Frequently Asked Questions
- What is HiPER?
- Who is involved and what stage are they at?
- What is fusion?
- What is INERTIAL fusion?
- Will inertial fusion work?
- Why is fusion attractive?
- Who discovered fusion and when?
- Why invest in fusion when we have mature renewable technologies like wind and solar power?
- There is already a major fusion project underway called ITER. Why build HiPER if ITER is already being built?
- There are already major laser projects underway, called NIF (in the USA) and LMJ (in France). Why build HiPER when NIF and LMJ exist?
- How long will it take to demonstrate this technique for power production?
- How expensive will electricity generated from fusion energy be, compared to conventional methods?
- Is the long term goal that fusion reactors will replace conventional nuclear power stations?
- Why is it taking so long to develop this technology?
- Is it dangerous? Will there be any radioactive waste products? If so, what will happen to them?
- What kind of science will be performed on HiPER?
- Is there a link between this facility and defence related work?
- Where will HiPER be situated?
- Who will pay for the facility?
Questions / Answers
HiPER stands for High Power laser Energy Research facility
HiPER is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of laser driven fusion as a future energy source.
It will open up entirely new areas of scientific research, providing access to physics regimes which cannot be explored on any other facility. This will cover areas as diverse as laboratory astrophysics, extreme material science, turbulence, and fundamental atomic, nuclear and plasma physics.
HiPER has just completed a 2-year design study involving senior scientists from 12 nations. The conclusions of this study allowed HiPER to be selected onto the European roadmap for future large-scale science facilities. See: ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/esfri/docs/esfri-roadmap-report-26092006_en.pdf
HiPER is now preparing for a 3-year project to resolve all the issues preparatory to construction: financial, legal, strategic, technical, etc.
This 3-year phase has been formally endorsed by 7 European nations at the governmental or national funding agency level, 2 regional governments, over 20 scientific institutions and has direct involvement from industry. In total, 15 nations are now associated with HiPER. Endorsement by the European Commission is currently being assessed, as part of their Framework Programme 7. The results will be known this Summer. See: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/capacities/research-infrastructures_en.html
The nations involved at “partner” level are: Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and the UK. In addition, the Conseil Régional d’Aquitaine (France) and the Comunidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain) are involved at the regional government level. Institutions and scientists from Russia, Germany and Poland are also directly involved in the project, and scientists from the USA, Japan, China, South Korea and Canada are involved via international collaborations.
The successful conclusion of this “preparatory phase” is designed to allow a decision to construct by a consortium of nations and funding agencies.
Fusion is the holy grail of energy sources – combining abundant fuel with no greenhouse gas emissions, minimal waste products, and a scale that can meet mankind’s long-term energy demands
Fusion is the combination of small atomic nuclei into a larger nucleus. As predicted by Einstein ( E=mc² ), this process can release a large amount of energy
Fusion is the process that powers the Sun and all the stars.
Earth-based fusion reactors use Deuterium and Tritium (isotopes of Hydrogen) to create Helium gas and a neutron. The helium is used to drive subsequent fusion reactions (creating a self-sustaining process). The neutron is captured in a “blanket” surrounding the fusion chamber – it deposits its energy such that the blanket heats up. This heat is used to drive a conventional steam turbine power plant.
Fusion power plant designs are typically at the multi-Gigawatt scale.
Sea water contains the main fuel source (Deuterium)
The main challenge is to heat and maintain the fuel at a very high temperature (of millions of degrees) and at a high enough density for a sufficient duration.
Two different schemes have emerged that have led to the construction of huge infrastructures.
In the “magnetic confinement” scheme, a low-density hot plasma is confined by magnetic fields in toroidal (doughnut-shaped) geometry. The international “ITER” facility is being constructed to lead to the demonstration of net fusion energy production for a duration of up to 8 minutes.
“Inertial confinement” fusion is based on creating much higher densities for much shorter timescales, using tiny (mm-size) pellets containing the fuel. These pellets are imploded to create the high density using high power laser beams. This leads to fusion reactions taking place inside the compressed fuel at more than a thousand times solid density for a few tens of picoseconds. For a power plant this process is then repeated 5 or 10 times a second to create a continuous flow of electricity.
Present estimations predict the achievement of net fusion energy production (a gain of about 15) for a laser energy of the order of 1 million Joules (a megajoule). Two large laser facilities at this scale are presently under construction: one in France (LMJ: Laser Mégajoule) and one in the USA (NIF: National Ignition Facility). NIF will be fully operational in 2009. These facilities will explore a conventional approach to inertial fusion: using laser generated x-rays to drive the implosion such that the fusion combustion propagates from a central hot spot formed at the end of the compression phase.
Net energy production from inertial fusion has already been demonstrated on Earth in an offshoot of the US defence mission in the 1980s. What now remains is to demonstrate energy production in the laboratory using a laser. This is anticipated on NIF in 2010: just 3 years away, marking the culmination of many decades of research.
