A step toward unlimited energy? US to unveil ‘breakthrough’ in nuclear fusion

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.

“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.

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