US scientists reach long-awaited nuclear fusion breakthrough, source says

A person familiar with the project revealed to CNN that US researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California successfully achieved a nuclear fusion reaction that resulted in a net energy gain for the first time ever.

According to a statement sent by the department on Sunday, US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will reveal a “significant scientific discovery” on Tuesday. The Financial Times broke the news of the discovery first.

When two or more atoms combine to form one larger atom, this process is known as nuclear fusion, which releases a tremendous quantity of heat energy. It does not produce long-lived radioactive waste, in contrast to nuclear fission, which generates electricity throughout the world.

Researchers from all across the world have been edging closer to the discovery while employing various strategies to do so.

Tuesday’s official announcement of the discovery is anticipated from the US Department of Energy.

The experiment’s outcome would be a significant milestone in the long-term goal to release an endless source of renewable energy that may help end dependence on fossil fuels. Nuclear fusion, the process that drives the sun, has been replicated by researchers for decades.

The National Ignition Facility project uses “thermonuclear inertial fusion” to produce energy from nuclear fusion. In actuality, US researchers use a system of over 200 lasers to discharge pellets containing hydrogen fuel, which results in a succession of extremely quick explosions that happen 50 times per second.

The heat created when the energy from the neutrons and alpha particles is removed is the key to creating energy.

Engineering professor Tony Roulstone of the University of Cambridge said, “They contain the fusion reaction by hitting the outside with lasers.” “They warm the environment, which produces a shockwave.”

The amount of energy gained via nuclear fusion is significant, but it is far less than what is required to run electric grids and heat buildings.
According to Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London, it takes roughly as long to boil 10 kettles of water. “We need to make a higher increase in energy — we need it to be significantly more — in order to turn that into a power station.”

To achieve the same goal, scientists in the UK are using a tokamak, a massive device with a donut-like form that is equipped with enormous magnets.

Giant magnets are turned on to form a plasma once a modest amount of fuel is added to the tokamak. At least 150 million degrees Celsius, or ten times as hot as the sun’s core, must be reached by the plasma. The fuel particles are combusted together as a result of this. The result of nuclear fusion has less mass than the original atoms. The lost mass is converted into a huge amount of energy.

When neutrons that are able to leave the plasma hit a “blanket” along the tokamak’s walls, their kinetic energy is converted to heat. It is possible to use this heat to warm water, produce steam, and turn turbines to produce electricity.

Researchers in the Oxford area were able to produce a record-breaking amount of sustained energy last year. The duration was only 5 seconds, though.

The end outcome is the same whether magnets are used or lasers are used to fire pellets: heat sustained by the process of fusing the atoms together holds the key to helping produce energy.

The main difficulty in using fusion energy is maintaining it for a long enough period of time to power global electric grids and heating systems.

According to Chittenden and Roulstone, experts from all around the world must now work to both drive down costs and massively scale up their fusion operations. Years of additional research will be required to make it commercially feasible.

For each experiment, we currently invest a significant amount of time and resources, according to Chittenden. “We need to significantly reduce the cost.”

The new chapter in nuclear fusion, according to Chittenden, is “a truly breakthrough moment that is incredibly thrilling.”

According to Roulstone, there is ample evidence that additional research is required before fusion can be used to produce power on a large scale.

According to the “opposing argument,” this result is far from the actual energy gain needed to produce electricity. Therefore, despite being a long way from producing useful energy, we can say that this is a scientific success.