this video is sponsored by Best Buy on December 5th 2022 at 103 am the Lawrence Livermore
laboratory and its National ignition facility reached a milestone they've been after for
nearly 60 years they produced the first nuclear fusion ignition in history but what does that
mean exactly and what does it imply for nuclear fusion is it a major breakthrough that some claim
or just a milestone along a long path and most importantly what does it mean for you and me
I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
nuclear fusion has been one of the Holy Grails of energy since it was first discovered a hundred years ago and it's what actually Powers the Stars it's a type of
nuclear reaction that naturally happens under the extreme conditions at a star's core taking light
atoms like hydrogen and combining or fusing them into larger heavier atoms like helium you might
not know this but this is actually how all the atoms in the universe except hydrogen originally
formed which means that at a very real way we are literally made out of Stardust something to think
about anyway Fusion Energy means taking the power of a star and putting it into a reactor right here
on Earth while this may seem like science fiction we may be closer to it than ever before there
are several reasons why many people believe that Fusion is the future of energy first Fusion is the
single most energy dense and Powerful source of energy we know of releasing four to eight million
times more energy than burning an equal mass of fossil fuels and four times more energy than
uranium-235 released in a conventional nuclear reactor second the fuel for Fusion Energy is
abundant most current approaches to Fusion Energy use two special forms of hydrogen called deuterium
and tritium about one in 6400 hydrogen atoms is a deuterium atom which means that it makes up about
.0035 percent of Water by mass this works out to roughly 40 trillion metric tons of deuterium
in the oceans alone making it a virtually inexhaustible resource tritium on the other hand
is pretty rare but we can produce it from lithium in nuclear reactors third Fusion is considered a
clean and completely carbon-free source of energy since the reaction products are helium which is
harmless and neutrons which aren't harmless but can be absorbed to generate power or more
tritium also as we mentioned in previous videos many of you pointed out helium is actually in a
bit of a shortage right now and helium has some really interesting properties like the specific
heat and other thermal considerations that make it really valuable in engineering applications
so if we could produce helium him here on Earth Not only would that be really awesome for kids
birthday parties but amazing for engineering and science fourth unlike nuclear fission fusion is
inherently safe and there's no chance of a runaway reaction or meltdown so Fusion is a safe plentiful
clean and Powerful source of energy tackling it would mean the rapid decarbonization of the
world economy providing reliable and sustainable source of Base load power to complement Renewables
it would also mean energy Independence for countries around the world for you and I that
would mean no more spiking utility bills whenever a new conflict pops up overseas among a multitude
of other benefits so naturally the question is if it's so great why aren't we using it everywhere
the answer is simple we haven't been able to make it work in a technically and economically viable
way but the recent breakthroughs at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories takes us one step
closer in the right direction now to understand the magnitude of this new development we need to
put things into context so start with how Fusion works you may remember from high school chemistry
that all atoms are made of a tiny positive nuclear surrounded by negative electrons in
order for two atoms to fuse we need to strip them other electrons and get their nuclei close enough
together for them to bond through a special type of force called strong nuclear force which is the
strongest force in the universe by the way we can use different types of atoms as fuel but the most
promising options use deuterium and tritium which are types of hydrogen atoms and a special isotope
of helium called helium-3 now you're probably wondering where does Fusion Energy actually come
from and the answer to that is when fusion occurs a part of the mass of the atoms is converted into
energy the amount of energy is given by Einstein's most famous equation E equals MC squared for
example if we took two grams of deuterium and fused it with three grams of tritium they would
produce around 4 grams of helium and one gram of neutrons and it would convert 0.01883 grams into
Pure Energy yes energy and mass are related the mass represents 1.7 trillion joules of energy or
472 million Watt hours and that's from burning just 5 grams of fuel that's enough to power the
average American home for 44.4 years or to charge 4 500 model S performance Teslas this
works out to a specific energy density of almost 100 billion Watt hours per kilogram 300 million
times higher than the best lithium ion battery 7 million times higher than gasoline and four
times higher than uranium-235 oh looks like my package is ready to pick up at Best Buy wait
wait I didn't think he'd hear me we love Best Buy it's like a toy store for big boys as my son
would say I'm picking up a Garmin dash cam Mini 2 because a few weeks ago there was a car crash
just down my street luckily everyone was okay and because one of the drivers had a dash cam
there was proof of what happened I turned to Best Buy because I trust products they carry much like
Garmin this car key size dash cam is remarkably Compact and with 1080p video and 140 degree lens
and Garmin Clarity HDR Optics you'll be able to record high quality crisp videos day or night plug
it into your car and it takes care of the rest and with incident detection it saves videos from just
before during and after an event automatically it has voice control so you can focus on the road
