Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) leadership is engaging with world leaders to make fusion energy a reality.
Last week, LLNL Director Kim Budil joined the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) inaugural meeting of leading fusion energy experts and high-level policymakers from 35 countries in Rome.
"In the face of growing global competition and a burgeoning start-up sector, the United States leads the world in advancing this game-changing energy source," said Budil. "This ministerial meeting represents an opportunity to engage at a global level and better understand how we can accelerate progress toward fusion energy on the grid."
The Inaugural Ministerial Meeting of the IAEA World Fusion Energy Group took place on Thursday, Nov. 6 and was co-chaired by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi. The U.S. delegation was led by Jean Paul Allain, associate director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fusion Energy Sciences.
LLNL seized the global spotlight when its Dec. 5, 2022 experiment at the National Ignition Facility was the first to achieve breakeven in a lab, meaning more fusion energy was produced than the laser energy needed to start the reaction. That same reaction - called fusion ignition - is fundamental to building a power plant based on inertial fusion energy (IFE).
Budil was joined by LLNL Inertial Fusion Energy Institutional Initiative Lead Tammy Ma.
"Bringing about inertial fusion energy would require harnessing the energy from fusion ignition and transforming it into abundant clean power for the grid," said Ma. "While that is no small task, it falls squarely in line with LLNL's 70-year pursuit of big ideas that change the world. We look forward to working with the IAEA to globally accelerate fusion energy."
Fusion was also featured at the Falling Walls Science Summit in Berlin from Nov. 7-9. Richard Town, LLNL's associate program director for Inertial Confinement Fusion Sciences, was a finalist in the Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year 2024 in Physical Sciences category, giving a talk entitled "Breaking the Wall to Fusion Gain," which addressed the road to ignition.
Budil spoke at a Falling Walls panel on fusion energy, where the discussion centered around models for public-private engagement and next steps to breaking down the walls in fusion energy.
"LLNL will continue to lean into its strengths when it comes to fusion energy," said Budil. "We are going to help close the major science and technology gaps in lasers, targets and materials that are vital to making this transformational energy source a reality."
-Thomas Lynch
