#103 Why Achieving a “Burning Plasma” Is Not Relevant to Practical Laser Fusion Power
By Steven B. Krivit
February 2, 2022
On Jan. 26, 2022, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, claimed that fusion results published in their recent paper had achieved the fusion milestone known as “burning plasma.”
Philip Ball, an experienced U.K. science reporter, announced the news as a “Major Milestone toward Practical Fusion Power,” in a Scientific American article today.
According to Philip Ball, the reaction, which lasted a billionth of a second, is “on the cusp of being self-sustaining.”
For fusion physicists, “burning plasma” refers to the state when the fusion fuel is heated primarily from self-heating, without an external source of heating.
From a practical perspective, the NIF experiment reported on Jan. 26, 2022, as a Reuters article explained, produced “about the equivalent of nine nine-volt batteries.”
Reuters did not explain, however, that the experiment required the equivalent energy of about 21,176 nine-volt batteries. Neither did Scientific American.
Even though the NIF experiment demonstrated a burning plasma, the fusion device lost 99.9 percent of the energy it consumed. Also, it lasted for just one-billionth of a second.
An Aug. 8, 2021, experiment at NIF did slightly better. It only lost 99.7 percent of the energy it consumed.
