28 Tuesday April 5 2022 | the times
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like conditions, as Jet does, it tries to in-
stantaneously recreate them by
shooting a super high-velocity slug at a
carefully shaped fuel pellet. When the
projectile hits, the pellet implodes, in-
creasing the pressure still further and
effectively magnifying the 6.5km per
second impact tenfold.
Now the company has been able to
do this in such a way that fusion oc-
curred. However, it has a long way to go.
Its reaction made only 50 neutrons.
The Culham experiment made many
billions of times as many and is itself
still a prototype. “We’re not daft,” said
Hawker. “We know that 50 neutrons is
not very much.” The point is though, he
said, it matches their calculations and
validates the approach. “The important
thing is that the measured amount of
fusion agrees very closely to the pre-
dicted amount from a simulation,” he
said. Now Hawker said they are looking
to speed up the projectile. With more
pressure, yield should increase greatly.
Dr Richard Kembleton, from Euro-
fusion, the European consortium of fu-
sion researchers, said that what is key
now is to see how those experiments
progress.
“This is good news for First Light, as
it proves their approach can produce
implosions as their models predict,” he
said. “It’s scaling this up to the complex
and precise geometries they show in
their simulations, which is the really
tricky bit.”TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JAMES GLOSSOPLight at the end
of the tunnel in
nuclear fusion
The pressure was greater than the
centre of Jupiter. The temperature was
approaching that of the centre of the
Sun. The projectile was travelling at
6.5km per second. And for the smallest
fraction of a second, these conditions
came together to release 50 neutrons, a
barely-perceptible amount of energy.
But in doing so, a company in Oxford-
shire has demonstrated a new way of
making nuclear fusion.
For the first time, First Light Fusion,
one of a growing number of nuclear fu-
sion start-up companies, has provided
proof of concept that its unusual ap-
proach to the technology, which in-
volves firing a projectile at a pellet of
fuel, is feasible.
If, and it remains a big if, it can be
scaled up, then there is a chance it
might offer a means of making almost
limitless carbon-free electricity.
“This is a completely new idea of fu-
sion,” said Dr Nick Hawker, the com-
pany’s founder. “If we can get the core
physics to work, which I think we can, it
potentially has a much faster trajectory
to a power plant. The engineering is
much simpler. The physics is simpler.”
Nuclear fusion is the process that
powers the Sun. It involves forcing to-
gether hydrogen atoms under intense
heat and pressure to make helium, and
in doing so release energy in the form of
neutrons. The difficulty is that it re-
quires replicating Sun-like conditions
on Earth.
Down the road from Hawker’s com-
pany in Culham, lies Jet, the inter-
national experiment that represents
the conventional approach to achiev-
ing viable fusion.
Inside a doughnut-shaped container,
scientists use extremely powerful mag-
nets to contain a superheated plasma,
so hot it cannot be allowed to touch the
sides. Earlier this year this experiment
broke the world record for fusion, but is
still far from a viable power plant.
First Light Fusion is planning a dif-
ferent, riskier, route. Rather than at-
tempting to continuously recreate Sun-Tom Whipple Science EditorPuff stuff Forget budding blossom and blue skies, you know it’s spring when the North Yorkshire Moors Railway chuffs back
into life as it did for the first time yesterday after its winter break. More than 550 volunteers keep the heritage railway on track
A bigger bangProjectile
TargetHigh velocityProjectile (^1) (6.5km per sec)
hits target
Box amplifies
shockwaves
to boost
pressure
3
Implosion
crushes and
heats fuel to
create fusion
conditions
Fuel
pellet
2
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