In 2022, physicist Tammy Ma and the team at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved a scientific breakthrough decades in the making: fusion ignition, or the combining of two atoms to generate more energy out of a reaction than was put in — recreating on Earth the same process that powers the Sun. She explains how they used a giant laser (way, way bigger than you're thinking) to catalyze this reaction and shares a vision for how this technology could change the world by creating limitless clean energy.
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[00:00:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Audio Collective. Our ability to harness fusion energy and leave fossil fuels behind might not actually be light years away. In fact, it could be realized within our lifetime.
[00:00:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Today, the US, France and China are competing with their dollars in the biggest brains in the field to make this technology viable.
[00:00:31] [SPEAKER_01]: But even small breakthroughs will require a great deal of sustained effort, resources, and innovation to bring this nuclear power to life.
[00:00:42] [SPEAKER_01]: This is TED Tech, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective. I'm your host, Shareld Dorsey.
[00:00:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Our speaker today is Tammy Ma, a fusion physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In this talk,
[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_01]: she takes us on a journey through the possibilities and potential of this technology, showing us how achieving fusion power could be the next major leap for humanity.
[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_01]: But before we dive in, a quick break to hear from our sponsors.
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[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Tammy Ma takes the TED stage. What would you do with the largest laser in the world?
[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Send a beeping to space.
[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Strap the laser to the head of a shark.
[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Or maybe just use it to amuse your cat.
[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the laser that I'm talking about is nothing like your tip-a-call laser pointer.
[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Note this laser is a thousand times more powerful than the entire US electrical grid.
[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_00]: It's the most energetic laser in the world.
[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I guarantee you, you're going to want to keep your cat far far away from this laser.
[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm a physicist. So what I would want to do with this laser is something a little bit different.
[00:03:07] [SPEAKER_00]: I take that laser and split it into almost 200 beams and shine them from every angle onto a little pellet of hydrogen.
[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: That very first element on the periodic table.
[00:03:21] [SPEAKER_00]: I'd use the laser to squeeze and compress that hydrogen until the atoms themselves fuse.
[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_00]: That's called fusion, and it's the same reaction that powers the sun.
[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So with our giant laser, we could actually create miniature stars right here on Earth.
[00:03:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Pretty cool, right?
[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, that's a goal. But why? Why do we care to do this?
[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion means unlocking a different kind of nuclear power.
[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of splitting big heavy atoms like we do with fission in today's nuclear power plants,
[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion means bringing together the atoms of a light element until they merge.
[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: In our case, we're going to use deuterium and tridium.
[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: There are isotopes of hydrogen, heavy hydrogen.
[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And if we can use our lasers to get them close enough together at hot enough temperatures
[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: and hold them their long enough until they fuse.
[00:04:23] [SPEAKER_00]: What we create on the other side is a helium nucleus and a neutron.
[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And it just so happens that that helium and neutron,
[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_00]: we're just a little bit less than our deuterium and tridium originally did.
[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to take that differential in mass and put it into an equation that everybody knows really well.
[00:04:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Einstein's E equals E equals MC squared.
[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Where that M is that differential in mass, we're going to multiply by C, the speed of light, a huge number squared,
[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_00]: and with that get a tremendous amount of energy out.
[00:05:02] [SPEAKER_00]: How tremendous. Well, one single pound, a fusion fuel, has the same amount of energy as 5,000 barrels of oil,
[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: or 3.5 million pounds of coal.
[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: So fusion is the ultimate energy source.
[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Not least because the field that we need for fusion is also very abundant.
[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Duterium is naturally occurring in seawater.
[00:05:30] [SPEAKER_00]: About one in every 7,000 particles is D2O instead of H2O.
[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And tridium we know how to breed from lithium.
[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_00]: So conceivably, we actually have enough fusion fuel on Earth
[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00]: to last us 30 billion years of human consumption at today's levels.
[00:05:49] [SPEAKER_00]: If you ask me, I'd call that energy security.
[00:05:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion is also clean energy.
[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: In our equation, it was a terium plus a tridium gave us a helium.
