c-span radio plus a variety of compelling podcast. c-span now is available at the apple store and google play. download it for free today. c-span now your front row seat to washington anytime anywhere. roxio's department of energy announced scientific breakthrough it says will pave the way for production of cleaner energy. news conference energy secretary talks about how scientists have for the first time been able to produce more energy infusion reaction was used to create it. welcome everyone. it is so great to see members of congress here, senator reid, i'm glad you're here. congressmen swallow, senator fleshman, you so much. i yet. of course in jerome bowman thank you so much all of you for your support of this. i know there are others who are supportive as well who were not able to make it. but this is a great day. today we are here to talk about fusion, combining two particles into one. last week at the lawrence livermore national laboratory in california, scientists at the national ignition facility achieved fusion ignition. that is creating more energy from fusion reaction than the energy used to start the process. the first time it is ever been done in a laboratory anywhere in the world. simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century. or as the president might say. [applause] i do think he probably did say it was his bf d. researchers at livermore and around the world have been working on this moment for more than 60 years. so, what does this accomplishment do? two things. first it strengthens our national security because it opens a new realm for maintaining safe, secure and a fat killer nuclear deterrence in an age where we do not have nuclear testing. ignition allows us to replicate for the first time certain conditions that are found only in the stars in the sun. in the second thing it does of course is this a milestone moves us to one significant step closer to the possibility of zero carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society. if we can advance fusion energy we can use it to produce clean electricity, transportation fuels, power and heavy industry, so much more. it would be like adding a power drill to our toolbox and building this clean energy economy. so today we tell the world that america has achieved a tremendous scientific breakthrough. one that happened because we invested in our national. we invested in fundamental research. on tomorrow we will continue to work for a future that is powered in part by fusion energy. fortunately, private sector investment in fusion research is already booming. it has reached nearly $3 billion last year alone. we have heard from professors that interest among students has never been higher which is terrific. that is why the biden/harris administration is aiming to capitalize on this moment. today's announcement is a huge step forward to the president's goal of achieving commercial fusion within the decade. there is still a lot more to do, so much more. we will continue to work toward that goal and find other ways to progress, to reach fusion energy. for example in september the department of energy made 858 million-dollar investment for public/private partnerships to start working towards fusion pilot plant designs and we are partnering with the office of science and technology policy to map out the president old vision for driving neck in the next decade with the highest safety standards. with cost-effective equitable deployment that positions american businesses to lead and communities to thrive. they skilled workforce. this is when it looks like for america to lead and we're just getting started. another big congratulations in the national lab and their team is here, where are you team, there you are. [applause] [applause] they will be joining us after this for a technical panel for those of you who wish to stay to learn more. big applause and thank you to the national nuclear security administration. everybody who has been involved in this fusion breakthrough that will go down in the history books. you'll hear more about the details first am going to turn it over to the director. >> thank you so much. thank you secretary granholm. what a pleasure to be invited to come celebrate at the department of energy. it's really a privilege to be here. when i heard for this news the years fell away and all the state's 1978. as a summer soon in the middle of my college years, a 19-year-old kid and got a chance to go work at lawrence livermore national laboratory. i shut up you got a picture of us were my bellbottoms, long black hair may give me a laser to work on i like lasers what's is all about? they said we think if you point and if lasers at fuel we want to see if we can get more energy released in the amount of energy at that school i spent three months working on this fun laser. after that summer with my laser i went off and did completely unrelated things. i've completely kept an eye out a watch what was happening at livermore as i pursued the idea of ignition of achieving this kind of for decades. i went off and didn't do anything more about fusion the people i worked with and their successors kept going went through periods of triumph and went through tremendous circles and setbacks they never lost sight of this goal. in last week lo and behold indeed they shot a bunch of lasers and more energy was released from that fusion ignition than the energy of the lasers going in. and i think this is such a tremendous example of perseverance really can achieve but have a great pleasure of meeting the team will you will talk with when you are panel in a little while. they have come from many different parts of the world. they studied many different fields. many were summer students decades after i was. took not just one generation but generations of people pursuing this goal. it is a scientific milestone proud of accomplishments of our livermore. [applause] [applause] the facility is the largest and most energetic laser system. during experiments 192 hi energy lasers converge on a target about the size of a peppercorn, heating capsule to over 3 million degrees celsius and briefly simulating the conditions of a start. in achieving ignition the researchers have opened a new chapter in a science stewardship program enabling us to study new regimes. along with this we have taken the first tentative steps toward a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world. earlier this year