Fusion Energy - Why LIFE: Tackling the Global Energy Crisis

Why LIFE: Tackling the Global Energy Crisis

LIFE will deliver a safe and secure, carbon-free, affordable, sustainable, and enduring supply of baseload electricity to people throughout the world, soon enough to make a difference to our shared future.

Providing for the world's energy demands is one of the most urgent—and difficult—challenges facing our society. Even with likely improvements in efficiency and energy conservation, there is a critical need to rebalance electricity supply away from fossil fuels to ensure long-term sustainability of natural resources, reduce carbon emissions over the next half-century, and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations thereafter. The projected electrification of transport further increases this need, as does our increasing reliance on products fabricated from the very same natural resources that are currently being burned to create electricity.
Diminishing energy supply (grey) and rapidly accelerating energy demand (green) are producing a window of opportunity for new energy solutions. Rollout from the 2030s requires a focused development solution and an immediate start. Chart assumes that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion, consuming at 2/3 the United States rate from 1985. Renewable sources such as solar, photovoltaic, wind, and hydro will play an essential role in meeting this challenge, but do not have the storage capacity or available land to meet the majority baseload power requirements of most countries. Nuclear energy offers many attractions, but requires addressing the safety and proliferation problems associated with enrichment, reprocessing, and high-level waste storage. While all these solutions could and should be pursued, the need to replace the current fleet of power plants provides a clear window of opportunity to transform the energy landscape from 2030 onwards.

Fueling the Future with LIFE

For 50 years, it has been recognized that fusion energy provides a highly attractive solution to society's demand for safe, secure, environmentally sustainable energy—at a scale that meets our long-term needs. But despite fusion's tantalizing benefits, it has been largely ignored in energy policy discussions because it is viewed as a technology too immature to affect energy production over the next few decades, when it is most needed. Drawing on huge prior investment by the U.S. Department of Energy, and linking with recent innovations in the semiconductor industry, we are now at a stage to change this paradigm and offer a deliverable way forward.
Scientific demonstrations by the end of 2012 on the National Ignition Facility will provide the basis for a fleet of LIFE (laser inertial fusion energy) power plants that are being designed to deliver gigawatt-scale electricity—equivalent to the largest coal or nuclear power stations.
"Energy is central to poverty reduction efforts. It is also central to the transition to a sustainable green economy. It affects all the social, economic and environmental aspects of development, including gender inequality, climate change, food security, health and education and overall economic growth."
—United Nations Industrial Development OrganizationLearn more about the National Ignition Facility and its role in demonstrating fusion.
Learn more about the benefits of LIFE.
External view of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber. NIF will be the first fusion facility to demonstrate ignition and self-sustaining burn, as required for a power station.

Why LIFE: Advantages of the LIFE Approach

The Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE) approach adopts a power plant design using the physics setup currently being tested on the National Ignition Facility (NIF), coupled to a driver solution using existing manufacturing technology, and a concept of plant operations that overcomes the need to wait for advanced material development. It has been designed to take full advantage of U.S. leadership and prior investment in relevant technologies, such as NIF. This reduces the cost and delay associated with a more conventional approach that requires multiple phased facilities to mitigate the risk arising from unproven physics, use of novel materials, and new technologies.
LIFE is being designed as a reasonable extension of NIF and manufacturing industries, with:

The LIFE facility design offers many
attractive features:

Proven design

The LIFE plant design has a similar footprint to NIF while generating enough power for 2.3 million people, at present usage rates. The designs for NIF and LIFE have comparable laser energy, target performance, cost, and operations concepts, such as modular design components.

Competitive cost

Estimates of the capital and operational cost of the LIFE approach are competitive with new nuclear plants and other sources of low-carbon baseload electricity.
LIFE electricity costs compare favorably with other low-carbon technologies.

Intrinsic safety

A LIFE plant is intrinsically safe due to the nature of fusion, which requires continuous delivery of laser energy to drive the operation—in contrast to fission, where the reaction can occur without intervention. Runaway reaction or meltdown is simply not possible. No cooling, external power, or active intervention is required from a safety perspective in the event of system shutdown (deliberate or otherwise). There is also no spent fuel; fusion has a closed fuel cycle (for the tritium), with helium gas as the byproduct.

