핵융합 에너지 활용: 전력의 미래

세계에서 가장 에너지가 높은 이 레이저는 제어된 열핵융합을 달성하여 미래를 위한 풍부하고 깨끗하며 유연한 에너지원을 개발하는 것을 목표로 합니다.

### 핵융합 에너지의 약속: 무한한 청정 전력의 활용
* ⚛ 태양에 동력을 공급하는 것과 동일한 과정인 **핵융합을 활용**하면 지구에 거의 무한에 가까운 깨끗한 에너지원을 제공할 수 있습니다.
* 🌍 핵융합은 오래 지속되는 폐기물을 최소화하고 사고 위험이 낮기 때문에 **현재의 핵분열 발전소보다 안전하고 지속 가능한 대안**이 될 수 있습니다.
* 💡 핵융합 연료인 **중수소와 삼중수소**는 풍부하고 널리 이용 가능하며, 지구상에 수십억 년 동안 인류의 에너지 수요를 충족시킬 수 있는 충분한 자원이 있습니다.
* 🔬 로렌스 리버모어 국립연구소의 국립 점화 시설(NIF)은 최근 처음으로 **제어된 핵융합 점화**를 달성하여 **반응을 시작하는 데 사용된 것보다 더 많은 에너지**를 생성했습니다.
* 🚀 이 획기적인 발전은 중요한 진전이지만, **핵융합 에너지를 상업적으로 실용화하기 위해서는 더 많은 연구와 개발**이 필요합니다.
* 💰 효율적인 핵융합 발전소를 건설하려면 **정부, 민간 산업계, 연구 기관 간의 상당한 투자와 협력**이 필요합니다.
* 🌐 핵융합 에너지의 성공적인 개발은 전 세계 에너지 생산에 혁명을 일으켜 **에너지를 본질적으로 무한정 공급**하고 농업, 담수화, 기후 변화 완화 등 다양한 분야에 변화를 가져올 수 있습니다.
* 🌟 핵융합 에너지는 전 세계의 생활 수준을 향상시키고 시급한 글로벌 과제에 대한 혁신적인 솔루션을 가능하게 하는 **'미래를 여는' 잠재력**을 가지고 있습니다.

What would you do with the largest laser in the world? Send a beam into space. Strap the laser to the head of a shark. Or maybe just use it to amuse your cat. Well, the laser that I'm talking about is nothing like your typical laser pointer. No, this laser is a thousand times more powerful than the entire US electrical grid. It's the most energetic laser in the world. I guarantee you you're going to want to keep your cat far, far away from this laser. Now, I'm a physicist, so what I would want to do with this laser is something a little bit different. I take that laser and split it into almost 200 beams, and shine them from every angle onto a little pellet of hydrogen. Hydrogen, that very first element on the periodic table. I'd use the laser to squeeze and compress that hydrogen until the atoms themselves fuse. That's called fusion.

And it’s the same reaction
that powers the Sun. So, with our giant laser, we could actually create miniature stars
right here on Earth. Pretty cool, right? OK, that's the goal. But why? Why do we care to do this? Fusion means unlocking
a different kind of nuclear power. Instead of splitting big, heavy atoms,
like we do with fission in today's nuclear power plants, fusion means bringing together
the atoms of a light element until they merge. In our case, we're going to use
deuterium and tritium. They are isotopes of hydrogen,
heavy hydrogen. And if we can use our lasers
to get them close enough together at hot enough temperatures, and hold them there
long enough until they fuse, what we create on the other side
is a helium nucleus and a neutron. And it just so happens
that that helium and neutron weigh just a little bit less than our deuterium
and tritium originally did.

So we're going to take
that differential in mass and put it into an equation
that everybody knows really well. Einstein's E equals -- Audience: MC squared. Tammy Ma: E equals MC squared. Where that m 
is that differential in mass, we're going to multiply by c,
the speed of light, a huge, huge number squared, and with that, get a tremendous
amount of energy out. How tremendous? Well, one single pound of fusion fuel
has the same amount of energy as 5,000 barrels of oil, or 3.5 million pounds of coal. So fusion is the ultimate energy source, not least because the fuel that we need
for fusion is also very abundant. Deuterium is naturally
occurring in seawater. About one in every 7,000 particles
is D2O instead of H2O. And tritium, we know
how to breed from lithium. So conceivably we actually
have enough fusion fuel on Earth

to last us 30 billion years of human consumption at today's levels. If you ask me, I'd call that
energy security. Fusion is also clean energy. In our equation, it was a deuterium plus a tritium
gave us a helium. Carbon is nowhere in that equation. Fusion is also inherently safe. In order to start a fusion reaction, we first have to put energy
into the system to make the atoms fuse. So if you ever want to stop
a fusion reaction, you just cut off that initial
energy source. Fusion will create waste, but it's not the kind of waste
that will last for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Instead, the low-level
nuclear waste of fusion can decay away in just decades. And that means we can place
fusion power plants almost anywhere, near large population
centers and big cities, and fusion power plants
would be compatible with our current grid infrastructure
or the smart grids of the future.