i have the opportunity to remember the 30th anniversary of divided the last test conducted by the united states. when reflecting on divider i spoke of how nature of reaching confirmed what i am previous administrators have been saying for decades there is no more dedicated or more talented group of scientists in the world as there should be. the tireless efforts of thousands of people from around the national security enterprise and their predecessors are responsible for this breakthrough. we honor their intelligence, their commitment and their determination introduce mark ade defense a program speak on this program thank you administrator ruby. it strikes me as fitting here. the little note no longer remember what we say here. so let's recap. a team at lawrence livermore lab made the following happen. there is a tiny cylinder here at the end of this you probably cannot see. it's so tall and so wide. inside diameter of a baby. 192 laser beings entered from the two ends of the cylinder and struck the inner wall they did not strike the capitol they struck the inner wall of the cylinder. and deposited energy. that happened in less time than it takes light to move 10 feet. it's kind of fast. x-rays imprint on the capsule. fusion fuel in the capsule got squeezed, fusion reaction started. this had all happened before, 100 times before. but last week for the first time they designed this experiment so the fusion fuel for long enough that it ignited. and it produced more energy than the lasers had deposited. the gain of exciting challenging important problems, we are hiring. [laughter] [applause] so, fusion is an essential process in modern nuclear weapons and fusion housing possible for abundant clean energy. as you have heard and we hear more the breakthrough does have ramifications for clean energy more immediately the search achievement will advance our national security in at least three ways. first it will lead to laboratory experiments that help defense programs continue to maintain confidence in our deterrent without nuclear explosive testing. second it underpins the credibility of our deterrent by demonstrating world leading expertise and weapons relevant technologies. that is, we know what we are doing. what we are doing in continuing to avoid testing to advance our non- proliferation also increased her national security. the achievement we celebrate today illustrates big important accomplishments often take longer and require more effort than originally thought. and that these accomplishments are often more than worth the time and effort they took. with that i like to welcome my friend and colleague doctor kim the director of the livermore laboratory to speak about her laboratory. genetic exit madam secretary, administrator ruby and administrator adams thank you for your remarks today and for your support. this is a historic achievement for the team at livermore, our collaborators academia labs in the's the department of energy and in congress who have ensured we can reach this moment. even when the going was tough. for the past 60 years thousands of people have contributed to this endeavor it took real vision to get us here. building the national ignition facility was an enormous scientific and engineering challenge with the emphasis on the importance of bringing those two together. in the end, after all that work the laser has exceeded its performance goals, opened a whole new energies to exploration and deliver the day that we need to keep our nuclear deterrent safe, secure, effective. our pursuit of infusion was incredibly ambitious technical goal. many said it was not possible. malays are not energetic enough, the targets are to be precise and effort our modeling assimilation tools were not up to the task. progress has taken time but last august we achieved record yield of 1.35 putting us at the threshold of ignitions many took notice. let's make our pre-shot predictions and provide machine learning and the wealth of data we have collected indicator of a better than 50% chance of exceeding a target gain of one. seek it 60 years ago propose lasers could be used to produce future in the laboratory laser just been invented was far from the auteur tool we know today. this is really what national labs are for, exactly the most difficult scientific challenges head-on, learning from the inevitable setbacks in building towards the next idea. lawrence livermore has been the center of the community across as many decades i sam has been centerpiece of our labs. people often say stands for lasers, lasers, nothing but lasers. [laughter] i think our motto sums up the approach nicely. science and technology on a mission. this achievement opens up new scientific realms for us to explore in advance our capabilities for national security measures. it demonstrates the power of u.s. leadership in science and technology which is what we are capable of as a nation. as a secretary mentioned breakthroughs like this one have generated tremendous excitement in the fusion community and a great deal of pride and fusion energy. this is only possible due to the long-term commitment of the public investment infusion science. the science and technology challenges on a path to fusion energy are daunting but making the seemingly impossible possible is when we are at the very best ignition is the first step a truly monumental and that sets the stage for transformational decade in high density science and fusion research. i cannot wait to see where it takes us, thank you. [applause] [applause] i will hand the podium back to secretary granholm. >> think you will open up for a few minutes of questions. i think our chat is going to be navigating that. of course we have the experts request just give your name and your outlet please. were taking questions on this topic, thank you. yes, hi. bloomberg news. in terms how you think it will be until we see commercialization of this technology? and also as a follow-up as this happened last monday where we just hearing about it now? thank you. x is going to take a lot before receipt is commercialized. i don't know if you and it's a word about that? quite sure. yes there are a very significant hurdles not just in science but in technology. this is one uniting capsule one time into relays commercial fusion energy you have to have many, many fusion ignition events per minutes. and you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that. so probably