NIF lasers or ITER magnets: who will light the first star?

Since 1997, physicists from Livermore National Laboratory (California) have been building an installation to launch a controlled thermonuclear reaction using lasers, and everything is almost ready. According to the latest news from the fields , the project has reached the final stage: before the birth of a small star on our planet, several months remain (if the experiment turns out to be successful, of course). This summer, the first test will be launched at the National Ignition Facility , in which the 5 micron star reaction will last for 0.0000000002 seconds (2 x 10 ^–10 s).

A controlled thermonuclear reaction is like the Grail for physicists who have been unsuccessfully trying to launch it for half a century now. Closer to all, the ITER project has advanced(there it is planned to use superconducting magnets to heat the plasma). Livermore physicists expect to get ahead of their European competitors, and to achieve this goal they have already spent $ 2 billion of budget money.

The National Ignition Facility building, the size of three football fields (it has been built since 1997), is a tunnel structure in which 192 of the most powerful lasers will be focused on a tiny capsule with a diameter of 2 mm with deuterium and tritium (pictured above). If the calculations of scientists are correct, then when the lasers are turned on at full power, the temperature will exceed 10 ⁸K, which will lead to the emergence of a hot plasma, and after a few moments (depending on the plasma density and time of holding the temperature), this reaction will begin the synthesis of deuterium and tritium nuclei into helium nuclei, similar to what happens inside the Sun.

However, as one physicist said, even if we can recreate the reaction on Earth inside the solar core, we will not have anything that will interest the industry. He meant that only 276.5 W / m ^{3 is} generated in the center of the solar coreenergy, the efficiency is about the same as the metabolism in the body of a crocodile - too little for commercial use: the Sun is a very cold star, which gives enough energy only due to its volume, but not due to efficiency. Something thousands of times more powerful is needed as a useful source of energy on the Earth’s surface.

Physicists from the Livermore National Laboratory say that laser technology needs to be improved for at least another 20 years so that they can support the operation of a thermonuclear reactor.