Project description
An unprecedented approach to laser technology for aneutronic fusion
Nuclear fusion, combining lighter atomic nuclei to produce heavier ones, such as helium production from hydrogen nuclei in the Sun’s core, releases massive amounts of energy – significantly more than nuclear fission reactions. Harnessing it could solve our energy challenges. However, it often releases neutrons that can weaken the reactor components while making them radioactive, resulting in high-volume, long-lived radioactive waste. Aneutronic fusion – fusion without neutron emission – could be the answer. Funded by the European Innovation Council, the V4F project will demonstrate a new laser technology that generates extreme levels of optical angular momentum. This will provide unprecedented control over light-matter interactions paving the way for aneutronic fusion for clean and sustainable energy supply together with radical particle accelerator designs.
Objective
V4F aims to show proof-of-principle of a new technology capable of unprecedented control over interactions with specially synthesised targets to significantly improve the energy balance of aneutronic fusion reactions.
New concepts and advanced simulations of inertial confinement of aneutronic fusion reactions and particle acceleration will inform pioneering experiments in high-energy matter-interactions. Results could offer the prospect of breakthrough increases in alpha-particle yields from fusion reactions and mitigate the instabilities found in conventional fusion reactions.
This work offers the tantalising possibility of aneutronic fusion as a waste-free nuclear energy source and radical new configurations of particle accelerators, leading to an efficient positron beam acceleration. The results will benefit society with game-changing new approaches to clean, safe energy production and significant downscaling of positron accelerators with dramatic impacts in medicine, industry and fundamental science.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Call for proposal
(opens in new window) HORIZON-EIC-2022-PATHFINDEROPEN-01
See other projects for this callFunding Scheme
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinator
33100 Tampere
Finland