decades. not six decades i don't lick five decades as will be used to set think it's moving into the foreground with concerted effort and investments a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plants. on the question of what we've been doing for the last week the team is been hard at work analyzing data. it turns when you ignite one of these capsules at ambiguous as something big happened. you make a lot of neutrons but the data is not trivial to analyze and the team invited all of their team members who understand the individual diagnostics to commit to work together to look at all the data to make sure we have the numbers right we brought in an external team of experts to do a. review before we were ready to release the numbers. it's really important to tell you the facts and that we get them right. so that is what we have been doing for a week. proxy should probably stay there. [laughter] >> two quick questions. i know the positive debt return is important. how much energy does it take you talk about wall plug energy. how much wall plug energy does it take and are there implications for other types of fusions that could inform fusion? hugs it laser about 30 megajoules of energy from the wall to drive to megajoules of laser which is three laser yielded a calculation suggests it is possible with the laser system at scale to achieve hundreds of megajoules of yield. there is a pathway to a target that produces enough yield but we are very distant from that right after your megajoules the wall, to megajoules in the laser. it's talking about target gain greater than one. it was a second archer question? next magnetic fusion. yes there are many common things about plasmid science and materials we need to work in fusion environments diagnostics et cetera. essentially magnetic fusion works at low pressures and densities or long times. where consignment works for height densities for hybrids of time for there similarities in the underlying physics, the fundamental concepts are quite different. quick secretary granholm, congress is charge you in the department with making decisions about the most promising signs or pilot fusion plans you're in the middle of that process now. how are you going to approach that and what are your concerns about making this better choices? >> clearly the folks who will be evaluating our professionals who are the scientists that do this work. unlike they do it's all these funding opportunity announcements, do a whole. review process for each of the applications to determine which ones are most likely to be successful given the challenges. there are no parameters whether these are magnetic consignment plans for laser we are just looking at the best proposals that come in and hopefully we will have a decision on that verse 50 early in the new year. >> and their secretary, gary from nbc news. there's questions about the ability to scale here as it relates. can you talk about the ability to scale and who should be in charge of that scaling private, government, both? >> clearly what the cited sector we need the private sector is really important there's been this incredible amount of u.s. public dollars going into this breakthrough. all the steps that we will take that will be necessary to get this commercial level will still require public research in private research. we know there's been a huge interest on the private funding community startups et cetera and we encourage that. the president has a vision to get to a commercial fusion reactor within obviously 10 years. so we have got to get to work. this shows that can be done. which has been a question, can you get there? this it demonstrates that can be done. that threshold being cross allows them to start working on better lasers, more efficient lasers, better containment capsules et cetera. the things that are necessary to allow it to be modern generalized to take it to a commercial scale. >> thanks so much. i just wanted to clarify there's a goal in a decade. you said decades plural commercial how do you reconcile that? what is the time i hear? >> i think i get that. there are two approaches to commercial fusion energy one is a devices one is inertial fusion there are private companies pursuing both approaches. the technology developed a foundational technology to begin to scale up towards a power plant is further along in the magnetic fusion community. it's building more directly off the work that's been done in recent decades at the princeton plaza physics lab at mit to build the foundational technologies for magnetic fusion energy. the national ignition facility has been focused on creating the first step if we cannot ignite capsules in the laboratory couldn't see a pathway to an inertial confinement can fusion energy plants this was a necessary first step. but it's a built foundational the 1980s leaders technology. we need to bring a modern technology approaches to the drivers. we need to think about all the systems questions. and now have a capsule that ignites me too figure out can we make it simpler? can we begin to make this process easier and more repeatable? can we begin to do it more than one time a day? can we start working towards reparation? each of these is incredible scientific and engineering challenge for us. so what magnetic fusion may be a little upfront having that portfolio of approaches is really a great place to be because they will see -- make these keys will feed off each other will learn will advance the field. many technologies will grow with both fields. i think having both is really important. you will hear in the panel is of potential advantage of inertial confinement approach it's a little bit different. i think it's really important to keep us on that pathway. and with investments with energy, no pun intended sorry about that. with the real investment and real focus that timescale can move closer. we were in a position for very long time were never got closer we need the first fundamental steps. we're in a great position today to begin understanding just what it will take to make that next step and where that boundary is. i am guessing, i do know is give you a sense of the grid that's definitely not how this works. but this is a fundamental building block of inertial confusion power. >> i like to acknowledge as well congressman loughran joined us as well. thank you so much. there are a number of lab we yo. 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