[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Carbon is nowhere in that equation.
[00:06:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion is also inherently safe.
[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: In order to start a fusion reaction, we first have to put energy into the system to make the atoms fuse.
[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_00]: So if you ever want to stop a fusion reaction, you just cut off that initial energy source.
[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion will create waste but it's not the kind of waste that will last for tens or hundreds of thousands of years.
[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, the low level nuclear waste of fusion can decay away in just decades.
[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And that means we can place fusion power plants almost anywhere.
[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: New large population centers in big cities.
[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And fusion power plants would be compatible with our current grid infrastructure
[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_00]: or the smart grids of the future.
[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And finally, fusion energy is also flexible energy.
[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Energy when you need it and can come in different forms.
[00:06:57] [SPEAKER_00]: Electricity to power our homes but also high temperature heat for industrial use.
[00:07:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Now, to be fair, there are some downsides to fusion too.
[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion is incredibly complex and incredibly difficult.
[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_00]: The development of fusion has been and will be expensive.
[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_00]: But the potential benefits of fusion are so great that it is worth it.
[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so how do we actually make fusion work here on Earth?
[00:07:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's a problem that we've been working on for nearly 60 years now.
[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's go back to that ginormous laser.
[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_00]: It's called the National Ignition Facility or NIS at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: The NIS is the world's largest, most energetic laser,
[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_00]: housed in a building, the size of three American football fields, side by side and 10 stories tall.
[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_00]: It's not just one laser.
[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It's actually a hundred and ninety-two separate lasers.
[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And each one alone is one of the most energetic in the world.
[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to combine all hundred and ninety-two of those lasers and shine them on a little field pellet
[00:08:15] [SPEAKER_00]: about the size of a peppercorn.
[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: The laser starts as a little pulse of light, the fraction of the energy of a typical laser pointer.
[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to split that beam into a hundred and ninety-two ways.
[00:08:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And those beams are now going to bounce back and forth across this giant facility,
[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: each beam passing through hundreds of slabs of laser glass getting boosted up in energy.
[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: In total, each beam is going to travel nearly a mile
[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_00]: and get amplified up a million times in energy
[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: and expanded in size from a little pin prick to over a square foot.
[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And then, all hundred and ninety-two laser beams are going to get directed towards the fusion chamber.
[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Half the laser beams go up and half come down
[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00]: and they're going to direct and concentrate their light on a tiny cylinder that sits right in the middle
[00:09:07] [SPEAKER_00]: about the size of a pencil eraser.
[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_00]: The lasers go into that cylinder and create a bath of x-rays
[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00]: that then envelop the little fuel pellet that sits right in the middle.
[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Those x-rays are so intense that they start blowing off the shell of that pellet,
[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_00]: like a rocket and then by conservation momentum,
[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_00]: the rest of the capsule squeezes inward equal an opposite reaction.
[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_00]: We're going to reach temperatures of over a hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit,
[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_00]: hotter than the center of the sun,
[00:09:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and pressures that would feel like a hundred billion earth atmospheres pressing down on you.
[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And then we start a little spark right in the center,
[00:09:49] [SPEAKER_00]: which then propagates through more of that fuel,
[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_00]: creating a miniature star and with it a huge burst of energy.
[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: And if we do it right,
[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_00]: we can actually get a whole lot more energy out than the energy that went in to start all of us.
[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_00]: I know, it sounds really easy, right?
[00:10:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Well obviously this is a story that bridges enormous scales,
[00:10:17] [SPEAKER_00]: the temperature and density of a star focused in on the atomic level.
[00:10:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Remember how I said that laser is a thousand times a power of the US electrical grid?
[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Well power is defined as energy per unit time,
[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_00]: so what we're doing is taking a huge amount of energy and compressing it down into just nanoseconds.
[00:10:37] [SPEAKER_00]: And that's why every time we fire the lasers, the lights don't flicker across the globe,
[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_00]: but we are able to create conditions that are the hottest in the entire solar system.
[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, so I know what you guys are all thinking.
[00:10:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Like how could this actually possibly work, right?