okay Garmin parking guard that monitors your car for any activity while parked and will even alert
you on your phone and with an online Vault you can even record those files to the cloud to share on
your terms live view even allows you to see what's happening around your car in real time I love this
feature I went to Best Buy and got a Garmin for my dash cam because there are two Brands I know
love and Trust keep yourself protected as you drive with the Garmin dash cam Mini 2 from Best
Buy links in the description huge thanks to Best Buy and you for supporting the show just one gram
of fuel would be enough to cover the average person's lifetime use of energy and we could
find it in just three gallons of water and three or four standard laptop batteries I don't know
about you but the idea of being able to carry all the fuel I'll ever need in just a couple
of water bottles and a few laptop batteries feels unreal but of course Fusion Energy isn't perfect
the big problem is that the nuclear are all very small and they repel each other with the second
strongest force in the universe electromagnetic repulsion which gets stronger as the nuclei get
close are together like when you try to stick two magnets of opposite poles closer because
of this repulsion and their small size we need to compress and confine atoms to extremely high
pressures densities and temperatures and keep them like that long enough for Fusion to occur
otherwise they'll just bounce apart again in other words we literally have to recreate the
conditions inside the core of a star to get Fusion going not an easy task by any means and something
that takes a lot of energy to pull off and that's where things start looking Grim for Fusion Energy
even though Fusion releases a tremendous amount of energy we have never been able to get enough
Fusion reactions to occur to produce more energy than we put into it to make the fusion happen in
the first place and that's exactly what changed last December at Lawrence Livermore National Labs
when they achieve ignition using the world's largest laser the national ignition facility
or nif in short igniting a plasma means making the fuel fused to release at least as much energy as
it took to make the fusion happen in the first place it's the same idea as igniting a branch
to start a campfire you know that the combustion releases heat but you still need to use a lighter
or friction or some other source of energy to get that fire reaction started and using that
same analogy even if you are able to make a small spark in that wood you wouldn't manage to actually
ignite it until you produced enough heat to make the branch catch on fire the same thing applies
with a nuclear fusion reactor unless we manage to get at least as much energy out as we put in
we won't be able to keep the reactor burning the fuel by itself it took 60 years but we finally
made it happen so how did they do it well there are dozens of different designs and approaches to
nuclear fusion the most popular approach is using magnets to confine hot plasma and to compress it
into high temperatures and high densities the most common application of this magnetic confinement
technology are tokimax like the huge itir project that's currently under construction other
Technologies include spiromax stellarators and a promising field reverse configuration reactor from
company called helion Energy but success came from a different type of reactor that uses lasers to
produce something called inertial confinement Fusion or ICF in ICF the deuterium tritium
fuel is introduced in a small spherical capsule or shell around four millimeters wide usually made of
diamond Which is far smoother than a mirror that's just about the size of a BB pellet or a peppercorn
the capsule is suspended inside a little Hollow cylinder called a holum about 10 millimeters in
diameter and 20 millimeters long usually made of gold which is cool to cryogenic temperatures
so from there a pulse of 192 high energy lasers are shot into the walls of the hallram generating
x-rays that quickly heat the outside of the capsule like a tiny x-ray oven vaporizing the
outer shell as the capsule material shoots out like a million little Rockets the fuel is pushed
in following Newton's law of inertia imploding to one ten thousandth of its initial volume the fuel
then heats up to more than 270 ml million degrees Fahrenheit at pressures twice that of the center
of the Sun and under these conditions the pulse of 192 laser beams deposited a total of 2.05
megajoules of energy into the walls of the hall realm for context 2.5 million joules may sound
like a lot but in reality that's only about the energy in two chocolate bars however that energy
is released by the laser in a very short burst and it only lasts a few billionths of a second
generating a peak power of 500 terawatts for a very small period of Time for That brief moment
the laser power exceeded the entire United States 2022 average power generation of 460 terawatts
if you're wondering how they pulled this off without leaving the nation in a blackout it's
pretty simple capacitors hundreds of thousands of capacitors connected in series in parallel if
you want to know how capacitors work and while they can deliver so much power we made a video
on super capacitors a few months ago that will link here a good video to check out after this
one during the Laser's pulse a little plasma one tenth of a millimeter in diameter forms which for
a trillionth of a second is the brightest thing on earth the nuclear fusion reaction releases a total
of 3.15 megajoules of energy resulting in a yield of 1.54 times the energy deposited by the laser
meaning that for the first time we have a net gain of more than 50 percent fusion power baby so we
basically managed to explode a tiny thermonuclear atomic bomb the size of a peppercorn using lasers
and created a true tiny little star in a lab and if that's not science fiction turn reality enough
I don't know what is so does that mean we pulled it off I mean Fusion is now right around the
corner right we're gonna start seeing them popping up not really in fact not by a long shot this is
