilaboratory effort that goes into making an experiment so successful.

So how exactly do all these teams come together to make an experiment at NIF successful? First, highly advanced computer simulations and models are used to design the experiment. Based on these specs, a target is made. This target is a small capsule about the size of a peppercorn containing a mixture of hydrogen isotopes, deuterium, and tritium. To say that this target has to be precisely made is an understatement. The quality requirements on a target for it to function properly are extreme. Michael Staderman, program manager for target fabrication at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, explains the role of target design in the process and why small things are needed to produce big

results. When we start building the capsule, the targets, the capsule has to sit within 20 microns of a one millimeter canister. And then that canister gets centered to do within better than 50 microns inside the facility. And then the componentsister gets centered to do within better than 50 microns inside the facility. And then the components themselves have to be of a very high quality too. And right now, that's a primary challenge. So the capsule, for example, has to be almost perfectly round. It has to have an almost perfectly uniform wall thickness. And the margins by which that difference can exist are, we're closer to talking about atoms than we're talking about hair diameters. The hair diameter is about, what,

80 to 100 microns. And the wall thickness non-uniformity that we're allowed to have is about 200 nanometers. So it's two thousands of a hair, if you will. This small target is placed inside the target chamber in NIF. This target chamber is a 10 meter diameter sphere surrounded with port cutouts for the 192 laser beams to get in and strike the target. Diagnostics are then positioned inside the target chamber to capture the data and measurements of what happens during the experiment. Once everything is set, NIF's laser system is activated. A weak laser pulse is released

and guided through the facility. This single laser beam is energized and split several times until there are a total of 192 laser beams. These beams then begin oscillating back and forth in the facility through laser amplifier glass to increase their energy. Using optics to direct and shape them, these laser beams are fired simultaneously at the target capsule. This process from initial laser release to target impact takes 20 billionths of a second. In that time, the lasers have increased in energy by a factor of 10 billion and traveled 4,900 feet.

On impact, the lasers compress the capsule to extremely high densities. And the capsule is heated to several million degrees, simulating the conditions in the core of the Sun. Under these extreme forces, the deuterium and tritium nuclei fuse together, releasing energy. The resulting fusion reaction and energy output are measured and analyzed, and computer simulations are updated to reflect this new data. Once the energy output from fusion exceeds the energy input from the lasers,

then fusion ignition has been achieved. If the target isn't perfectly uniform, the experiment will fail. If it doesn't compress spherically, it will fail. If the laser doesn't deliver the energy with unimaginable precision, it will fail. If the simulations aren't accurate or the diagnostics don't capture the data needed to further refine experiments, then fusion ignition will forever remain elusive. Even with that facility, our critics and detractors said that it would be impossible. Jean-Michel DiNicola is the lab's program co-director for laser science and system engineering.

First of all, because the laser would never work, it would never produce the energy that was needed to accomplish ignition conditions or that the beams would be degraded. We have had over the past 60 years at Lawrence Livermore, multiple generations of laser facilities ranging from a few hundred joules to kilojoules, so a thousand joules to megajoule class, a million of joules. And we were closer and closer. And then a leap in improvement that no one expected. NIF recently announced a record-breaking energy yield of 1.3 megajoules in a single shot. On August 8, 2021, a standard ignition experiment produced 1.35 megajoules of energy after delivering 1.9 megajoules of laser energy. This record is eight times what they achieved previously this year, 25 times greater than their previous record in 2018,

and almost a thousand times better than what they started with in 2011. When we first exceeded the megajoule and saw this has legs, it was actually a dramatic improvement over any result that we had before. And it was somewhat unexpected that it would be this much better and that we are actually this close already to an ignition step. They were at the threshold of ignition. But this outcome wasn't all celebration. After the excitement died down, they were left with even more questions. We had a full batch of 20 shells that to our eye

looked all the same and they all looked good. And then we did repeat experiments after that shot and found that they all didn't perform as well as the original experiment, which causes, of course, to go back and look at more of the capsule data. And then we discovered that there were flaws that we weren't accounting for beforehand. By doing those deliberate, systematic repeats, we could pull apart and figure out what do we need to do to type the next step. So on that, we found, yep, we have to pay more attention to the symmetry of the implosion, work more on the capsule quality, and look for design improvements. So one of the design improvements is to use a bigger hammer,

putting it crudely. Myth was already looking and exploring to see if they could increase beyond the current performance, and then turn that dial up to 11. So they went back to the drawing board and did just that, turned the dial up to 11. After the experiment on August 8th, 2021,

the NIF team spent more than a year piecing together what had caused such a dramatically improved yield. They increased the laser's precision and energy delivered to target, improved the target quality, and fine-tuned the experimental design to maximize the impact of these changes. In the late night hours of December 5th, 2022, they set and prepared for a normal shot, just like they had done dozens of times before. The control room did final checks. The immense facility, systems humming at the ready, lasers towering above like cathedral pillars, all their might trained on the tiny flawless capsule that

rests at the point where the lasers would soon meet. With a deep breath, they hit go on the impossible one more time, hoping for a breakthrough that would forever change the future of science. We only had to say one word. Ignition. Decades of work and aspiration came to triumph. The team had produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy with 2.05 megajoules of laser energy. They had produced more energy than was delivered by the laser.

In other words, they had achieved fusion ignition. December 5th, 2022 was the first time this has ever been done in a laboratory anywhere on Earth, making it one of the most historic scientific achievements of the 21st century. It was just an amazing moment. Tayab Suratwala is the program director for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's optics and material science and technology team. We met in the auditorium. That's when we had formally announced that we had achieved ignition. And some people were in tears. There was standing ovation. The mood was just so positive. And everyone stood up and clapped. and it was just an amazing moment.

