Nuclear Fusion: Inside the breakthrough that could change our world | 60 Minutes

last month the nearest star to the Earth was in California in a laboratory for the first time the world's largest lasers forced atoms of hydrogen to fuse together in the same kind of energy producing reaction that fires the sun it lasted less than a billionth of a second but after six Decades of toil and failure the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proved it could be done if Fusion becomes commercial power one day it would be endless and carbon free in other words it would change human destiny as you'll see there's far to go but after December's breakthrough we were invited to tour the lab and meet the team that brought star power down to earth the story will continue in a moment uncontrolled Fusion is easy mastered so long ago the films are in Black and White Fusion is what a hydrogen bomb does releasing energy by forcing atoms of hydrogen to fuse together what's been impossible is harnessing the fires of Armageddon into something useful the U.S department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory helps maintain nuclear weapons and experiments with high energy physics an hour east of San Francisco we met livermore's director Kim budell in the lab that made history the national ignition facility the national ignition facility is the world's largest most energetic laser it was built starting in the 1990s to create conditions in the laboratory that had previously only been accessible in the most extreme objects in the universe like the center of giant planets or the Sun or in operating nuclear weapons and the goal was to really be able to study that kind of very high energy high density condition in a lot of detail the national ignition facility or nif was built for three and a half billion dollars to ignite self-sustaining Fusion they tried nearly 200 times over 13 years but like a car with a weak battery the atomic engine would never turn over nif drew some nicknames it did for many years the not ignition facility the never ignition facility uh more recently than nearly ignition facility so this recent event has really put the ignition in the Neff ignition means igniting a fusion reaction that puts out more energy than the lasers put in so if you can get it hot enough dense enough fast enough and hold it together long enough the fusion reactions start to self-sustain and that's really what happened here on December 5th main laser operation will begin in approximately one minute last month the laser shot fired from this control room put two units of energy into the experiment atoms began fusing and about three units of energy came out Tammy ma who leads the lab's laser Fusion research initiatives got the call while waiting for a plane and I burst into tears it was just tears of joy and I actually physically started shaking and jumping up and down in in you know at the gate before everybody bored so everybody was like what is that crazy woman doing Tammy ma is crazy about engineering and that's another one of our sensors she showed us why the problem of fusion would bring anyone to Tears first there's the energy required which is delivered by lasers in these tubes that are longer than a football field and how many are there altogether 192 total lasers each one of these lasers is one of the most energetic in the world and you have 192 of them that's pretty cool right well pretty hot actually millions of degrees which is why they use keys to lock up the lasers ready the beams strike with the power 1 000 times greater than the entire National power grid your lights don't go out at home when they take a shot because these capacitors store the electricity in the tubes the laser beams amplify by racing back and forth and the Flash is a fraction of a second we have to get to these incredible conditions hotter denser than the center of the Sun and so we need all of that laser energy to get to these very high energy densities all that Wallop vaporizes a Target nearly too small to see can I hold this thing absolutely unbelievable absolutely amazing Michael staderman's team builds the hollow Target shells that are loaded with hydrogen at 430 degrees below zero the Precision that we need for making these shells is Extreme the shells are almost perfectly round they have a roughness that is 100 times better than a mirror you think about that if it wasn't smoother than a mirror imperfections would make the implosion of atoms uneven causing a fusion fizzle so these need to be as close to perfect as humanly possible that's right that's right and we do think there are among the most perfect items that we have on Earth staderman's lab pursues Perfection by vaporizing carbon and forming the shell out of diamond they build fifteen hundred a year to make 150 nearly perfect all the components are brought together under the microscope itself and then the assembler uses electromechanical stages to put the parts where they're supposed to go move them together and then we apply glue using a hair a hair yeah usually something like an eyelash or a similar or a cat whisker you apply glue with a cat whisker this way why does it have to be so small the laser gives us only a finite amount of energy and to drive a bigger capsule we would need more energy so it's a constraint of the facility that you've seen that is very large and despite its big size this is about what we can drive with it the target could be larger but then the laser would have to be larger on December 5th they used a thicker Target so it would hold its shape longer and they figured out how to boost the power of the laser shot without damaging the lasers so this is an example of a Target before the shot Tammy ma showed us an intact Target assembly that diamond shell you saw is inside that silver colored cylinder this assembly goes into a blue vacuum chamber three stories tall it's hard to see here because it's bristling with lasers and instruments this instrument they call Dante because they told us it measures the fires of hell one physicist said you should see the target we blasted December 5th which made us ask could we have you seen this before this is the first time I'm seeing it for Tammy Ma and for the world this is the first look at what's left of the target assembly That Changed History an artifact like Belle's first phone or Edison's light bulb this thing is going to end up in the Smithsonian the target cylinder was blasted to Oblivion the Copper support that held it was peeled backward the explosion on the end of this was hotter than the sun it was hotter than the center of the sun we were able to achieve temperatures that were the hottest in the entire solar system which would make an astronomical change in Electric Power unlike today's nuclear plants which split atoms apart fusing them is many times more powerful with little long-term radiation and it's easy to turn off so no meltdowns but getting from the first ignition to a power plant will be hard how many shots do you take in a day we take on average a little more than one shot per day if this was theoretically a commercial power plant how many shots a day would be required approximately 10 shots per second would be required and the other big challenge of course is not just increasing the repetition rate but also getting the gain out of the targets to go up to about a factor of a hundred Not only would the reactions have to produce 100 times more energy but a power plant would need 900 000 perfect diamond shells a day also the lasers would have to be much more efficient remember December's breakthrough put two units of energy in and got three out well it took 300 units of power to fire the lasers by that standard it was 300 in three out that detail was not front and center at the department of Energy's December news conference which fused the advance with an unlikely timeline today's announcement it's a huge step forward to the president's goal of achieving achieving commercial Fusion within a decade when you heard that President Biden's goal was commercial fusion power in a decade you thought what I thought it was nonsense Charles seif is a trained mathematician science author and professor at New York University who wrote a 2008 book on the hyping of fusion power I don't want to diminish the fact that this is a real achievement ignition is a milestone that people have been trying for to do for years I'm afraid that there are so many technical hurdles even after this great achievement that 10 years is a pipe dream those hurdles Sipe says include scaling up livermore's achievement the December shot generated about enough Excess power to boil two pots of coffee the hurdles might be overcome seif says but not soon I have a running bet going that we're not going to have it by 2050. still betting against Charles sipe's prophecy are more than 30 private companies designing various approaches to fusion power including using magnets not lasers three billion dollars in private money flowed into those companies in the last 13 months including bets by Bill Gates and Google amid all this speculation Lawrence livermore's director Kim budell is certain of one thing can you do it again absolutely they're going to try again next month udel agrees the obstacles are enormous but she told us commercial fusion power could be demonstrated in 20 years or so with enough funding and dedication we likened the first ignition to the first Wright brothers flight which covered only 120 feet it's one thing to believe that the science is possible that the conditions can be created it's another to see it in action and it really is a remarkable feeling after working for 60 years to get to this point um to have first taken that first flight it was 44 years from a puddle jump to supersonic flight whether fusion power is 10 or 50 years away is now mainly an engineering problem Lawrence Livermore has proven that from a machine A Star is Born

