Sandia’s scientists report that working with two magnetic fields and a laser, all at low points of their power outputs, the Z machine has released neutrons in an amount surprisingly close to ‘break-even’ fusion. The new result comes from using a method fully functioning for only little more than a year.

Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine.  Matt Gomez, left, presents an idea to Steve Slutz, right, while Adam Sefkow looks on. Image Credit: Randy Montoya, Sandia National Lab.  Click image for the largest view.

Sandia National Laboratories’ Z machine. Matt Gomez, left, presents an idea to Steve Slutz, right, while Adam Sefkow looks on. Image Credit: Randy Montoya, Sandia National Lab. Click image for the largest view.

The experimental work is described in a paper published in the Sept. 24 Physical Review Letters online.

A theoretical Physical Review Letterspaper to be published on the same date helps explain why the experimental method worked. The combined work demonstrates the viability of the novel approach.

Sandia senior manager Dan Sinars said, “We are committed to shaking this [fusion] tree until either we get some good apples or a branch falls down and hits us on the head.” He expects the project, dubbed “MagLIF” for magnetized liner inertial fusion, will be “a key piece of Sandia’s submission for a July 2015 National Nuclear Security Administration review of the national Inertial Confinement Fusion Program.”

Inertial confinement fusion creates nanosecond bursts of neutrons, ideal for creating data to plug into supercomputer codes that test the safety, security and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The method could be useful as an energy source down the road if the individual fusion pulses can be sequenced like an automobile’s cylinders firing.

MagLIF uses a laser to preheat hydrogen fuel, a large magnetic field to squeeze the fuel and a separate magnetic field to keep charged atomic particles from leaving the scene.

It only took the two magnetic fields and the laser, focused on a small amount of fusible material called deuterium (hydrogen with a neutron added to its nucleus), to produce a trillion fusion neutrons (neutrons created by the fusing of atomic nuclei). Had tritium (which carries two neutrons) been included in the fuel, scientific rule-of-thumb says that 100 times more fusion neutrons would have been released. (That is, the actual release of 10 to the 12th neutrons would be upgraded, by the more reactive nature of the fuel, to 10 to the 14th neutrons.)

Tritium’s even larger output, to achieve break-even fusion – as much power out of the fuel as placed into it – will still need 100 times more neutrons (10 to the 16th) to be produced.

That’a a sizable gap, but the Sandia technique is an experiment with researchers still figuring out the simplest measures: how thick or thin key structural elements of the design should be and the relation between the three key aspects of the approach – the two magnetic fields and the laser. There will lots of room for improvement as things progress.

The first paper, “Experimental Demonstration of Fusion-Relevant Conditions in Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion,” (MagLIF) by Sandia lead authors Matt Gomez, Steve Slutz and Adam Sefkow, describes a fusion experiment remarkably simple to visualize.

The deuterium target atoms are placed within a long thin tube called a liner. A magnetic field from two pancake-shaped (Helmholtz) coils above and below the liner creates an electromagnetic curtain that prevents charged particles, both electrons and ions, from escaping. The extraordinarily powerful magnetic field of Sandia’s Z machine then crushes the liner like an athlete crushing a soda can, forcefully shoving atoms in the container into more direct contact. As the crushing begins, a laser beam preheats the deuterium atoms, infusing them with energy to increase their chances of fusing at the end of the implosion. (A nuclear reaction occurs when an atom’s core is combined with that of another atom, releasing large amounts of energy from a small amount of source material. That outcome is important in stockpile stewardship and, eventually, in civilian energy production.) Trapped energized particles including fusion-produced alpha particles (two neutrons, two protons) also help maintain the high temperature of the reaction.

Sefkow noted, “On a future facility, trapped alpha particles would further self-heat the plasma and increase the fusion rate, a process required for break-even fusion or better.”

The actual MagLIF procedure follows this order: The Helmholtz coils are turned on for a few thousandths of a second. Within that relatively large amount of time, a 19-megaAmpere electrical pulse from Z, with its attendant huge magnetic field, fires for about 100 nanoseconds or less than a millionth of a second with a power curve that rises to a peak and then falls in intensity. Just after the 50-nanosecond mark, near the current pulse’s peak intensity, the laser, called Z-Beamlet, fires for several nanoseconds, warming the fuel.

