The tiny diamond sphere that could unlock clean power

[Grant]

At 1:03am on Monday 5 December, scientists at the National Ignition Facility in California aimed their 192 beam laser at a cylinder containing a tiny diamond fuel capsule.
That powerful burst of laser light created immense temperatures and pressures and sparked a fusion reaction - the reaction which powers the sun.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF), part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), had done such experiments before, but this time the energy that came out of the reaction, was more than the laser power used to trigger it.
Scientists have been trying for decades to meet that threshold and the hope is, one day, to build power stations that employ a fusion reaction to generate abundant, carbon-free electricity.
That's still some way off. In the meantime, much work needs to be done in developing the technology.
One of the key components at NIF is a peppercorn-sized synthetic diamond capsule, which holds the fuel. The properties of that spherical capsule are crucial to creating a successful fusion experiment.

The sphere has to be perfectly smooth and contaminant-free - any anomalies could ruin the reaction.
Those precisely engineered spheres are not made in California though. They are the result of years of work by Diamond Materials, a company based in Freiburg, Germany.
"The demands on the [spherical] capsules are very high," says Christoph Wild who, alongside Eckhard Wörner, is managing director of Diamond Materials

The tiny diamond sphere that could unlock clean power

A diamond sphere made in Germany was key to December's breakthrough fusion experiment in California.

www.bbc.com

 

[Gordon_R]

Sad when a BBC article sounds like a company press release...

Edit: Previous hype story on this topic:

Lab reports significant nuclear fusion progress

Major nuclear fusion breakthrough The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has recorded the biggest temperature and energy increase ever with a magnetised fusion experiment. The NIF recently published its finding in the...

mybroadband.co.za

 

[backstreetboy]

The tiny diamond sphere that could unlock clean power

The BBC never heard of the sun?

 

[Kosmik]

Is this not just trapping energy in a condense form? So yes it takes less power than what is released to trigger it but it takes a lot of energy to create all the components of the sphere so its still a net loss? Unless I assume the fusion can be a chain reaction that's controlled?

Example of small power, large release, think of a bullet and firing pin.

 

[Jet-Fighter7700]

my question is always when we finally cross this threshold, will we finally unlock deep space travel?

 

[Pak Fa Fui]

Does it need platinum cables to carry power and pure melted gold to store it