[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And who would be crazy enough to try?
[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Well tens of thousands of scientists and engineers around the world, including me.
[00:11:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And scientists are trying all different approaches to fusion,
[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_00]: not just giant lasers, but sometimes giant magnets.
[00:11:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Things that have cool names like Tocamax or Stellarators that can help shape and contain the fusion.
[00:11:22] [SPEAKER_00]: And right now we're actually seeing a whole bunch of new private startup fusion companies pop up all across the globe.
[00:11:30] [SPEAKER_00]: Each one trying a unique and different approach to fusion.
[00:11:34] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole host of brave and brilliant individuals working hard to make this dream a reality.
[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And our team at Lawrence Livermore National Lab are the stewards of work that started in 1960, because of national security.
[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_00]: We need to understand fusion to understand how to ensure that our US nuclear arsenal stays safe and effective.
[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And that is what is provided the steady funding to pursue this very difficult physics challenge over decades.
[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it took us 12 years to build the nith.
[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_00]: And we've been doing experiments using it for nearly 15 years more now.
[00:12:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And in that time, we've improved our physics understanding and computational simulation models.
[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_00]: We've designed new diagnostic instruments capable of taking better, clearer, faster pictures of the experiment.
[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_00]: We've continuously pushed up the laser energy and found ways to build better chargots.
[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And guess what?
[00:12:43] [SPEAKER_00]: In December of 2022, we finally did it.
[00:12:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Our team at Lawrence Livermore National Lab demonstrated fusion ignition.
[00:12:59] [SPEAKER_00]: And we've been doing this for the first time in human history.
[00:13:04] [SPEAKER_00]: We generated a controlled thermonuclear fusion reaction in the laboratory that generated more energy out than went in with the lasers to start in.
[00:13:19] [SPEAKER_00]: That's right, we were able to light a match and turn that into a bonfire.
[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_00]: And in the process, release a new form of energy that is a million times more energetic than a chemical reaction.
[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_00]: And now we've actually been able to repeat ignition for more times in just the last 15 months with our most successful experiment giving us over twice as much energy out as we put in with the lasers.
[00:13:48] [SPEAKER_00]: So are we done?
[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, not quite.
[00:13:55] [SPEAKER_00]: In order to move towards that fusion energy future, we'll have to figure out how to harness this energy in a working fusion power plant.
[00:14:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And to be clear, there's still a long scientific and engineering road ahead.
[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Just to build on our successes at NIF, we'll have to build more efficient lasers, mass manufacturing targets, and figure out robotics for automated operations.
[00:14:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And more.
[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_00]: The depth and breadth of this challenge will require sustained investment from government and private industry and all of us working together.
[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_00]: We're all racing to make this a reality, but there's still a lot more work to be done.
[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know exactly how long this will all take, but I do know that we can do it.
[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And when we do it, when we make fusion energy a reality, energy will become so plentiful that it will no longer be a limited resource.
[00:15:00] [SPEAKER_00]: This will change the world as we know it's.
[00:15:04] [SPEAKER_00]: When energy becomes essentially unlimited, there are unlimited ways to use this energy.
[00:15:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Every country will be energy independent.
[00:15:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Standards of living will rise around the world.
[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And we'll be able to use energy in creative new ways as well, like carbon capture at scale to combat climate change.
[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Vertical farming for delicious sustainable food for all.
[00:15:32] [SPEAKER_00]: And decalination of sea water so that everybody has access to clean water.
[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_00]: We can do all this and more with fusion.
[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Fusion can ignite that future.
[00:15:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[00:15:49] [SPEAKER_01]: That was Tammy Ma at TED 2024.
[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_01]: TED Tech is part of the TED Audio Collective.
[00:16:02] [SPEAKER_01]: This episode was produced by Nina Lawrence, edited by Alejandra Salazar, in fact check by Julia Dickerson.
[00:16:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Maria Latias, Faraday Grunge, Corey Hajim, Danielle LaBullaroso and Michelle Quint.
[00:16:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Cheryl Dorsey.
[00:16:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening and talk to you again next week.