Lab fulfils two key conditions for workable fusion energy system

A private laboratory in New Jersey, US, has made lab news by fulfilling two of the key conditions required to form a workable fusion energy system.

The Lawrenceville Plasma Physics company has developed a system that can confine atomic nuclei in an ion bottle, and heat them to 1.8 billion degrees Celsius. The company has claimed the record temperature for a confined plasma reaction after reaching the staggering heights.

Additionally, the new system produces no neutrons and therefore has no radioactivity. This differs from previous attempts, achieved by creating an aneutronic reaction through firing a particle beam and its choice of hydrogen-

boron fuel pB11.

Their results have been published in the American Institute of Physics’ Physics of Plasmas journal, and confirms that the high-density deuterium ion fusion reactions were confined “for durations of 7-30ns in the cores of plasmoids with typical radii of 300-500 μm”.

The laboratory's chief scientist Eric Lerner, said the third condition Lawrenceville Plasma Physics is working towards is to increase the density of the fuel. “The denser it is, the faster it will burn," he told MyCentralJersey. A higher density could allow the lab to scale up the reaction to deliver net energy.

Posted by Ben Evans