US Department of Energy researchers are expect to announce Tuesday that they have made a concerning nuclear fusion breakthrough 2022, which could be use as a revolutionary source of renewable energy.
Scientists have worked for decades on developing nuclear fusion – hailed by supporters as a source of clean, abundant and safe energy that could eventually break humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels.
Despite the Energy Department’s refusal to provide any details about what it will announce Tuesday, a Financial Times report over the weekend has been making the rounds in the scientific community.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California have produced the first “net energy gain” from nuclear fusion after producing more energy in the reaction than use in its activation, according to the UK-based outlet.
A real nuclear fusion breakthrough 2022
A confirmation of this achievement would be A real nuclear fusion breakthrough 2022 that would be extremely exciting, says Imperial College London physicist Jeremy Chittenden.
“I am encourage by the discovery of the ‘holy grail’ of fusion, which has long sought and finally attained.”
Currently, nuclear power plants around the world generate power through fission – the splitting of heavy atoms’ nuclei.
Meanwhile, fusion releases a large amount of energy when two light hydrogen atoms combine to form one heavier helium atom.
Our sun, as well as other stars, go through this process.
During extreme heating of hydrogen in specialized devices, fusion reactions can be induced on Earth.
The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory houses 192 ultra-powerful lasers that are pointed at a hydrogen-filled thimble-sized cylinder.
As reported by the Financial Times, LLNL scientists recently produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy from a nuclear fusion reaction, which is 120% more than the 2.1 megajoules used by the lasers in the process.
Years of hard work – Cambridge University lecturer Tony Roulstone
Fusion researchers outlined these physical principles decades ago, and the result would confirm them. The result would be “an unqualified success for science,” according to Cambridge University lecturer Tony Roulstone.
Aside from being carbon-free during operation, fusion has many other advantages, including inducing less radioactive waste and posing no risk of nuclear disaster.
It will be a long time before fusion becomes viable on an industrial scale, although there have been some advances.
It will be necessary to boost fusion’s energy gains further before it can become a power source, cautions Chittenden.
“To achieve the same result, a power plant will also have to be able to produce it much more frequently and much more cheaply,” he said.
AFP quoted Erik Lefebvre, project manager at the French Atomic Energy Commission, as saying that it might take yet another 20 or 30 years for that to be accomplish.
Nevertheless, climate experts warn that we can’t wait that long for greenhouse gas emissions to be reduce, and the worst effects of global warming to be minimize.
Around the world, there are also nuclear fusion projects under development, including the major international project ITER, currently under construction in France.
In place of lasers, ITER will employ a technology known as magnetic confinement, which forms a donut-shaped chamber inside which hydrogen plasma will swirl.