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 3,015,881

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, nuclear fusion, national ignition facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Id: 2kh6Ik4-yag

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 15 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Toror]

My question is, what was it that changed? What finally made it work this time vs the others? Did they heat it more quickly? Did they use a new material?

They've tried for years but they haven't discussed what the TRUE breakthrough really was that finally made it actually happen.

[u/brianpeiris]

Mirror for Canadians. I was able to watch this on the CBS website: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nuclear-fusion-60-minutes-2023-01-15/

[u/matsamharv]

WRONG! Nuclear weapons use FISSION not FUSION. This is junior high earth science for fuck sake. Unfuckingbelievable.

[u/MissDiem]

I was glad they at least added the footnotes that it actually requires 300 units of energy in for 3 units of output, and that some of us who have followed the subject long enough know there won't be commercial fusion in the lifespan of anyone reading this today.

It's sad that young redditors gets excited by what will inevitably be science fiction because there's a lucrative industry behind it, while clamoring to poach resources and progress away from renewables.

[u/Borats_Wife]

This is fucking awesome. I don’t understand how it works… but it is amazing nonetheless. Fusion sounds scary cause it is categorized with nuclear fission (atom bombs) but it is much less destructive when properly controlled. If we can safely harness it, fusion could literally make us a type 1 kardashev civilization. This is extremely exciting.

[u/Kill3rT0fu]

Why is the thumbnail the MCP from Tron?

[u/billstrash]

On topic: "we" should be working toward making current technology commercial asap and then replace it with this cleaner tech once ready. Off-topic: not trying to be a jerk but why are their eyes all fucked up?