A laser-driven technique for creating fusion that doesn't require radioactive fuel elements and leaves no toxic radioactive waste is now within reach, according to researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney.
In a paper published in journal Laser and Particle Beams, lead author Heinrich Hora from UNSW Sydney and international colleagues argue that the path to hydrogen-boron fusion is now viable, and may be closer to realisation than other approaches, such as the deuterium-tritium fusion approach being pursued by US National Ignition Facility (NIF) and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor under construction in France.
Hydrogen-boron fusion produces no neutrons and, therefore, no radioactivity in its primary reaction. And unlike most other sources of power production – like coal, gas and nuclear, which rely on heating liquids like water to drive turbines – the energy generated by hydrogen-boron fusion converts directly into electricity.
But the downside has always been that this needs much higher temperatures and densities – almost three billion degrees Celsius, or 200 times hotter than the core of the Sun.
'It is a most exciting thing to see these reactions confirmed in recent experiments and simulations,' said Hora, an Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at UNSW. 'Not just because it proves some of my earlier theoretical work, but they have also measured the laser-initiated chain reaction to create one billion-fold higher energy output than predicted under thermal equilibrium conditions.'
An Australian spin-off company, HB11 Energy, holds the patents for Hora’s process. 'If the next few years of research don’t uncover any major engineering hurdles, we could have a prototype reactor within a decade,' said Warren McKenzie, managing director of HB11.
'From an engineering perspective, our approach will be a much simpler project because the fuels and waste are safe, the reactor won’t need a heat exchanger and steam turbine generator, and the lasers we need can be bought off the shelf,' he added.
Other researchers involved in the study were Shalom Eliezer of Israel’s Soreq Nuclear Research Centre; Jose M. Martinez-Val from Spain’s Polytechnique University in Madrid; Noaz Nissim from University of California, Berkeley; Jiaxiang Wang of East China Normal University; Paraskevas Lalousis of Greece’s Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser; and George Miley at the University of Illinois, Urbana.
