May 12, 2008
Enhanced Omega fusion laser to be dedicated May 16
jonathan.sherwood@rochester.edu
The University will mark another important step in the
effort toward attaining sustainable fusion, the ultimate source of clean
energy, this Friday, May 16. President Joel Seligman, along with
special guests, which include U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, Congressman
Thomas Reynolds, and Undersecretary for Nuclear Security for the U.S.
Department of Energy Thomas D’Agostino, will dedicate the new
Omega EP laser facility at the Robert L. Sproull Center for Ultra High
Intensity Laser Research at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE).
The Omega EP comprises a new set of four
ultrahigh-intensity laser beams that will unleash more than a
petawatt—a million billion watts—of power onto a target just a
millimeter across. Working in conjunction with LLE’s original 60-beam
Omega laser, the Omega EP will open the door to a new concept called
“fast ignition,” which may be able to dramatically increase the
energy derived from fusion experiments and provide a possible new avenue
toward clean fusion power. If successful, fast ignition could lead to the
highest energy densities ever achieved in a laboratory.
“I look forward to the profound scientific
contributions the Omega EP extension will bring to the University and to
the world,” says Seligman. “It is a vital component of our
nation’s scientific capital and leadership, a key to strategic work
on an independent energy future, and a vital part of the local economy,
including $44 million in local expenditures just last year.”
The original Omega laser fires multitrillion watt
bursts of energy—more powerful than the entire electrical generating
capacity of the United States—making it among the three most powerful
lasers in the world. Yet Omega will become approximately 50 times more
powerful still with the inclusion of Omega EP. Such incredible intensities
are necessary because creating electricity from fusion means heating the
target fuel to a high temperature and confining it long enough so that more
energy is released than is supplied to sustain the reaction. To release
energy at a level required for electricity production, the fusion fuel must
be heated to about 100 million degrees, more than six times hotter than the
interior of the Sun.
Fusion, nuclear fission, and solar energy, which
includes biofuels, are widely seen as the only energy sources capable of
satisfying the growing need for power for the next century without the
harmful environmental impacts of fossil fuels. In a fusion power plant, one
gallon of seawater would provide the equivalent energy of 300 gallons of
gasoline; fuel from 50 cups of water contains the energy equivalent of two
tons of coal. A fusion power plant would produce no climate-changing gases,
as well as considerably less environmentally harmful radioactive byproducts
than nuclear power plants currently do. And there would be no danger of a
runaway reaction or core meltdown in a fusion power plant.
Beyond clean energy production, Omega and Omega EP
will facilitate research impossible to attempt almost anywhere else on
Earth. The way matter behaves in stars can be replicated on a small scale
inside Omega’s target chamber. Laser and materials technologies,
electro-optics, and plasma physics will also be able to be studied under
conditions never before possible.
The LLE was first established in 1970 “to
investigate the interaction of intense radiation with matter.” The
initial University investment of approximately $10.4 million in 1975 has
allowed the laboratory to attract cumulative external funding, primarily
from the federal government, of more than $1.3 billion, including a
five-year $352 million commitment last year from the Department of Energy.
The funding includes an important investment by New York State in the
upstate economy by the New York State Energy Research and Development
Authority. These figures do not include the contributions made by high-tech
companies founded in the Rochester area whose technology or founders came
from the laboratory.
The Omega EP’s extended capabilities will also
contribute substantially to the critical need to recruit and retain
graduate students, postdoctoral associates, University faculty members, and
national laboratory scientists—especially while the National Ignition
Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is designed
to achieve controlled thermonuclear ignition and gain, nears completion.
The laboratory is one of the four institutional participants in NIF.
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