Inside a small research space at Jefferson Lab, physicist Xiangdong Wei gestures to what looks like a row of computer servers.
Stereo-looking machines with knobs, buttons and interconnecting wires are stacked against one wall. A high-tech microwave device lines another.
The equipment is set up for Wei’s team to try and detect an electromagnetic signal that is tiny – less than a part per million of a single electrical volt.
But the implications could be huge.
Researchers in Newport News hope findings could help the nation generate nuclear fusion, a powerful energy source that humans have long tried to master.
Jefferson Lab and several other facilities around the country are in the midst of a multi-year project to advance fusion technology, funded with $29 million from the Department of Energy.
Fusion is a nuclear reaction that powers the sun and other stars. It’s the opposite of fission, which powers traditional nuclear plants. Those plants split atoms apart to create energy, whereas fusion combines atoms.
The method has the potential to produce virtually limitless electricity without emitting climate pollution or leaving behind radioactive waste.
But it’s extremely hard to replicate on Earth, requiring temperatures hotter than the sun and a magnetic field to contain it all, along with other engineering challenges.
Some companies say they’re closer than ever. A Massachusetts start-up, for example, announced plans to build the world’s first commercial fusion plant in Virginia within the next decade.
Jefferson Lab’s project could make fusion more commercially viable by nearly doubling its yield.
The goal is to develop “spin-polarized fuel” to power a fusion reactor. The material is made of deuterium and helium-3, isotopes of the elements hydrogen and helium, respectively.
Under normal conditions, these isotopes spin in random directions, Wei said. “Polarizing” them instead aligns the tiny particles to spin in a unified way.
The technique could increase fusion production’s efficiency by up to 80%.
“If this one works, you can get the 80% extra energy without changing your design,” Wei said. “Just putting in different fuels.”
The theory is not new. But the Virginia researchers aim to prove it can survive the extreme heat of a reactor.
Private companies can’t “spend billions and billions of dollars to design something which you don’t know if that process works or not,” he said.
Jefferson Lab has the expertise and resources to do so, such as using a particle accelerator to bombard the material with electrons.
The team is waiting to receive a dilution refrigerator, which will cool the sample “pellets” to near-absolute zero temperatures, said mechanical engineer Phillip Dobrenz. Then the pellets will be polarized by a very high magnetic field.
When Jefferson Lab develops the specialized fuel, and other institutions including the University of Virginia produce other parts, it will all move to the DIII-D National Fusion Facility in San Diego for final experiments in an actual reactor.
Wei said the research is especially salient as the U.S. searches for more electricity, particularly from non-polluting sources.
Spin polarization could tip the scales for the fusion industry, Dobrenz said. It’s like finding a new fuel that suddenly doubles a car’s horsepower and miles per gallon.
“I think that it's going to really push the needle forward and really get a lot of companies over the line,” he said.
He hopes Hampton Roads residents “feel a little bit of pride that a huge step in the world of fusion energy is taking place here at Jefferson Lab.”