Proven physics

Ignition on NIF is anticipated in the 2011–2012 period. Assuming success, NIF ignition will provide direct evidence of the required physics basis for a power plant. Any IFE driver/target design other than one based directly on NIF evidence would almost certainly require a new ignition demonstration facility, since knowledge of driver performance and fusion coupling are demonstrably insufficient to move forward on the basis of computational extrapolations. Using proven physics shortens the timeline and reduces cost.

Modular design enables high reliability and availability

NIF's laser beams pass through thousands of line-replaceable units (LRUs)—self-contained packages containing multiple laser components that can be assembled and tested off-line in a clean room, then installed on the laser as a unit—on their way to the target chamber; these units can be individually removed and replaced for maintenance work with substantially no laser downtime. The LIFE approach takes the modular concept a step further. LIFE design accounts for periodic replacement of materials in high-risk environments (due to extreme temperatures, neutron bombardment, etc.) such as final optics without requiring wholesale changes to the rest of the plant.
This concept is applied, for example, at the level of laser beam lines, which have been designed with an innovative new architecture to reduce their physical size by over an order of magnitude compared with NIF. A beam box less than 11 meters long has been designed as an LRU. This allows off-site manufacture and maintenance, the ability to deliver a beam box to the construction site on a standard truck, and changeover of individual beamlines while the plant is operational. Even the fusion chamber is split into a set of independent modules that can be withdrawn to a maintenance bay in isolation or as a complete unit. By adopting a design approach that promotes modular, replaceable units throughout the plant, the components of the LIFE plant can sustain economic operations at high availability and reliability, and have the ability to be inspected and maintained.

Use of available materials

The pace of fusion delivery has been driven in large part by the long timescales associated with advanced materials development and their operational certification for high-threat structural components. By adopting the NIF approach of using LRUs across all life-limited areas of the power plant (including the fusion engine itself), quantitative analyses and full system designs show that near-term materials can be used, while maintaining the required plant availability and reliability. In this way, a commercial demonstration plant can be constructed with high confidence, and used to test prospective upgrade materials in a relevant fusion environment.
Integrated laser designs have been developed for LIFE that achieve the required performance characteristics using Nd:glass gain media, helium cooling, and diode technology based on current production methods. The mass markets associated with these solid-state components provide a highly competitive supply chain that now quotes diode price points consistent with a commercially viable rollout with no new research and development. Similarly, the use of a known production route for the structural materials of the demonstration plant allows rapid time-to-construction, and is not contingent on the development of a new class of materials.

Low tritium inventory for start-up

Many fusion plant designs require large quantities of tritium for start up and operations (with estimates of 40 to 60 kg per GW power plant, which is high compared with the available global inventory). This substantially reduces the rate of rollout of a fleet and has led some senior researchers to question the fundamental viability of fusion. By virtue of the high fractional burn-up in an IFE capsule (>30% for a LIFE facility), and by adopting a National Ignition Campaign (NIC)-scale fusion target and a phased approach to operations, the start-up tritium inventory can be reduced by an order of magnitude. Breeding from this system can then be used for subsequent steps.

Continuous improvement

IFE greatly benefits from its ability to use modular advances in component technologies (e.g., subsystem electrical efficiency) and in enhanced fusion performance. Improvements can thus continuously drive improvements in the overall plant cost and cost of electricity by large factors. Future designs can readily be incorporated as long as they maintain the same interface characteristics to the rest of the plant.

Delivering LIFE: Fusion Energy Soon Enough
to Make a Difference

LIFE takes a near-term, pragmatic approach to delivery.

