| Nuclear power
Achieving fusion, and what next for First Light?
Having attained the major milestone of achieving fusion with its novel projectile-based technology, First Light Fusion is now looking to the next key steps, including a “gain” demonstrator, with more energy out than in, and design of a pilot power plant. First Light is pursuing a unique approach to inertial fusion, in which deuterium-tritium fuel inside a target is compressed using a projectile travelling at tremendous speed, creating the temperatures and densities needed for fusion. First Light believes its technology promises the simplest, fastest and cheapest route to commercial fusion power
Dr Nick Hawker co-founder and CEO, First Light Fusion, Oxford, UK
High fives, popping of corks, confetti cannons… None of these things happened at the end of 2021 when we saw neutrons – evidence that we had achieved fusion for the first time. Though we are proud to have an action-oriented, entrepreneurial and energetic culture at First Light, we are all scientists and engineers; rigour is one of our company values. Any result needs to be challenged, forensically tested and, in the case of our fusion result, independently verified by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which took us until April.
But that all said, we’re not robots either, there were definitely some fist pumps along the way! I would be lying if I said we didn’t collectively feel a huge sense of achievement, satisfaction and excitement at both the result and also what this means for First Light Fusion and indeed the fusion sector generally.
After achieving fusion for the first time, we have been asked: how did you know? what were you looking for? The answer is that we were looking for little blips on the oscilloscope. The blips needed to be at the right time, within a few billionths of a second, of the right shape, and most crucially, we needed to see them on more than one detector. For the first shot, it was there on one detector only, and the same on the second. But excitement built cautiously. In the end we ticked every objective for the
measurement, and the confidence these are neutrons is eight-sigma, less than a trillionth of a percent chance of a false positive. For readers who aren’t aware, First Light Fusion (a University of Oxford spin-out) is a privately-owned business researching power generation by inertial confinement fusion. I founded First Light in June 2011 alongside Professor Yiannis Ventikos, the head of the Mechanical Engineering Department at University College, London.
Our mission is to solve the problem of fusion power with the simplest machine possible. “Simple” is the key word here and one I will repeat throughout this piece. Fusion science is incredibly complex, as is the engineering that goes towards turning it into a power generation technology. With complexity comes delay and major expense. We firmly believe we can crack fusion energy, but we also believe that for it to be sustainable, it needs to be cost competitive. Hence our insistence on making sure everything we do is as simple as it can be, preferably using tried and tested technology where it exists, but also ensuring that we have the end point in sight at all times. Society won’t accept clean power at any cost, the objective is net zero but also to end energy poverty. For fusion energy to be a major contributor in tackling climate change it must deliver electricity at a price people can pay.
Targetting fusion
We take a totally unique approach to fusion technology, different from any other private company or government- backed fusion scheme. Our approach is a new method of inertial confinement fusion. We are able to recreate the established process for inertial fusion, the same implosion of the fuel pellet, with a simpler, lower-cost, scalable method. We impact an intricately designed and engineered object, our target, which contains fusion fuel, with a high-velocity projectile.
We successfully demonstrated this method, creating fusion, in April 2022,
something we achieved for less than £45 million, and with a rate of performance improvement faster than any other fusion scheme in history.
The target design is the key to our
approach and our targets are completely proprietary. They are formed of two parts – the amplifier and the fuel capsule. The amplifier focuses and amplifies the velocity of the shockwave generated by the projectile at the point of impact and delivers this amplified pressure to the fuel capsule. One of the designs we used to show fusion takes the 6.5 km/s projectile velocity, and boosts that to a fuel capsule
Shockwave
implosion velocity of 80 km/s. This level of amplification has never been previously achieved, and this is the first time fusion has been demonstrated in this way.
This is reflected specifically in our unique approach to trying to solve this great scientific problem.
Our approach, a form of inertial confinement fusion, creates the extreme temperatures and pressures required to achieve ‘fusion’ by compressing a target containing fusion fuel using a projectile travelling at a tremendous speed. The projectile approach is lower-cost, simpler, and more energy-efficient than the complex lasers or magnets used by others, and it has lower physics risk.
It also has a simple geometry. We use one projectile coming from one side. This simple geometry opens up different engineering solutions that allow us to avoid the biggest engineering challenges of fusion power, which are: managing the intense heat flux; preventing neutron damage to structural materials; and producing the required tritium fuel. The key technology in our approach is the target design, which focuses the energy of the projectile, a bit like how a lens focuses light. Although the outside system is different, the imploding fuel is identical to that of the laser- driven approach. The core physics is the same, but we have a new way or realising it. Inertial fusion is envisaged as a pulsed process, like an internal combustion engine. The main existing approach to inertial fusion uses a large
capsule
Fuel
www.modernpowersystems.com | September 2022 | 33
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