Denise Hinkel, a scientist who spent 30 years looking for an energy that could change the world.

Physics Denise Hinkel began working at the Livermore National Laboratory. Lawrence (California, USA) 30 years ago, where from the very beginning she was fascinated by the nuclear fusion project, which “was not only scientific challengebut it will have a huge impact on humanity.”

hinkel speaks with EFE in a virtual interview after Government US announced this week that scientists at the federal center have achieved the first net energy gain nuclear fusion, meaning it produces more energy than is used in the process.

This achievement could change rules of the game in the fight against climate crisisas it provides less expensive, cleaner and almost unlimited energy production.

Although, according to experts, commercial fusion power is still far away, hinkel it was expected that when this became possible, carbon-free energy system.

“If you don’t have to burn oil, this will be a great step towards Environment free in carbon,” mused the physicist, who did not hesitate to believe that fusion energy “would be of great help in the fight against changing of the climate”.

In parallel, this will add another energy resource, “because at some point we will run out of natural resources,” he said.

THERMONUCLEAR REACTION

thermonuclear reaction It consists of a reaction in which two nuclei of light atoms combine to form a heavier one, releasing a huge amount of energy. Unlike nuclear fission, which is used to generate electricity around the world, fusion does not create long-lived nuclear waste.

Another advantage is that it uses elements such as the deuteron and lithium, which are found in abundance in naturewith which he could produce virtually unlimited energy.

Hinkel explained that “the energy of fusion is the process that powers the sun”: “Basically, we are trying to take this process into the laboratory and take advantage of this energy,” he explained.

To recreate the conditions that exist inside the stars, scientists Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory fired 192 lasers at a popcorn-sized target, namely a deuteron and triton capsule (which is made of lithium) at a temperature of about 3 million degrees Celsius.

So they briefly simulated the conditions of the star and achieved a merger with a net gain Energy.

The idea of ​​using this technique arose after the invention of the laser in 1960 by a physicist from that California center, John Nichols, who proposed using these beams to induce controlled nuclear fusion in the laboratory.

Since then, “we’ve been working on it, increasing scientific understanding. Laser technology has improved, targeting capabilities have improved, and all this had to happen for us to get to where we are today,” said Hinkel, who began working on the project as a doctoral student.

This physicist developed a series of experiments that contributed to the goal of producing more energy than is used in fusion reactions.

He is currently the leader of the “predictive ability” group. inertial holdthis is the name of the technique used by American scientists.

They’ve run into many problems in all this time, but for her, if there was one problem that really gave them weird headaches, it was computer codes.

When we started experimenting in National ignition setting (a laboratory whose abbreviation in English is NIF), we did not have data from any site in this area, we did not have data about this energy in conditions that we could trust to check and calibrate curved computers, he said. remembered.

To solve this problem, they extrapolated the data by dividing by 30 from existing information at other laser centers and their own. NIF.

“It was a real challenge for our computer codes and it remains so to this day,” he said. “We are still working on developing our predictive abilities because they are not 100% correct.”

The reason is that computer simulations cover several spatial and temporal scales.

Another difficulty was making a target capsule “smoother than a mirror” but in which any tiny defect could affect the explosion, which they worked on to make these imperfections less important.

After overcoming obstacles and after the experiment on December 5th, it remains only to continue working, because, as laboratory Kim Budil there are still “several decades” to have fusion power for commercial purposes.

For now, hinkel expects them to try to repeat the feat of the past on December 5th to see if they can repeat it and in the future they will aim to use more energy from capsule laserswhich will allow you to use larger targets.

Likewise, “we will continue to try to improve our predictive abilities”, for which they will try to use “machine learning” (automatic learning) more effectively.

EFE