And finally, fusion energy
is also flexible energy. Energy when you need it,
and can come in different forms. Electricity to power our homes, but also high-temperature
heat for industrial use. Now, to be fair, there are some
downsides to fusion, too. Fusion is incredibly complex
and incredibly difficult. The development of fusion
has been and will be expensive. But the potential benefits of fusion
are so great that it is worth it. All right, so how do we actually
make fusion work here on Earth? Well, that's the problem
that we've been working on for nearly 60 years now. Let's go back to that ginormous laser. It's called the National
Ignition Facility, or NIF, at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. The NIF is the world's largest,
most energetic laser, housed in a building the size
of three American football fields, side by side, and ten stories tall.

It's not just one laser. It's actually 192 separate lasers, and each one alone is one
of the most energetic in the world. And we're going to combine
all 192 of those lasers and shine them on a little fuel pellet about the size of a peppercorn. Alright, let me take you into the facility
and give you a closer look. The laser starts as a little
pulse of light, the fraction of the energy
of a typical laser pointer. We're going to split
that beam into 192 ways. And those beams are now going to bounce
back and forth across this giant facility, each beam passing through hundreds
of slabs of laser glass getting boosted up in energy. In total, each beam
is going to travel nearly a mile and get amplified up a million
billion times in energy and expanded in size
from a little pinprick to over a square foot. And then all 192 laser beams
are going to get directed

towards the fusion chamber. Half the laser beams go up,
and half come down, and they're going to direct
and concentrate their light on a tiny cylinder that sits
right in the middle, about the size of a pencil eraser. The lasers go into that cylinder and create a bath of X-rays that then envelop the little fuel pellet that sits right in the middle. Those X-rays are so intense that they start blowing off
the shell of that pellet like a rocket. And then by conservation of momentum, the rest of the capsule squeezes inward, equal and opposite reaction. We're going to reach temperatures
of over 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the center of the Sun, and pressures that would feel
like 100 billion Earth atmospheres pressing down on you. And then we start a little spark
right in the center, which then propagates
through more of that fuel, creating a miniature star, and with it a huge burst of energy.

And if we do it right, we can actually get
a whole lot more energy out than the energy that went in
to start all of this. (Applause) I know, it sounds really easy, right? (Laughter) Well, obviously this is a story
that bridges enormous scales. The temperature and density of a star
focused in on the atomic level. Remember how I said that laser
is a thousand times the power of the US electrical grid? Well, power is defined
as energy per unit time. So what we're doing is taking
a huge amount of energy and compressing it down
into just nanoseconds. And that's why every time
we fire the lasers, the lights don't flicker across the globe. But we are able to create conditions
that are the hottest in the entire solar system. All right, so I know
what you guys are all thinking. Like, how could this actually
possibly work, right? And who would be crazy enough to try?

Well, tens of thousands of scientists
and engineers around the world, including me. Scientists are trying
all different approaches to fusion. Not just giant lasers,
but sometimes giant magnets. Things that have cool names
like tokamaks or stellarators, that can help shape
and contain the fusion. And right now, we're actually seeing a whole bunch of new,
private start-up fusion companies pop up all across the globe, each one trying a unique
and different approach to fusion. It's a whole host of brave
and brilliant individuals working hard to make this dream a reality. And our team at Lawrence
Livermore National Lab are the stewards of work
that started in 1960 because of national security. We need to understand fusion, to understand how to ensure that our US nuclear arsenal
stays safe and effective. And that is what has provided
the steady funding to pursue this very difficult
physics challenge over decades. So yeah, it took us 12 years
to build the NIF.

