Ground-breaking scheduled in five years
US-based Longview Fusion Energy Systems has announced plans to build the world’s first laser fusion power plant with ground-breaking for the first unit planned in five years.
The California company said its power plants will combine this week’s National Ignition Facility laser fusion breakthrough with efficient lasers and a patented design.
The NIF, the world’s most energetic laser, squeezes together a type of hydrogen so that it becomes 100 times denser than lead and at a temperature of 100 million C, bringing star power to earth.
The Longview design will replicate these conditions several hundred times a minute – similar to the repetitive pulses in a car engine but delivering over one million horsepower.
The California company said its power plants will combine this week’s National Ignition Facility laser fusion breakthrough with efficient lasers and a patented design.
The NIF, the world’s most energetic laser, squeezes together a type of hydrogen so that it becomes 100 times denser than lead and at a temperature of 100 million C, bringing star power to earth.
The Longview design will replicate these conditions several hundred times a minute – similar to the repetitive pulses in a car engine but delivering over one million horsepower.
The company said its power plants will provide carbon-free, safe, economical, and sustainable energy at a scale that can power a city’s electricity and drive industrial production of materials such as steel, fertiliser and hydrogen fuel.
The Longview team, spearheaded by Dr Edward Moses, who has worked for almost 30 years at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, site of the NIF fusion facility, led the successful delivery of the NIF facility.
Longview has been working with US industry, utilities, academia, national laboratories and investors over the past 18 months to design a power plant based on the physics that has now been proven at the NIF.
