LLNL Report: July 12, 2024 (2024)

A technician mounts a keyhole shock-timing target on a stalk that attaches the target to the Ignition Target Inserter and Cryostat, which is attached to the end of the target positioner and cools the target and deuterium-tritium fuel mixture to meet temperature and uniformity requirements. (Photo: LLNL)

A high-tech race is under way between the U.S. and China as both countries chase an elusive energy source: fusion.

China is outspending the U.S., completing a massive fusion technology campus and launching a national fusion consortium that includes some of its largest industrial companies. The result is an increasing worry among American officials and scientists that an early U.S. lead is slipping away.

Fusion has seen a burst of interest from governments and private investors since August 2021. Investments in fusion technology surged in 2022 after scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved “ignition” — a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed. The federal research lab has achieved the key milestone four times since.

Tammy Ma, lead for the Inertial Fusion Energy Initiative at Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility, said the U.S. fusion budget of $790 million for the 2024 fiscal year, a 4% increase from the year prior, hasn’t been enough to keep pace with inflation. The sluggish growth has meant fewer research grants and grant-funded positions available in U.S. graduate schools, Ma said.

During heat waves, San Francisco usually sees lower temperatures due to its proximity to the Pacific Ocea. (Image: National Weather Service)

San Francisco has long championed itself as a temperate paradise — even if it didn’t feel that way to start the month.

But San Franciscans know that these summer warm-ups — despite increasing in frequency — remain the exception, not the rule. The city’s year-round climate has generally kept its cool and breezy identity, even as the rest of the nation has boiled under record-breaking heat waves through much of the first half of the year.

But with global warming threatening so many previously hardened climate realities, it raises a question: Will San Francisco always be able to insulate itself from the simmering nationwide summer heat? The short answer, according to weather experts is yes — because San Francisco lies along the Pacific Ocean.

If anything, climate researchers said, rising global temperatures will only bolster the city’s role as a weather refuge.

“San Francisco might become more of an escape, honestly, because inland temperatures are expected to rise much faster than oceanic temperature,” said Paul Ullrich, head of climate resilience at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. “It will continue to be a respite, if not a growing respite from change.”

A gamma ray sensor built by LLNL scientists is an essential part of a larger gamma-ray spectrometer built in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. (Photo: LLNL)

It's official. An instrument designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers is the highest-resolution gamma-ray sensor that has ever flown in space.

The Livermore high-purity germanium gamma ray sensor is an essential part of a larger gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) built in collaboration with researchers from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The GRS is part of a suite of instruments launched Oct. 13 from the Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket to make the first-ever visit to Psyche, the largest metal asteroid in the solar system. In a post-launch test, the LLNL gamma-ray sensor was found to have a resolution of 2.1 kilo electron volts, about 2 ½ times better than the 5-kilo electron volt resolution gamma-ray sensor LLNL built for a mission to Mercury in 2004.

"With the higher resolution gamma ray sensor, it equates to much better sensitivity and a much better ability to identify elements on the surface of Psyche," said LLNL physicist Morgan Burks, who heads the Lab team that developed the sensor.

Machine head: lead designer Darrel Carter designed the Deep Purple payload. (Photo: LLNL)

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s space hardware team has delivered a payload for NASA’s Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-R satellite. LLNL developed the optical payload, called Deep Purple – named after the heavy rock pioneers – that utilizes a new design for a UV and SWIR monolithic telescope.

The mission is intended to demonstrate simultaneous monolithic UV and SWIR optical sensing from space for the first time via two co-boresighted, 85 mm aperture monolithic telescopes using a new compact custom electronics module and a novel, lightweight, carbon-composite optical housing and radiator.

The satellite is scheduled to launch in the summer of 2024 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-11 mission from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

Deep Purple also will observe UV and short-wave infrared light from high-UV stars and the galactic bulge. The scope’s dual optical module and electronics are contained in a 250 x 150 x 100 mm package. LLNL’s monolithic optics are a novel line of compact Cassegrain telescopes constructed out of a single piece of fused silica. This design allows for a compact telescope that can endure the harsh environments of launch and outer space.

LLNL scientists built the lenses for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera. (Photo: SLAC)

A team of scientists and engineers at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and their collaborators, including Lawrence Livermore, celebrate the completion of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera. As the heart of the DOE- and National Science Foundation-funded Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the 3,200-megapixel camera will help researchers observe our universe in unprecedented detail. Over 10 years, it will generate an enormous trove of data on the southern night sky that researchers will mine for new insights into the universe.

That data will aid in the quest to understand dark energy, which is driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, and the hunt for dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up around 85% of the matter in the universe. Researchers also have plans to use Rubin data to better understand the changing night sky, the Milky Way galaxy and our own solar system.

Among the partner labs that contributed expertise and technology are Brookhaven National Laboratory, which built the camera’s digital sensor array; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which with its industrial partners designed and built lenses for the camera.

A key feature of the camera’s optical assemblies are its three lenses, one of which at 1.57 meters (5.1 feet) in diameter is believed to be the world’s largest high-performance optical lens ever fabricated.

“The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is extremely proud to have had the opportunity to design and oversee the fabrication of the large lenses and optical filters for the LSST Camera, including the largest lens in the world,” said Vincent Riot, a LLNL engineer and the former LSST Camera project manager. “LLNL was able to leverage its expertise in large optics, built over decades of developing the world’s largest laser systems, and is excited to see this unprecedented instrument completed and ready to make its journey to the Rubin Observatory.”