According to the paper’s authors, the unusual arrangement of using magnetic forces both to collapse the tube and simultaneously insulate the fuel, keeping it hot, means researchers could slow down the process of creating fusion neutrons. What had been a precipitous process using X-rays or lasers to collapse a small unmagnetized sphere at enormous velocities of 300 kilometers per second, can happen at about one-quarter speed at a much more “modest” 70 km/sec. (“Modest” is used as a comparative term; the speed is about six times greater than that needed to put a satellite in orbit.)

The slower pace allows more time for fusible reactions to take place. The more benign implosion also means fewer unwanted materials from the collapsing liner mix into the fusion fuel, which would cool it and prevent fusion from occurring. By analogy, a child walking slowly in the ocean’s shallows stirs less mud than a vigorously running child.

Sandia senior scientist Mike Campbell said, “This experiment showed that fusion will still occur if a plasma is heated by slow, rather than rapid, compression. With rapid compression, if you mix materials emitted from the tube’s restraining walls into the fuel, the fusion process won’t work; also, increased acceleration increases the growth of instabilities. A thicker can [tube] is less likely to be destroyed when contracted, which would dump unwanted material into the deuterium mix, and you also reduce instabilities, so you win twice.”

Besides the primary deuterium fusion neutron yields, the team’s measurements also found a smaller secondary deuterium-tritium neutron signal, about a hundredfold larger than what would have been expected without magnetization, providing a smoking gun for the existence of extreme magnetic fields.

The question remained whether it was indeed the secondary magnetic field that caused the 100-fold increase in this additional neutron pulse, or some other, still unknown cause. Fortunately, the pulse has a distinct nuclear signature arising from the interaction of tritium nuclei as they slow down and react with the primary deuterium fuel, and that interaction was detected by Sandia sensors.

The secondary magnetic field is the subject of the second, theoretical paper, “Understanding Fuel Magnetization and Mix Using Secondary Nuclear Reactions in Magneto-Inertial Fusion.” Using simulations, Sandia researchers Paul Schmit, Patrick Knapp, et al confirmed the existence and effect of extreme magnetic fields. Their calculations showed that the tritium nuclei would be encouraged by these magnetic fields to move along tight helical paths. This confinement increased the probability of subsequently fusing with the main deuterium fuel.

“This dramatically increases the probability of fusion,” Schmit said. “That it happened validates a critical component of the MagLIF concept as a viable pathway forward for fusion. Our work has helped show that MagLIF experiments are already beginning to explore conditions that will be essential to achieving high yield and/or ignition in the future.”

The foundation of Sandia’s MagLIF work is based on work led by Slutz. In a 2010 Physics of Plasmas article, Slutz showed that a tube enclosing preheated deuterium and tritium, crushed by the large magnetic fields of the 27-million-ampere Z machine and a secondary magnetic field, would yield slightly more energy than is inserted into it.

A later simulation, published January 2012 in Physical Review Letters by Slutz and Sandia researcher Roger Vesey, showed that a more powerful accelerator generating 60 million amperes or more could reach “high-gain” fusion conditions, where the fusion energy released exceeds by more than 1,000 times the energy supplied to the fuel.

This results shows the concept has legs and might get to breakeven. But, said Campbell, “There is still a long way to go.”  But they are way ahead of ITER,


Comments

5 Comments so far

  1. Harold Baker on September 25, 2014 12:03 PM

    “We are committed to shaking this [fusion] tree until either we get some good apples or a branch falls down and hits us on the head.”

    So far the only thing shaking has been money out of taxpayers pockets. They have spent countless $billions trying to make fusion work, with very little to show for it. Pardon me if I am rather underwhelmed by this latest news. It seems the hot fusioneers have a powerful lobby which has the ears of our lawmakers. This is the only explanation there could be for this disgraceful waste of our money, and failure to explore more productive alternatives.

  2. MattMusson on September 26, 2014 7:23 AM

    Only two orders of magnitude to go!

    Of course this machine is not designed to produce energy. But, everyday we learn a little more about how fusion plasma behaves.

  3. Marc on October 3, 2014 7:05 PM

    It must be time to renew funding for federal projects. Seems like this is the time of the year when most of these think tanks toss out some red meat, no?

  4. Marc on October 5, 2014 3:51 PM

    It seems like Sandia trots out a little “good news” every once in a while to continue to justify funding. Agreed, it’s interesting stuff. But I wonder if they shaved off a few million for EMC, would they even miss it?

  5. dmm on October 6, 2014 5:50 PM

    I’m in favor of fusion research. If nothing else, it leads to greater understanding of MHD — useful for astronomy and other fields. But I wish we’d spend some $$ on thorium fission reactors. Then we’d have a few hundred years of breathing room to work on fusion (and solar).

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