No Colloquium on 03/09. We will resume the regular series soon.
Mar4
Controlled Nuclear Fusion: Scientific Achievement or Power to the Grid?
Prof. Norbert Holtkamp
Monday, March 4, 2024
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3:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m. PT
Abstract: On Dec 13, 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Accelerator Laboratory achieved Ignition. 2.05MJoule produced by 192 lasers were converted into 3.15Mjoule of fusion power. The first time on earth, controlled nuclear fusion produced a net positive power reaction. This is a major scientific milestone that took decades to plan, build and deliver. A boost in private and public funding already preceded this event, but this major success boosted the enthusiasm even further. As of today, about 40 privately funded start-ups around the world are in place and race to deliver nuclear fusion anywhere from a few years from now to within the next two decades or so. In parallel the largest science experiment, the tokamak based Fusion reactor is under construction by an international collaboration in the south of France (ITER) and presently faces a series of technical set-back. Between the sprawling enthusiasm in the private sector and ITER’s and NIF’s status today, a lot of scientific and technical questions still have to be resolved, some specific to laser driven inertial confinement fusion, others specific to magnetic confinement fusion, but also many in common. The challenge to deliver a First Fusion Power Plant (FPP) within a decade is now out there. Like the word “Power Plant” indicates, it is supposed to deliver net electrical power to the grid. Apart from controlling the fusion process itself, this provides an additional layer of engineering challenges that have to be solved in parallel in order to meet the decadal timeline. Some of the major impediments that have to be overcome towards net power production will be discussed.
About Prof. Norbert Holtkamp
Norbert Holtkamp is a Science Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a professor of particle physics and astrophysics and of photon science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford University
He was SLAC’s deputy laboratory director from 2014 to 2022, leading the conception and implementation of multi-laboratory partnerships for several Department of Energy and National Science Foundation projects. Between 2019 and 2022 he has led SLAC’s $1.1 billion LCLS-II Free Electron Laser construction project, built by five US national laboratories. He also managed the laboratory’s overall risk portfolio, which included more than $2.5 billion worth of construction on the SLAC site. He first joined SLAC in 2010 as the associate laboratory director for the accelerator directorate.
In 2006, he was nominated principal deputy director of ITER, an international organization founded in France with seven members—the European Union (through Euratom), China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, and the United States—collaborating on a 20-billion-Euro project to build the world's largest tokamak, a magnetic fusion devise. From 2001 to 2006, Holtkamp served as the director of the Accelerator Systems Division for the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the world’s most powerful pulsed neutron source, built by a collaboration of six Department of Energy national laboratories. He held various leadership positions on a variety of US and international science infrastructure projects at Fermi National Accelerator Lab and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany. He chaired the Particle Accelerator Conference in 2005 and the Linac Conference in 2006. In June 2008 he received the Gersh Budker Prize of the European Physical Society.
Holtkamp has an MS-equivalent degree in physics from the University of Berlin and a PhD in physics from the Technical University in Darmstadt, Germany. His interests include science applications, technology transfer, and the value and future of international science collaborations.
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