CLEVELAND — On Tuesday morning, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and scientists announced a breakthrough in nuclear fusion, which they say can have a major impact on the future of energy. Scientists achieved ignition through nuclear fusion, essentially generating more energy than was initially put into the process.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, the Energy Department said.
“Nuclear fusion is absolutely amazing, it’s a form of power generation. In fact, nuclear fusion is what powers our sun and all the other stars in the universe,” said JonDarr Bradshaw, community engagement coordinator at the Great Lakes Science Center. “It occurs when you have two nuclei that combine, that fuse together, to form a much heavier nucleus. And at that point, it generates – it actually gives off – an enormous amount of energy.”
Bradshaw said scientists have been working on nuclear fusion for decades, but this instance is significant because of the energy gain involved.
“More energy was generated through this process than what was actually delivered to the target,” Bradshaw said.
The process of creating this reaction involved putting two Hydrogen isotopes into a cannister, and essentially shooting lasers at it, according to Cyrus Taylor, the Albert Michaelson Professor in Physics at Case Western Reserve University.
“What they do is they have a little cannister and inside that they have isotopes of Hydrogen, deuterium and tritium they’re called. And they suspend this, it’s a small thing, and blast it with 192 lasers simultaneously - incredibly high power. The result of that basically causes this to implode, and creates the high temperatures and pressures needed to fuse it together. And what they did for the first time was they got more energy out than they put into it.”
The potential of harnessing this energy is what excites both Bradshaw and Taylor.
“We have a real prospect for sort of commercial fusion. Clean, limitless power to basically power mankind,” Taylor said. “And once we’ve achieved that, we don’t have to worry about fossil fuels anymore, this will be the basis for our civilization for the next million years.”
Taylor said although harnessing this power for widespread, commercial use won’t happen overnight, as more private companies work in this field, we can expect more developments in nuclear fusion in the coming years.
“Our hope is that by harnessing this type of power, by being able to use nuclear fusion reactors, we’ll be able to use that power generation tool to make electricity that we can use to power most everything that we know,” said Bradshaw. “It is a form of cleaner energy that we haven’t had access to before, and it will be a gamechanger.”
You can watch Tuesday's announcement from Secretary Granholm below:
More News: