U.S. government scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in the quest to pioneer nuclear fusion technologies that could potentially provide abundant clean power in the future, according to a much-anticipated announcement from the Department of Energy (DOE) on Tuesday that follows leaked reports of the news that circulated in the previous days.
On December 5, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), which is a part of the DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, witnessed the first example of “fusion ignition,” a milestone that has been in the works for decades and offers new hope to visionaries who aim to harness the same source of power that fuels the stars in laboratories here on Earth.
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On that day, NIF researchers sparked a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumed from the device’s suite of lasers, creating a self-sustaining process that will be essential to any working fusion reactor in the future.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm called the achievement of fusion ignition a “tremendous scientific breakthrough” in the Tuesday press conference.
“This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero-carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society,” Granholm said at the briefing. “If we can advance fusion energy, we could use it to produce clean electricity, transportation fuels, power heavy industry, and so much more. It would be like adding a power drill to our toolbox in building this clean energy economy.”
Nuclear fusion occurs when atoms merge together, a process that unleashes an enormous amount of energy. These reactions are the reason that stars shine, and scientists on Earth hope that they could one day form the basis of a clean power system that could ease our civilization’s transition away from fossil fuels.
Scientists at NIF induce fusion reactions by shooting nearly 200 lasers at a tiny pellet filled with atoms. The lasers indirectly provoke the pellet to implode, exposing the atomic fuel to extreme pressures and temperatures that force them to fuse into new permutations and release their immense stores of energy.
NIF has steadily inched toward the goal of fusion ignition in recent years, but the recent experiment has finally passed this threshold with a reaction that produced an output of roughly three megajoules from a laser input of two megajoules.
The result is a clear example of a net energy gain, also known as a “scientific energy breakeven,” but there is still a long way to go toward a working fusion reactor that genuinely produces a surplus of energy. This is because the entire apparatus of NIF requires exponentially more power to operate than the input from the lasers, meaning that the new milestone represents a step toward fusion power, rather than a practical demonstration.
Indeed, it’s not clear that fusion power will ever be feasible, given all the scientific and engineering challenges involved with recreating the power of the stars on our planet. Regardless of that ultimate dream, though, NIF has shown that some of the most important fundamentals of fusion power are possible.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” said Granholm. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to supporting our world-class scientists—like the team at NIF—whose work will help us solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”