Despite fusion's potential benefits for a low-carbon energy economy, the long timescales typically associated with fusion development have excluded it from mainstream energy policy considerations. The laser inertial fusion energy (LIFE) concept is intended to change this paradigm, and deliver laser fusion power stations on a timescale that matters.
The LIFE approach is based on the demonstration of fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), and uses a modular approach to ensure high plant availability and to allow evolution to more advanced technologies and materials as they become available. Use of NIF's proven physics platform for the ignition scheme is an essential component of an acceptably low-risk solution.
After ignition on NIF, the “next step” would be a power plant generating hundreds of megawatts of thermal power. Estimates of the technology development program requirements, along with manufacturing and construction timescales, indicate that this plant could be commissioned and operational by the mid 2020s. This first plant is designed to demonstrate all the required technologies and materials certification needed for the subsequent rollout of electric power at commercial power plant levels from the 2030s and onward.
The timeliness requirements for commercial delivery are compelling. Rollout from the 2030s would remove 90 to 140 gigatons of CO₂-equivalent carbon emissions by the end of the century (assuming U.S. coal plants are displaced and the doubling time for roll-out is between 5 and 10 years). Delaying rollout by just 10 years removes 30 to 35% of the carbon emission avoidance, which at $100/megaton translates to a net present value of $140 to $260 billion dollars. For inertial fusion energy to achieve its full potential in solving our energy/climate challenges, a focused delivery program is urgently needed.

Modeling of the U.S. grid shows the great need for new energy solutions, but early market entry is essential for fusion energy to be relevant.

Based on many decades of development and investment, the option of LIFE is now sufficiently mature to allow progression to power plant construction. This offers profound new solutions to meeting the demand for safe, secure, low-carbon, non-geopolitical electricity generation. It also provides new options for process heat applications, being able to be operated at high temperatures.
A delivery-focused, evidence-based approach has been proposed to allow LIFE power plant rollout on a timescale that meets these policy imperatives and is consistent with industry planning horizons. The system-level development path makes full use of the distributed capability in laser and semiconductor technology, manufacturing and construction industries, nuclear engineering and existing grid infrastructure.
The LIFE design adopts a scheme that is being tested directly on the NIF, and uses a factory-built, modular approach to construction, operations, and maintenance. This provides for high plant availability and reliability, reduced construction costs and timescales, and compatibility with accepted models for power plant operations.
The nature of fusion provides for inherent plant safety and a simplified licensing regime, consistent with performance-based, risk-managed regulation. Material choices provide robust security of supply and allow widespread rollout for global market penetration.
Plant design, delivery planning, and vendor engagement are now at a stage that calls for transition to full-scale project delivery (in anticipation of ignition on the NIF by the end of 2012). Successful execution of the LIFE project strengthens American economic competitiveness and allows the United States to regain a leading position in new energy technology development.
Learn more about LIFE commercialization.

Early market entry for fusion has a big impact, displacing 90 to 140 gigatons of CO₂, 3 to 4.5 Yucca Mountains, or 3000 to 4000 tons of plutonium in the United States alone.

• NIF-like fusion performance
• Market-based, diode-pumped laser technology
• Mass-manufactured target techniques
• A modular design that includes line replaceable units at every stage, including the fusion chamber.

Delivering LIFE: LIFE Commercialization

LIFE commercialization begins with subsystem development and laboratory-based technology demonstrations, and then moves directly to a plant capable of continuous fusion operations. The plant is highly flexible and can be configured to support subscale qualification testing as well as commercial power production. This strategy is enabled by the modular architecture of the design and the fact that the fusion chamber and major laser system components are line-replaceable units.
This approach has significant advantages. It avoids the need for an intermediate-step engineering test facility, which is a multi-billion-dollar capital investment. Gaining the approval and funding for a test facility, as well as for the first commercial plant, adds significant programmatic risk. Further, the technology requirements for an engineering test facility are substantially the same as for the first plant. Both require high-average-power operation of the laser, hitting and igniting targets on-the-fly, tritium self-sufficiency, and so on. For LIFE, there is little advantage to an intermediate-step facility.

Perhaps even more importantly, the flexible configuration of the first plant mitigates the risk of technology development concurrent with plant design and construction. For example, testing in NIF may result in a change of the laser energy requirement for the first plant. The modular architecture accommodates this by allowing one to add or subtract beam lines from the laser system, with minimal impact to the overall plant design. Similar flexibility applies to the fusion chamber. One can transition directly to full-scale hardware and power production; however, if warranted, subscale hardware can be qualification tested at reduced fusion power levels prior to full scale testing. The ability to develop technology concurrent with first plant design, without the risk of “building the wrong plant,” significantly reduces time to market and enhances the relevance of fusion energy.

