Monday, 12 December 2022
First Light Fusion welcomes the news today of reports that ‘Net Energy Gain’ has been demonstrated at The National Ignition Facility in the USA. This important and exciting news shows that inertial fusion can work in a device suitable for a power plant.
Dr. Nick Hawker, Co-founder & CEO of First Light Fusion, said:
“Consensus seems to have been that the other branch of fusion, magnetic fusion, would be the first to crack ‘gain’. We have long known that inertial fusion works, and those of us in the field have seen this coming for several years.
“If confirmed, this result is a watershed moment for inertial fusion as a power generation technology. Target gain has long been the measure of success, the objective that shows the core physics has been cracked. From this point, the physics does not change. It has long been known, from underground tests, that high-gain inertial fusion works. The physics path from this result to power production is very clear and significantly derisked.
“For the energy sector, there will not be an immediate impact, and it is important that deployment of renewables must continue. This is not a silver bullet for climate change. But we need clean baseload power and this is what fusion can offer. It does not have the drawbacks of nuclear, no high-level or long-lived waste, no weapons grade material, no meltdown risk. There is a credible path to a power plant with the laser approach.
“At First Light, we are pursuing a simpler, lower-cost approach that we believe can be commercialised more quickly. This result is directly relevant to the physics of our approach and massively increases our belief that we can reach cost-competitive power production with inertial fusion.”
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