Important Fusion Breakthrough

One of the goals of those researching cleaner energy is to produce heat the way the sun does it, through nuclear fusion. Unlike nuclear fission which produces a lot of radioactive waste products, fusion is clean. The waste product is helium.

It also uses hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium as fuel which can be readily obtained.

The nuclei of these isotopes are positively charged and thus repel each other, but on the sun they're forced together under incredible pressure and temperature to form helium. In this process, called fusion, an immense amount of energy is produced, enough to provide all the heat and light that have bathed our planet for its entire existence.

If this reaction could be harnessed on earth it would go a long way to solving our future energy problems. The difficulty has been generating the conditions necessary to force those nuclei together so that they fuse.

Now it seems that a major hurdle has been overcome by the Lawrence Livermore lab. Newsweek hasthe report:

A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.

Once the hydrogen plasma "ignites", the fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining, with the fusions themselves producing enough power to maintain the temperature without external heating.

Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity.

If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible.

No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of.

The problem with fusion energy at the moment is that we do not have the technical capabilities to harness this power. Scientists from across the world are currently working to solve these issues.

Newsweek has more details of this encouraging development. Unfortunately, although ignition is a big step there are still many technological difficulties to be overcome and commercial fusion generation may still be decades away.

Even so, humanity is one step closer to realizing an energy boon.