In early April, the $3.5 billion in Livermore, California, was given the green light to begin a series of experiments. Researchers hope they will culminate in the first ever self-sustained, stable fusion reaction that will release many times more energy than the energy used to trigger the reaction. The stadium-sized facility will train 192 laser beams on tiny targets, producing pressures and temperatures that could illuminate the interiors of giant planets and pave the way to the first fusion reactors.
To produce the temperatures and pressures needed for fusion, the facility will aim all of its 192 laser beams simultaneously on a hydrogen target. This all happens inside this 10-metre-diameter chamber, which weighs 130 tonnes. The sphere is made up of 18 aluminium sections that are each 10 centimetres thick.
The square openings are for the lasers, and the round openings are used to accommodate nearly 100 pieces of diagnostic equipment. (Image: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Department of Energy)
This is a view of the target chamber from the inside. The laser beams enter through ports in the chamber to deliver almost 500 trillion watts of power to the tip of the positioner (right), which will hold the target for each experiment. When all of its beams are fully operational, NIF will focus nearly 2 million joules of ultraviolet laser energy at that tiny target, delivering 60 times more energy than any previous laser system. (Image: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Department of Energy)
All 192 lasers that enter the National Ignition Facility chamber will be trained on this pencil-eraser-sized cylinder. This capsule will hold the pea-sized target, which for will be a pellet of frozen hydrogen. Laser beams will enter through openings at each end to compress and heat the hydrogen in the hopes of creating a self-sustaining fusion reaction. (Illustration: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Department of Energy)
As laser beams hit the interior of the gold-plated capsule, they will create intense X-rays that can squeeze the pea-sized pellet of hydrogen down to a speck about the width of a human hair and heat it to some 3 million °C. The burst of laser light will last just billions of a second, but physicists hope the intense pulse will force hydrogen atoms to combine to form helium, releasing enough energy to fuse all other neighbouring hydrogen atoms until the fuel is spent. (Illustration: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Department of Energy)
Before reaching the chamber, laser light must be converted from infrared light to ultraviolet light, which is more effective at heating the target.
This conversion is accomplished with plates sliced from large potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystals.
This crystal, which weighed about 360 kilograms, started out from a seed crystal and grew to its pictured size inside a 2-metre-tall vat of solution over a period of two months. Each crystal is sliced into plates measuring 40 cm2. More than 600 of these plates are needed for the National Ignition Facility. (Image: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Department of Energy)