This world-altering event will require a clear response to the public – it is essential therefore that our scientific community clearly understands the future path to an energy programme following this event. The field is still in the Research and Development phase, requiring international cooperation over the next decade centred on a next generation laser facility. Europe is ideally placed to lead the world in this journey, but requires a focused programme to ensure timely progress.
The HiPER project has been developed to provide a clear path forwards from this event, based on a strong science mission. This will allow us to answer the political and public questions of what to do after NIF achieves energy production.
The process of inertial fusion is shown schematically on this website: http://www.hiper-laser.org/fusion/fastignition.asp
Fusion does not release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which is believed to be a factor in global warming
There is no long lived radioactive waste produced
Fusion does not rely on a large fuel mass, unlike fission, and so ‘melt down’ is not possible. The worst that can happen is that you get no energy output!
The high temperatures created by fusion can be used to drive a Hydrogen production cycle. Hydrogen is needed as the fuel for a new, carbon-free solution to mobile energy (e.g. to power vehicles). So fusion can provide energy both for the national grid and to supply local, mobile power sources.
As such, the benefits of fusion energy cannot be overstated in the current global setting where climate change, pollution, energy security and the ever increasing demand for consumption represent a principal challenge facing mankind. It is a long-term, sustainable solution that will take a concentrated research and development effort across a range of options to realise its potential.
The discovery of fusion cannot be attributed to a single person but a collection of discoveries by many different scientists.
In 1905 Einstein published the famous equation E=mc² ,which equated energy and mass. In 1920, Francis William Aston (UK) first discovered four separate hydrogen nuclei were heavier than a single helium nucleus. On the basis of this work, Arthur Eddington (UK) proposed in 1920 that the Sun could get energy from converting hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei ( via E=mc² ). In 1939 Hans Bethe (Germany/USA) then distilled these facts into a quantitative theory of energy production in stars, which eventually led to him winning the Nobel prize in 1968.
The first tentative fusion experiments were carried out in the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge (UK) during the 1930’s, but serious effort was not applied until the 1950’s when the ZETA device was built at the Harwell site in the UK.
Renewable technologies like wind and solar power are already being exploited. However they are only expected to account for a target value of 10% of energy generation by 2010, and perhaps 30% in the long term.
For a reliable national grid there needs to be a relatively constant method for generating the base load requirements. This is currently fulfilled by fossil fuel burning power stations and/or nuclear fission reactors. However this is undesirable because of carbon emissions and high level radioactivity problems.
A fusion power station would be a direct, non carbon producing alternative.
The basic fuel is found in seawater and so energy security is greatly enhanced, removing the reliance on regionally based fuel sources.
- There is already a major fusion project underway called ITER. Why build HiPER if ITER is already being built?
Fusion represents a very attractive energy source for the future in that the fuel supply is almost inexhaustible and there are no carbon emissions or long lived radioactive isotopes produced. ITER represents one route for producing fusion but it is sensible to investigate other options to ensure fusion technology can be fully developed to meet our long-term needs.
Multiple routes exist for fossil fuel sources (oil, gas, coal, etc) and renewable sources (wind, wave, solar, etc). Similarly, we must plan for multiple routes for our long-term energy requirements.
Inertial fusion offers some unique benefits – for example the potential to use advanced fuels (with little or no tritium). This greatly reduces the complexity of the process and further reduces the residual radioactivity. Inertial Fusion also allows for the use of flowing liquid wall chambers, thus overcoming a principle challenge: how to construct a chamber to withstand thermonuclear temperatures for the lifetime of a commercial reactor. In addition, Inertial Fusion allows for the direct conversion of the fusion products into electricity. This avoids the process of heating water, and so increases the net efficiency of the electricity generation process.
- There are already major laser projects underway, called NIF (in the USA) and LMJ (in France). Why build HiPER when NIF and LMJ exist?
The National Ignition Facility(NIF) and Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) are large facilities designed primarily for defence purposes. Only a small part of their mission is to investigate energy generation. The method used in these facilities is not well suited to energy generation. They use x-rays to compress and heat a pellet with extremely high accuracy.
HiPER will be a civilian facility whose main mission is to demonstrate that inertial fusion could be used as a future energy source. To do this it uses an all-optical method of energy generation called “fast ignition”. This separates the process into 2 stages: fuel compression and fuel heating. This is analogous to a petrol engine (compression plus spark plug) approach. Fast ignition is predicted to require a much smaller laser to achieve high energy output, and so is far more compatible with a commercial power station’s requirements.
Fusion ignition at NIF is expected to be demonstrated in the period 2009 to 2012.
The HiPER preparatory phase project is scheduled for 2008-2011, and so an informed decision on the route forwards can be taken by combining the results of the NIF demonstration with the detailed design work for HiPER.
Construction of HiPER would take 4-5 years.
One possible future option will be to combine the work performed for HiPER with that of the wider international community (particularly the USA and Japan) to create a multi-regional approach to the next stage. Plans for this are currently being developed.