an important milestone for sure but it's just that a milestone in a very long and arduous path with
many obstacles on the horizon even though it took over 60 years to reach it the only thing
the Milestone proves is that it is possible to produce more energy from Fusion than what you
put in but there's so much more that still has to happen for Fusion Energy to become a reality
one major challenge is that even though the nif shot 2.05 megajoules of energy onto the target
it actually sucked 300 megajoules from the grid for a wall plug efficiency of just 0.7 percent
you don't have to be a rocket scientist to tell that investing 300 megajoules to produce 3.15
megajoules back isn't generating electricity it's consuming it even worse we can't really use the
full 3.15 megajoules that the fusion produced we'd still need to capture that energy and convert it
into electricity or other form of usable energy each step having its particular inefficiencies
depending on what technology we end up using then comes the capsules these capsules are made in
collaboration with a German company called Diamond materials and they have to be perfectly rounded
and virtually defect free every time any tanning Perfection the size of a bacteria can mess up
the entire implosion so they take a long time to make and will cost a lot right now each of the new
capsule designs takes seven months to make from its Inception to design to the actual construction
and characterization even assembling the finished capsule with fuel and getting it ready for the
experiment takes two weeks so firing capsules repeatedly to produce any usable amount of energy
simply isn't possible today it doesn't make sense to talk about a levelized cost of energy yet since
this is a research facility not a commercial power plant for those reasons this technology is nowhere
near becoming economically viable because of the high cost of operating the largest laser in the
world making nearly perfect fuel capsules and destroying a horror May of gold with every shot
it's obvious that there's still a ton of work to do and that you shouldn't be misled into thinking
that laser driven Fusion reactors are right around the corner but this experiment did generate a ton
of data that will help us get the next shot better than the last and that'll help us push
closer and closer to a future with nuclear fusion energy the nif laser is decades old and scientists
believe that with new laser Technologies they can get the wall plug efficiency up to as much
as 33 percent delivering 100 megajoules of energy per pulse all else equal that would produce over
150 megajoules of energy and it's still a lot less than about 50 overall but it's much better
than the present loss of 99 there's also lots of room for improvement in the overall yield since
the December's experiment only four percent of the fuel was burned so there's a potential
to increase the amount of energy up to about 25 fold and they can do that with a more energetic
and Powerful laser with these improvements in the laser itself and the capsule design and symmetry
scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories believe they will eventually reach a net energy
gain and be able to start thinking about the next stage of their research delivering that net energy
back to the grid if nothing else this Milestone proves that given we could ignite a capsule in a
lab we might be able to do the same thing in a power plant and that's worth looking into I'm
not gonna lie when I first saw this article I was really pumped I was thinking for the first
time we produced more than we put in doesn't that mean that Fusion is right on the corner because I
mean even if it's not a whole lot we'll just make a bunch of them and just keep powering the next
and keep getting more and more power out but as you can imagine the cost of the world's biggest
laser and all the capacitors to power it for that instant of a second it's massive and these are not
going to scale up anytime soon so yes this is a huge breakthrough and one honestly I'm pretty
impressed happened in 2022. if you told me when will this happen I would have guessed five years
from now it put another way we're five years ahead of where I thought we might be now how far are we
from seeing a nuclear fusion reactor it's hard to say five ten years probably is a fair assessment
but what do you guys think how important is this do they have the right approach with ICF
are there other Alternatives that you can think of that might be better are you excited about
nuclear fusion because here's the reason why this matters solar power is cheaper there's been some
discussions about why even invest in this when we have solar and wind solar is dirt cheap now it's
easy way to make power but it doesn't produce power 24 hours a day well not unless you do the
laser the Japanese laser solar farm in space idea that we covered video in the description but other
than that you would need batteries so for every solar power and every plant you produce you got
to produce batteries distort at night this is base load power you could run a fusion reactor
all day and the byproduct would be helium which is vitally important for all sorts of engineering
applications helium is a great use when you need to store energy in thermal heat it can store way
more heat than natural air or nitrogen or oxygen or anything else and it's in short supply so
this is important for so many reasons and I think knowing that this research is happening especially
so close to home is pretty amazing and I think I'll just keep checking out the progress and and
we'll make future videos so you should be excited this is a huge breakthrough but let's pump the
brakes or not building nuclear fusion power plants anytime soon all right that is a look at nuclear
fusion and this really important breakthrough that just happened hopefully you guys learned a
couple things write to us leave a comment let us know what you think and let us know what future
videos you want to see from us all right I'm Ricky Tibet DaVinci we'll catch you next week