Fusion is a nuclear reaction that combines two light nuclei, producing energy; fusion reactions power stars like our sun. Producing energy from fusion would provide a carbon-free, clean, safe, and abundant source of electricity. Net energy production from fusion requires that the reactions occur in a ‘plasma’ hotter than the center of the sun. Raising the fuel to such temperatures requires a significant input of energy, and for decades experiments have been predominantly heated by external sources. A key milestone towards producing a significant energy output from fusion is to achieve a ‘burning plasma’ in which the fusion reactions themselves provide a majority of the heating, because this self-heating can be leveraged to greatly increase the energy output. Recent experiments on the National Ignition Facility, pursuing inertial fusion, have produced such burning plasmas in the laboratory for the first time. A subsequent experiment has since produced an ‘ignited’ plasma, in which the fusion self-heating surpasses all energy loss mechanisms for a period of time.
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Self-Heating Plasmas
Dr. Alex Zylstra received his undergraduate degree from Pomona College in 2009, and his PhD. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015. He joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as a Reines Postdoctoral Fellow, and then became a member of the scientific staff at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in 2018. He has studied numerous areas of high-energy-density physics and inertial confinement fusion, including nuclear astrophysics, charged-particle transport, and the development of novel inertial fusion designs. He was the experimental lead for the Hybrid E campaign on NIF, which generated the first burning and ignited plasmas in the laboratory. His work has been recognized by a DOE Early Career award in 2018 and a Livermore early career award in 2021.
Dr. Andrea Kritcher is the HYBRID-E design lead within the ICF program and is a member of the ICF leadership team and lead designer for shot N210808 which reached >1.35 MJ and first ignition by Lawson Criteria in the lab. Annie was first employed at the Lab as a summer intern in 2004, as an LLNL Lawrence Scholar during her time at UC Berkeley, and as a Lawrence postdoctoral fellow in 2009 following completion of her Ph.D. During her postdoctoral appointment she continued her work on X-ray Thomson Scattering, investigated nuclear plasma interactions, and co-lead a campaign to measure the equation of state of materials to hundreds of Mbars, which is featured in Nature. In 2012 Annie became a member of scientific staff and now serves as team lead for integrated implosion modeling and is a group leader within the design physics division at LLNL.
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