There's a buzzing interest in fusion ignition: a New York Times article, press from Department of Energy, a Saturday Night Live sketch, Biden administration's investments in fusion initiatives, waves of fusion startups, or the Fusion Energy Act. Underneath this cloud of optimistic excitement is a long path ahead and a long path trailed behind. I am writng from July, 2024 to postmark the current scientific status update. Perhaps decades down, we'll view the first fusion ignition the way we look at the Watt steam engine today.
On December 5, 2022, we achieved fusion ignition, which was significant because it actually showed promise for fusion energy. We've had fission power plants but the byproducts are not clean. We've had fusion energy before in tokamaks, but we've always wastefully used more energy to actually generate it. For the first time, we've created a crude case where we are releasing more energy than the energy used to ignite the experiment; we've created a source of sustainable energy. A feat of scientiific design. A feat for sustainable, carbon-free energy. A feat for mankind. Like the Wright brother's first flight or the invention of the cyclotron, these crude experiments are a feat of ingenuity that ushers in innovations that snowballs into a new age. Wright Brothers sparked an age of man-made flight and fusion sparks a potential age of sustainable nuclear energy.
Now the numbers may look idealistic, but there are a lot of problems hindering the scaling of this experiment. On paper we use 2 MJ to create 3 MJ with a gain of about 1.5. This doesn't consider the 200 MJ we've drawn from the power grid to create the 2 MJ of energy through refining the laser's energy. That 2 MJ is a experimental quantity considered only within the context of a physics experiment. This isn't an engineer's quantity that considers energy losses used to setup our experiment. Additionally, we must consider the energy loss that will come through the Rankine Cycle when we eventually try to power a heat engine to actually power the grid. From an engineering standpoint, there are a lot of problems that prevent the pragmatic deployment of this technology on a commercial level. Hence, it remains a less-than-practical physics experiment right now.
Most of the work has been done by physicists for decades and decades. From optic engineers refining the glassware to the design physicist who have designed the experiments, the work is gargantuous. I'm excited to see fusion-based engine designs and manufacturing schemes popping up everywhere. Perhaps tokamaks may prove more practical in the end. Perhaps there is another green technology is more commercially viable. Nonetheless, I had the opportunity to have a small role in designing a part of the simulations used to design the experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Yet, the majority of the contributions are owed to the many physicsts who've came before and are continually pushing the boundaries for physics.