One of the dreams of physicists is to be able to bottle the Sun. Or what is the same, duplicate the mechanism by which the stars shine in a sustained way and that is economically profitable: nuclear fusion. The fundamental problem is that it is necessary to ensure that the meltable material – in this case, hydrogen – is in the fourth state of matter, that is, plasma, which implies having to reach temperatures of hundreds of millions of degrees .
That is the crux of the matter: we can get that temperature, but … in which vessel? Physicists have devised two ways to keep plasma locked up: by magnetic fields or by inertial confinement , that is, by bombarding it with laser beams in a very precise sequence. The main inertial reactors in operation are that of the National Ignition Facility, in the USA, which uses 192 extremely powerful lasers – a burst fired in this complex generated 500 billion watts – and the Laser Mégajoule, in France, with 240 beams.
Among the magnetic ones is the ITER, which will come into operation in 2025, and the German Wendelstein 7-X, which was launched at the beginning of 2016. All of them are immense, and that is why, when in 2014 the defense firm Lockheed Martin announced that it was developing a compact nuclear fusion reactor , many experts were skeptical.
Image: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