And one thing that was kind of cute during that event is all the managers, they played that song, that 80s song, The Future's So Bright You Gotta Wear Shades. So we're playing that as a background music, and the senior managers all put on sunglasses while that was going on, and that was just really cute and such a memorable moment for the team. The optimism and the pride in the code teams themselves was the highest I've ever seen it.

Teresa Bailey, the Associate Program Director for Computational Physics in the Weapon Simulation and Computing team, explains her team's excitement. I was very happy to see the code teams congratulating each other. I was very happy that they felt a stake in this accomplishment. And I think it really made the careers of many people, it was a really important accomplishment for them because a lot of those people have spent most of their adult life working towards this goal and trying to develop tools that help us get towards this goal. So this was a really big deal for all of the co-developers involved in this mission space. And of course, lab director Kim Budell was there as it unfolded. I think initially it was sort of surreal.

There was a lot of immediate and palpable excitement in the air. There were a lot of texts swirling around after that shot. We've had some big successes where we made big steps toward ignition. Not quite getting there, but really getting much closer than we had been before. When we actually got over that threshold, there was a little bit of disbelief because of how long we have been on this trail. It's just a very strange feeling to finally arrive at your destination like that. But after about a day or two, when the initial shock wore off

and the data analysis had proceeded enough that we were really quite confident where we were, it was pretty exciting here. The first ever controlled fusion ignition. A major leap forward in our search for a source of limitless and clean energy. Creating more energy from fusion reactions than the energy used to start the process. Fusion ignition is the result of more than 60 years of work. A holy grail in physics research. One day end our dependence on fossil fuel. The same process that gives our sun its energy. So what happens post-ignition is equally as interesting as what happened leading up to it. For the lab, innovation never stops. In the weeks after the ignition shot, while worldwide press

was still ablaze, the teams at NIF were back at their desks analyzing, planning, and looking forward to the next experiment. Since first achieving ignition in December 2022, the lab has successfully repeated the achieved ignition multiple times. And many other experiments have taken place, supporting national security and exploring our universe. New ignition experiments are testing out a different set of target capsules, manufactured to reduce the defects that limited the performance of earlier shots. We can only do this every few days. But arguably, we could do this once a day. But that's not enough.

That's not enough at all. Kelly Hahn is an experimental physicist and diagnostician at the lab. You've got to be able to do this over and over and over at a very, very high rep rate so you can keep the energy going. This is hard to fathom,

doing that in a facility where we destroy the target itself. So you hard to fathom doing that in a facility where we destroy the target itself. So you got to have a target that somehow stays together or we can constantly replenish it and be able to continue these high pressure conditions and keep things assembled and working. Additionally, operators intend to boost the laser's energy to try and recreate the ideal balance for ignition. This brings new sets of challenges to the optics team, who will have to continue to develop materials that can sustain damage and be reused. There's more that we can do with this current facility.

We don't have to necessarily build another facility to get that. And that will hopefully enable even higher yield experiments than what we're doing right now. Think of it like this. We're running a factory where we are pulling off optics and repairing the damage sites that the laser is creating when we take all these laser shots. If we make optics improvements, we reduce the amount of laser damage that occurs. And that means the rate at which we have to run the recycle loop can slow down. Researchers and collaborators are now making plans for sustained and even higher yields to enable new stockpile stewardship and basic science applications at NIF.

So now we're talking about, can we upgrade the power on NIF in some way in order to get better results, more effective results, a more efficient machine, let's say. And you know what they're using to do that? Experiments, of course, but they're also using modeling and simulation and high performance computing to make projections into the future about what's possible with an increased size of machine. And I think a lot of people are engaged in adding features to codes to help people take a look at different types of ICF facilities and what it's going to take to take a next leap in that space. The story of achieving fusion ignition isn't just about the result. It's about a tireless, decades-long journey of some of science's leading minds

and how one brief reaction will benefit the world. There's a large number of people who have contributed over the decades to make this happen. People who developed the processes to make the target. People who made the laser what the laser is today. And so many people contributed. Thousands of people have contributed over the decades to make this achievement. We always want grand challenges, right? We want to see this great thing, right? Kennedy with the Apollo moon landings said, hey, we're doing this because it's

hard, not because it's easy. Whatever they do, they are driven to excellence. It's this contagious fuel that I think everybody feeds off of. You just put a really tough problem and you get these people around it and you create the right culture, you're going to solve it. As of April 2024, the highest energy yield achieved in a successful ignition test is approximately 5 megajoules. That is enough energy to power a single 100-watt light bulb for a little over 13 and a half hours. Clearly, the world is a long way from building the first fusion power plant. But before you can run,

you must walk. And ignition is that crucial first step in our journey towards much bigger goals. It sets the stage for a transformational decade to come in high-energy density science and fusion research to support national security. And it is the catalyst of a potentially endless supply of clean, sustainable fusion energy. All led by the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory invites you to join our diverse team of professionals where opportunities abound for engineers, scientists, IT experts, welders, administrative and business professionals, and more. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, your contributions are not just jobs. They're a chance to make an impact from strengthening U.S. security to leading the charge

in revolutionary energy solutions and expanding the boundaries of scientific knowledge. Our culture at the lab values collaboration, innovation, and a relentless pursuit of excellence. We're committed to nurturing your professional journey within a supportive workspace and offering a comprehensive benefits package designed to ensure your well-being and secure your future. Seize the opportunity to help solve something monumental. Dive into Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's wide variety of job openings at llnl.gov forward slash careers, where you can also learn more about our application process. This is your chance to join a team dedicated to a mission that matters. Make your mark. Visit llnl.gov forward slash careers today to discover the waiting for you. Remember, your expertise might just be the spotlight of our next podcast interview. Don't delay. Uncover the myriad of opportunities available at Lawrence Livermore

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