Nuclear fusion – live: Scientists announce major ‘limitless clean energy’ breakthrough

‘This is game-changing, world-improving, lives-saving history unfolding in real-time,’ Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says

Scientists achieve historic fusion ‘ignition’ to produce ‘near-limitless’ clean energy

The United States has announced a nuclear fusion breakthrough, a historic step towards the promise of “near-limitless” clean energy.

“It will go down in the history books,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday in Washington DC alongside scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

For 70 years, hundreds of scientists and engineers have attempted to replicate the energy process of atoms fusing together that powers the sun and other stars.

It is an enormously complex - and expensive - process which is highly unstable due to the high temperatures and pressures involved.

Now, for the first time, the California lab team used lasers to achieve a “net energy gain”, producing more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it.

Scientists heralded the breakthrough but said there were still decades of work to be done before fusion would be powering our everyday lives.

Nevertheless, the fusion breakthrough has the potential to significantly impact the trajectory of the climate crisis - driven by the planet-heating emissions created by burning fossil fuels.

Key Points

• Scientists finally achieve ‘holy grail’ of nuclear fusion power
• Nuclear fusion breakthrough holds promise of ‘near-limitless’ clean energy
• ‘Massive challenges’ facing researchers working to implement new science
• US scientists achieve ‘holy grail’ net gain nuclear fusion reaction: report
• VIDEO: Scientists achieve historic fusion ‘ignition’ to produce ‘near-limitless’ clean energy

[14 December 2022 08:00 · The Independent]

VIDEO: US scientists announce fusion energy breakthrough

[14 December 2022 09:00 · The Associated Press]

Fuel has to be hotter that the centre of the sun

The net energy gain achievement applied to the fusion reaction itself, not the total amount of power it took to operate the lasers and run the project. For fusion to be viable, it will need to produce significantly more power and for longer.

It is incredibly difficult to control the physics of stars. Dennis Whyte, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in fusion research, said the fuel has to be hotter than the center of the sun. The fuel does not want to stay hot — it wants to leak out and get cold. Containing it is a challenge, he said.

Results from the California lab exceeded expectations, said Jeremy Chittenden, a professor at Imperial College in London specializing in plasma physics.

Although there’s a long way to go to turn fusion into a usable power source, Chittenden said, the lab’s achievement makes him optimistic that it may someday be “the ideal power source that we thought it would be” — one that’s carbon-free and runs on an abundant form of hydrogen that can be extracted from seawater.