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Could sodium-ion be a hazard-free and lower cost alternative to lithium-ion for the energy storage market? China seems to think so. And as is often the case in clean technology, they are out in front. Energy storage is a critical component to achieving 100% clean electricity generation. Without it, the intermittency of solar and wind leaves the entire strategy vulnerable to collapse…
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Ammonia and hydrogen combination Join over 1800 sectoral experts: Ammonia and Hydrogen
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The post Breakthrough: Laser-Powered Fusion Experiment Nears ‘Ignition’ appeared first on POWER Magazine.
An experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) appears to have approached fusion ignition as it recreated the extreme temperatures and pressures at the heart of the sun for a tiny fraction of a second. The momentous step has fueled new optimism for fusion energy.
The experiment on Aug. 8 “was enabled by focusing laser light from NIF—the size of three football fields—onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second,” LLNL reported on Aug. 18. It achieved a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ)—and initial analysis suggests this is an eightfold improvement over experiments conducted in spring 2021, and an increase of 25 times over NIF’s 2018 record yield.
The production of that energy—which is more than any previous inertial confinement fusion experiment—proves ignition is possible, said experts from the Imperial College London, which are part of the “very large team” of industry and academia that has worked over many decades to demonstrate ignition.…