Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE):
Tackling the Global Energy Crisis
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.
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 these solutions could and should be pursued within the United States, 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 Department of Energy, and linking in with recent innovations in the semiconductor industry, we are now at a stage to change this paradigm and offer a deliverable way forward.
LIFE, or Laser Inertial Fusion Energy, offers:
- A sustainable, carbon-free source of baseload electricity
- Security of supply (reducing our reliance on foreign oil imports)
- No enrichment, no reprocessing, and no high-level radioactive waste
- Global commercial competitiveness from a U.S.-led solution
- Compatibility with existing grid infrastructure
- Intrinsic safety
Demonstration of fusion ignition on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) will provide the basis for a fleet of LIFE power plants that are being designed to deliver gigawatt-scale electricity—equivalent to the largest coal or nuclear power stations.
Delivering Fusion Energy Soon Enough to Make a Difference
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 United States is in a unique position to change this paradigm, and deliver laser fusion power stations on a timescale that matters—with LIFE.
The path to LIFE is a four-step process:
- NIF: Construction and operation of a laser facility at the scale required for energy production (Achieved 2009)
- Ignition: Demonstration of net energy gain from fusion fuel (In progress)
- LIFE demonstration: Integration of all the technologies required for a power station (Planned for mid-2020s)
- Commercial LIFE fleet: Rollout of LIFE plants onto the electric grid (Late 2020s and beyond)
After ignition on NIF, the "next step" would be a first-of-its-kind LIFE power plant capable of generating hundreds of megawatts of electricity. Such a step has been 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 late 2020s onwards.
This program plan builds on 50 years of international research and a multi-billion-dollar investment by the Department of Energy in NIF. Delivery of an integrated power plant on an acceptable timescale is possible only in the U.S. and benefits considerably from the distributed academic and industrial expertise arising from the nationwide NIF effort and the ongoing ignition campaign.
A Game-Changing Energy Solution
How does it work? In a laser fusion power plant, fuel pellets are rapidly injected into an interaction chamber, producing pulses of fusion energy that heat a blanket of material surrounding the chamber. The fusion heat is then transferred to a power conversion system to produce electricity. Learn more about how fusion plants work.
The LIFE solution uses:
- Proven physics: demonstrated on the NIF
- Available materials: enabling construction of a demonstration plant in the near term
- Market-based technology: using the U.S. solid state (semiconductor) manufacturing base
Commercially, the solution allows a staged approach to power plant rollout, with multiple implementation options dependent on customer needs. Material availability and tritium production calculations show that the rate and scale of market penetration can meet 25% of new build plants by 2050 and significantly more thereafter.
Why now?
- Required commercial delivery of safe, carbon-free base load power from the late 2020s requires an immediate start on the first LIFE plant.
- The imminence of NIF ignition provides the scientific basis for a fusion power plant (for the first time in 50 years).
- Recent progress in solid-state laser technology has dramatically lowered the cost and size to acceptable levels, removing long-standing obstacles.
- Using lessons learned from NIF, the concept of line replaceable units has enabled a fundamentally new approach to power plant design.
- Taken together, a plant with high availability and reliability is now achievable, consistent with the highest level utility requirements for commercial operation.
More Information
"Igniting Our Energy Future," Science & Technology Review, July/August 2011
"Safe and Sustainable Energy with LIFE,"Science & Technology Review, April/May 2009
