FOCUS BUSINESS AND RESEARCH NEWS
Laser fusion foundation given green light to research cleaner energy
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consortium of companies led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology (ILT) will develop the required components and
explore the practical photonics approaches in successfully harnessing laser-driven inertial fusion energy (IFE) for commercial use. The news has been announced as part of the PriFUSIO research project. Granted €18m of funding by the German
Federal Ministry of Education and Research over the next three years, as part of the €5bn ‘Fusion 2040 – Research towards the fusion power plant’ funding program, the PriFUSIO research project to develop the technology for commercially viable IFE will see seven industrial partners and three research institutes come together to investigate the pivotal photonics components for laser-driven fusion, and facilitate their integration into industrial applications. “We want to build a fusion ecosystem of industry, start-ups and R&D that pools existing strengths and creates synergies between the various players,” said Bettina Stark-Watzinger, Federal Minister of Education and Research. “We must not miss this huge opportunity.” Different from nuclear fission, which
Nuclear fusion energy represents a clean and virtually inexhaustible energy resource
generates unstable nuclei that can remain radioactive for millions of years and needs safe, long-term geological storage and causes a risk of nuclear meltdowns, nuclear fusion can be achieved by igniting hydrogen isotopes – deuterium and tritium – with high-energy laser pulses, causing the nuclei to fuse into helium and releasing energy due to the difference in mass between the original nuclei and the resulting helium nucleus. The process, if it can be controlled, could provide an abundant and carbon-free energy source.
Next generation of lasers Our sun achieves nuclear fusion at its core, where the pressure is 100 billion times that of Earth’s atmosphere but, to make deuterium and tritium fuse here on Earth, we need temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius. PriFUSIO’s research will aim to answer this fundamental problem, developing the next generation of high-powered lasers that can fire more than 10 times per second, while controlling the resulting plasma and maintaining the resulting fusion reaction
long enough to obtain more energy than was needed for ignition.
High-capacity materials for high-powered lasers The high-power levels that are required to ignite and control the reaction, however, will place extremely high demands on the complex optical systems used and their materials. “The performance and efficiency of the high-power lasers depend directly on the properties of the optical components used,” said Hans-Dieter Hoffmann, Head of the Lasers and Optical Systems department at the Fraunhofer ILT. For this reason, specialised suppliers of optical glass and coating materials – Schott and the Heraeus Group, firms involved in the processing and coating of optical components; Layertec and Laseroptik, and Trumpf, with its expertise in complex high-powered lasers – have been brought to the project. “PriFUSIO will bring together the expertise of these partners along the process chain,” said Hoffmann, to develop the high-end optics required to meet the performance needs of IFE reactors. EO
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