A step toward unlimited energy? US to unveil ‘breakthrough’ in nuclear fusion
Ryan King
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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will reportedly announce a breakthrough in nuclear fusion Tuesday in which scientists achieved a fusion reaction with a net energy gain.
Nuclear fusion has been widely seen as the white whale of carbon-free, nearly limitless energy scientists have been hunting for for decades. While the technology is still seen as being years or decades away from commercial use, the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved the milestone within the past two weeks, according to the Financial Times.
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“Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy out than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal,” Arthur Turrell, deputy director of the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics, tweeted.
“This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion — at a time when we’ve never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more,” he added.
Engineers at Livermore deployed massive lasers against a pellet of hydrogen plasma to achieve the nuclear milestone. The reaction created roughly 2.5 megajoules of energy, exceeding the 2.1 megajoules needed to power the lasers, the Financial Times reported.
Scientists are still poring through data from that reaction. Higher-than-expected energy output reportedly damaged diagnostic tools, making it more difficult to perform analysis.
Harnessing processes similar to the ones that power the Sun, nuclear fusion entails two or more atoms fusing together, unlike nuclear fission, which involves atoms splitting. Fusion has been long sought after because it can theoretically produce large swaths of energy without nuclear waste like the fission processes seen in conventional nuclear power plants. It is also carbon-free.
Thus far, most fusion attempts have been marked by reactions consuming more energy than they can produce. A common joke is that fusion is “always 30 years away” because of years of rosy forecasts for achieving a fusion breakthrough.
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The National Ignition Facility came close to clinching a breakthrough last year when its reaction produced about 70% of the power needed to generate it. The Biden administration has expressed interest in funding nuclear fusion research and is set to pump roughly $370 billion worth of subsidies for green energy technologies under the Inflation Reduction Act in order to reduce carbon emissions.
Undersecretary for Nuclear Security Jill Hruby is expected to join Granholm at the announcement event Tuesday.