The detailed analysis of this question is still underway. Initial estimates from the USA in the mid-1990s predicted a cost of between 5 and 8 cents per kW-hour.
In the near term, conventional nuclear fission power stations will continue to be a part of the reduced carbon energy generation requirements. The technology is well developed and efficient and will continue to be a part of energy generation well into the future.
However due to the attendant costs and risks of waste disposal, storage and decommissioning the long term aim should be to reduce the number of fission power stations.
Fusion is always 30 years away isn’t it?!
The expected achievement of net energy production using laser fusion (by the NIF facility in ~2010) changes the landscape, such that an accelerated programme can be initiated, based on solid scientific proof.
The reason that it’s taken 40 years to get to this point is because we needed to find a way to reliably produce extreme conditions in the laboratory. In order to obtain fusion the fuel must be heated to 100 million degrees Celsius. At these temperatures matter becomes a plasma (made from negatively charged electrons and positively charge nuclei). The plasma must be confined to keep the nuclei together long enough to undergo the fusion reaction. Confinement of plasma is a very difficult task as there cannot be contact of the plasma and vessel walls as firstly there are no materials that can withstand such temperature and secondly the plasma would quickly cool due to heat conduction. Instabilities in plasma are also a significant challenge as they can act negatively and cause energy losses or prevent confinement (depending on the method of confinement).
In the case of laser driven fusion the appropriate laser and fuel pellet technology for power stations must still be developed - subjects that HiPER will address alongside the fusion physics.
There are no long-lived radioactive products as there are with fission. The fusion process does however produce neutrons and other high energy particles. These can interact with the reaction chamber and its immediate environment, such that over the course of the life of the fusion power plant there is some low-level radioactive waste produced. The level and nature of this is such that the waste stream is manageable – just as in the case of radioactive by-products from a hospital.
The science programmes were selected for their compelling nature in terms of delivering an extreme science capability to Europe. The HiPER facility specification was then developed to provide an internationally leading capability in these areas. The scope included:
- Opacity and photoionization physics - to address many outstanding fundamental atomic physics questions, along with their application to (for example) solar modelling.
- Warm Dense Matter studies – addressing the principal outstanding regime of material science in which there is no accepted theory (for which HiPER will offer exceptional probing and diagnostic capability).
- Laboratory Astrophysics – consistent with the fusion and high energy-density potential of HiPER, there is a wealth of astrophysical phenomena whose models could be tested in the laboratory, including supernovae evolution, proto-stellar jets, planetary nebulae, interacting binary systems, cosmic ray seeding and acceleration, and gamma-ray bursters.
- Extreme Matter studies – What are the fundamental properties of matter in extreme states? This includes studies in Gigagauss magnetic fields (otherwise only found in highly compact stellar objects, and in which the magnetic field dominates the electric field in determining sub-atomic motion), in Gigabar pressure regimes, in radiatively dominated systems, in burning plasmas, etc.
- Turbulence – how do compressible, nonlinear flows transition to turbulence and subsequently evolve? This is one of the few remaining fundamental uncertainties in classical physics.
- Laser-plasma interaction physics – including the question of how waves and matter interact under highly nonlinear conditions
- Nuclear physics under transient, excited state conditions – to study the effect of dense plasmas on nuclear cross sections, the behaviour of isomeric states via pump-probe studies of dressed states, and the creation of high density electron-position pair plasmas and the evolution of the ensuing pair-fireball.
- Production and interaction of relativistic particle beams – for example, whether macroscopic amounts of relativistic matter can be created (then studied and utilised)
- Fundamental physics at the strong field limit
It is clear that HiPER will open up entirely new areas of research, providing access to physics regimes which cannot be explored on any other science facility.
Full details of the science case are provided in the Conceptual Design Report
HiPER will be a civilian facility for energy research, with all the results published to the international scientific community. No aspect of the research undertaken on HiPER will be classified. This has been a guiding principle of the project and a central aspect of the consortium from its inception
HiPER will investigate the science of “hot dense matter”. This lies at the centre of fusion research. Aspects of laser driven fusion have been classified (although most of the field was declassified many years ago). The remaining security concerns relate mostly to the use of x-ray radiation drive – the approach adopted by the National Ignition Facility (USA) and Laser Mégajoule (France). This is because of the analogy to x-ray radiation drive in thermonuclear weapons. The approach adopted by HiPER is fundamentally different. It will use a purely optical system, avoiding entirely the radiation interaction issues associated with the weapons research. It is no coincidence that this is the laser fusion method being pursued in Japan, which strictly avoids any research into nuclear weapons.
This is a decision for the 3-year “preparatory design phase” project. The UK is currently the coordinator of the project and the leading host country at the moment, but no decisions have been taken (in the UK or elsewhere) on construction or site selection yet.
This also is a decision for the 3-year “preparatory design phase” project. The main output from this phase is the preparation of a consortium of nations and funding agencies willing to construct HiPER.