(AGENPARL) - Roma, 28 Giugno 2025(AGENPARL) – Fri 27 June 2025 A weekly compendium of media reports on science and technology achievements
at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Though the Laboratory reviews
items for overall accuracy, the reporting organizations are responsible for
the content in the links below.
LLNL Report, June 27, 2025
LLNL’s precisely tuned, high-power lasers can be used to separate isotopes
of uranium.
Fueling the nuclear renaissance
https://www.axios.com/pro/climate-deals/2025/06/25/nuclear-fuel-hexium-laser
Reactor companies, investors and governments are searching for technologies
and startups that can deliver fuel for the coming nuclear renaissance.
Why it matters: Fuel availability could be the bottleneck that delays or
derails advanced reactor plans.
Driving the news: Nuclear fuel startup Hexium and advanced reactor companies
Oklo and TerraPower announced a plan Wednesday to work with California’s
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to evaluate how a promising
laser-based technology could produce low-cost fuel for advanced reactors.
Zoom in: Hexium CEO and co-founder Charlie Jarrott tells Axios the company
plans to raise a Series A round this year to fund the development of a pilot
laser system to produce uranium fuel for fission reactors, in addition to
other nuclear materials.
What they’re saying: “We’re trying to show the world that you can separate
isotopes with lasers,” says Jarrott, whose background is a fusion scientist
at Lawrence Livermore and part of the team that achieved fusion energy gain.
Read More
https://www.axios.com/pro/climate-deals/2025/06/25/nuclear-fuel-hexium-laser
A high-resolution 3D HYDRA capsule simulation of a June 2017 NIF shot.
(Credit: Marty Marinak)
LLNL captures outstanding paper prize
Computational physicist Jose Milovich of Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL) and colleagues have been awarded the 2025 Plasma Physics
and Controlled Fusion (PPCF) Outstanding Paper Prize for their computational
research on capsule implosions during laser fusion.
The work — Understanding asymmetries using integrated simulations of
capsule implosions in low gas-fill hohlraums at the National Ignition
Facility — is an important part of understanding the physics at the heart
of inertial confinement fusion (ICF).
Fusion is usually performed via two types of plasma confinement. Magnetic
involves using magnetic fields to hold stable a plasma of deuterium-tritium
(D-T), while inertial confinement uses rapid compression, usually by lasers,
to create a confined plasma for a short period of time.
The award-winning work was based on experiments carried out at the National
Ignition Facility (NIF) based in California, which is one of the leading
fusion centers in the world.
Read More
An artist’s illustration of asteroids, or near-Earth objects. (Credit: ESA –
P. Carril)
Looking at lunar defense
What if an asteroid was just barreling towards earth and we didn’t know it?
Surely, they monitor for stuff like that, right? Well, it turns out they do.
I took this thought to Katie Kuamoto. She is the planetary defense lead at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. She told me about a
recent update by NASA on the asteroid 2024 YR4.. They’ve upped the probability
of it hitting the moon early next decade. Recent estimates of the
building-size space rock’s trajectory suggest it has a 4% chance of hitting
the lunar surface in December 2032. What would actually happen if it did
strike the moon, and is there any effect we’d notice down here on Earth?
“2024 YR4 is definitely still an object of interest, and research is
ongoing to look at precisely this topic. So, I can only speak in generalities
right now, because we’re still working on it,” said Kuamoto. “If 2024 YR4
hit the moon, the impact would form a large crater, and it would throw up a
lot of material, depending on where exactly the impact occurs.. It’s possible
that some of that lunar material could head toward Earth.”
Read More
Reactive carbon dioxide capture and conversion could be used to produce
synthetic renewable natural gas — energy storage that can be leveraged with
existing infrastructure. (Image: Alvina Aui)
A chemical form of long-duration energy storage
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-captured-carbon-natural-gas-competitive.html
Solar and wind energy are highly variable, dependent on the day, weather and
location of the facilities. At times, they can generate more electricity than
is needed, but they can also fall short when demand is at its peak.
Unfortunately, any extra energy created by these sources is often wasted, as
there are few methods that adequately store it long-term. To improve energy
security in the United States, the nation requires both sources of energy and
novel ways to store and distribute it.
In a new study, published in Cell Reports Sustainability, researchers from
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have explored how a reactive
carbon dioxide capture and conversion (RCC) process could be used to produce
synthetic renewable natural gas—a chemical form of long-duration energy
storage.
“Rather than sourcing carbon from below-ground, RCC enables the use of
above-ground carbon as a resource,” said LLNL scientist and lead author
Alvina Aui.
Read More
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-06-captured-carbon-natural-gas-competitive.html
LLNL’s last optical telescopes flew to lunar orbit in 1994 on the
Clementine mission, which created this image of the moon. (Credit: NASA,
Naval Research Laboratory)
LLNL telescopes will fire-fly to the moon
Firefly Aerospace says it plans to offer a commercial lunar imaging service
for use by governments and companies, one that could supplement or replace an
existing, but aging, NASA orbiter.
Firefly announced June 18 a service called Ocula that will provide imagery
using instruments placed on its Elytra spacecraft. The system will use
telescopes from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with ultraviolet and
visible sensors.
The company said that those telescopes, mounted on Elytra spacecraft orbiting
the moon at an altitude of 50 kilometers, will be able to provide images at a
resolution of 20 centimeters. By comparison, the main camera on NASA’s
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has a resolution of 50 centimeters per
pixel.
It added that imagery at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths could be used to
identify key minerals. That includes ilmenite, a mineral associated with the
presence of helium-3. The imagery system can also be used for space domain
awareness, tracking and identifying objects in cislunar space.
Read More
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challenges through innovative science, engineering and technology. Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory is managed by Lawrence Livermore National
Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security
Administration.
Read previous Lab Report articles online https://www.llnl.gov/news/lab-report
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