and we've been doing experiments using it for nearly 15 years more now. And in that time, we've improved
our physics understanding and computational simulation models. We've designed new diagnostic instruments
capable of taking better, clearer, faster pictures of the experiment. We've continuously pushed up
the laser energy and found ways to build better targets. And guess what? In December of 2022, we finally did it. (Applause) Our team at Lawrence Livermore National
Lab demonstrated fusion ignition. For the very first time in human history, we generated a controlled
thermonuclear fusion reaction in the laboratory that generated more energy out than went in with the lasers to start it. (Applause) That's right, we were able
to light a match and turn that into a bonfire. And in the process,
release a new form of energy that is a million times more energetic
than a chemical reaction. And now, now we've actually been able
to repeat ignition four 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. So are we done? Well, not quite. 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. And to be clear, there's still a long scientific
and engineering road ahead. Just to build on our successes at NIF, we'll have to build more efficient lasers, mass-manufacture targets, and figure out robotics
for automated operations and more. The depth and breadth of this challenge will require sustained investment
from government and private industry, and all of us working together. We're all racing to make this a reality, but there's still a lot
more work to be done. I don't know exactly
how long this will all take, but I do know that we can do it. 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. This will change the world as we know it. When energy becomes essentially unlimited, there are unlimited ways
to use this energy. Every country will be energy independent. Standards of living will
rise around the world, and we'll be able to use energy
in creative new ways as well, like carbon capture at scale
to combat climate change. Vertical farming for delicious,
sustainable food for all, and desalination of seawater so that everybody
has access to clean water. We can do all this and more with fusion. Fusion can ignite that future. Thank you. (Applause)

The Secret Force for Limitless Energy? Lasers | Tammy Ma | TED

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세계 최대 레이저의 성능과 잠재력

한 물리학자는 레이저를 이용해 핵융합을 달성하고, 소형 별을 만들어 새로운 종류의 원자력을 개발하는 것을 상상합니다.

핵융합은 가벼운 원자를 모아서 엄청난 양의 에너지를 생산할 수 있으며, 1파운드의 핵융합 연료는 석유 5,000배럴에 해당하는 양입니다.

지구에 핵융합 연료가 풍부하기 때문에 궁극적인 에너지원이 될 수 있습니다.

핵융합 에너지는 현재 소비 수준에서 최대 300억 년 동안 전력을 공급할 수 있기 때문에 장기적인 에너지 안보를 제공합니다.

핵융합 에너지는 깨끗하고 안전한 에너지원이며 폐기물은 수십 년 후에 부패하기 때문에 인구 밀집 지역 근처에 핵융합 발전소를 배치할 수 있습니다.

또한 핵융합 에너지는 전기와 고온의 열을 공급하는 유연성이 있지만, 잠재적인 이점이 투자를 정당화하지만 개발이 복잡하고 비용이 많이 듭니다.

국립점화시설(NIF)은 192개의 레이저를 사용하여 작은 연료 펠렛에 핵융합을 위한 조건을 만드는 연구를 선도하고 있습니다.

레이저 빔으로 미니어처 별을 만드는 과정

레이저 빔은 연료 펠릿을 감싸는 강렬한 X-선을 생성하는 데 사용되며, 화씨 1억 8천만 도가 넘는 온도와 극한의 압력에 도달합니다.

엄청난 양의 에너지를 나노초 단위로 압축하여 미니어처 별과 폭발적인 에너지를 생성하여 처음에 투입된 에너지보다 더 많은 에너지를 생성할 수 있습니다.

이 과정을 통해 엄청난 양의 전력을 사용하면서도 태양계에서 가장 뜨거운 조건을 만들 수 있습니다.

전 세계의 과학자와 엔지니어들은 토카막과 스텔라레이터와 같은 거대 레이저와 자석을 포함한 다양한 접근 방식을 통해 핵융합 에너지를 추구하고 있습니다.

또한, 핵융합에 대한 독특한 접근 방식을 가진 민간 스타트업 핵융합 회사도 점점 더 많이 생겨나고 있어 이 분야에서 광범위한 노력이 이루어지고 있음을 알 수 있습니다.

로렌스 리버모어 국립연구소의 연구팀은 수십 년간의 연구와 실험 끝에 2022년 12월, 제어된 열핵융합 반응을 달성하여 새롭고 에너지가 높은 형태의 에너지를 생성하는 역사적인 이정표를 세웠습니다.

핵융합 실험은 레이저로 소비하는 에너지보다 더 많은 에너지를 생산하는 데 성공했습니다.

그러나 이제는 이 에너지를 실용적인 핵융합 발전소에서 활용하는 데 초점을 맞추고 있으며, 이는 과학 및 공학적으로 중요한 도전 과제입니다.

더 큰 규모의 핵융합 에너지를 달성하려면 지속적인 투자와 협력이 필요하며, 풍부한 에너지를 공급하고 다양한 글로벌 문제를 해결함으로써 세상을 혁신할 수 있는 잠재력을 가지고 있습니다.