Materials Testing

Many of the components needed for a fusion power plant can be developed and tested in a laboratory setting. Examples include high-average-power lasers, tritium handling systems, and corrosion-resistant materials. However, once ignition has been demonstrated, the critical path to commercial fusion energy is dominated by the need to have a quasi-continuous fusion source to qualify materials and processes needed in a commercial plant. Examples of materials and processes that will need this qualification include on-the-fly fusion target ignition with repeatable fusion yield and final optic survival in fusion environment.
Materials and structures need to be exposed to the same thermal and radiation loads as will be experienced in a commercial power plant. In addition, the exposure time must be long enough to simulate one or more system lifetimes, for systems such as the fusion chamber and final optic. This can be done in a full-scale fusion chamber, operating at full commercial plant fusion power level, or in a subscale fusion chamber operating at lower average power. This flexibility to test at multiple scales provides significant risk mitigation and allows initial materials qualification testing at small scale, should regulatory or technical issues mandate.
Once the materials and process qualification is complete, the plant will transition to regular operations, delivering 400 MW of commercial power to the grid.
Electrical generation options for the 2010 to 2100 time frame. (Other than LIFE, all costs are from the Electric Power Research Institute.) If another technology is to be made available in time to include in filling the gap left by retiring coal and nuclear plants, work must begin soon to ensure that a supply chain is ready to produce the plants necessary to impact the market.

The National Ignition Facility:
Ushering in a New Age for Science

“Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.”
—John Dewey

Scientists have been working to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion and energy gain in the laboratory for more than half a century. Ignition experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are now bringing that long-sought goal much closer to realization.
NIF's 192 giant lasers, housed in a ten-story building the size of three football fields, will deliver at least 60 times more energy than any previous laser system. NIF will focus more than one million joules of ultraviolet laser energy on a tiny target in the center of its target chamber—creating conditions similar to those that exist only in the cores of stars and giant planets and inside a nuclear weapon. The resulting fusion reaction will release many times more energy than the laser energy required to initiate the reaction.
Experiments conducted on NIF will make significant contributions to national and global security, could lead to practical fusion energy, and will help the nation maintain its leadership in basic science and technology. The project is a national collaboration among government, academia, and many industrial partners throughout the nation.
Programs in the NIF & Photon Science Directorate draw extensively on expertise from across LLNL, including the Physical and Life Sciences, Engineering, Computation, and Weapons and Complex Integration directorates. This goal is a scientific Grand Challenge that only a national laboratory such as Lawrence Livermore can accomplish.

More Information

Much more information on the NIF & Photon Science Directorate's missions and programs is available on this Website. Here are some links to explore:

• The Seven Wonders of NIF—How NIF scientists, engineers, and technicians overcame a series of daunting technical challenges to bring NIF to the verge of success.
• How NIF Works—What goes into creating the world's highest-energy laser system.
• How to Make a Star—Achieving thermonuclear burn in the laboratory.
• Stockpile Stewardship–Helping protect national security by ensuring that the nation's nuclear weapons are safe, secure, and reliable.
• Inertial Fusion Energy—Exploring new pathways to safe, clean, limitless energy.
• Photon Science & Applications—Developing advanced high-power, high-intensity, laser technology and applications.
• Laboratory Astrophysics—Providing new tools to study the cosmos.
• Plasma Physics—Understanding the behavior of turbulent plasmas, the "fourth state of matter."
• People—Get to know some of the people who make NIF and Photon Science possible.
• Education—Learn more about lasers and fusion energy.

More Information

T.M. Anklam et al., “LIFE: The Case for Early Commercialization of Fusion Energy,” Fus. Sci. Tech. 60, 66–71 (2011).
M. Dunne et al., “Timely Delivery of Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE),” Fus. Sci. Tech. 60, 19–27 (2011).