THE CHALLENGE
Clean, renewable energy is a must for the future. One area where innovation is coming from: fusion power, which would generate electricity via nuclear fusion reactions.
But it has a bit of a way to go before being put into practical use, despite how long scientists have been working on it, starting in the 1940s.
In 2022, Hertz Fellow Kim Budil oversaw an important step toward making it a reality.
THE SOLUTION
As director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), she played a key role in a landmark achievement: the first controlled fusion experiment to achieve fusion ignition, which the U.S. Department of Energy described as a “historic, first-of-its-kind achievement” that will provide “invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy.”
In the 2022 experiment, LLNL researchers, in a fraction of a second, produced 3.15 megajoules (MJ) of fusion energy output using 2.05 MJ of laser energy. They demonstrated, for the first time, that the fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy works.
“Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capacity, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that arise,” said Budil. “These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.”
THE IMPACT
The experiment, and the work of the LLNL, advances the concept that fusion is very real, even if it will still take a massive undertaking to make it a reality.
“It’s enormously difficult. And it’s not just engineering; there’s still physics to be learned and much work to be done,” she said. “If we can capture that intellectual capital in this great moment where everyone is really feeling the power of science, that would be amazing.”
“Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit — a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capacity.”
Kim Budil
Director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
