A nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain was successfully produced by US scientists at the National Ignition Facility in California.
For the first time in history, US scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain, a source familiar with the project confirmed to CNN.
The US Department of Energy is expected to officially announce the breakthrough Tuesday.
The result of the experiment would be a massive step in a decades-long quest to unleash an infinite source of clean energy that could help end dependence on fossil fuels. Researchers for decades have attempted to recreate nuclear fusion — replicating the energy that powers the sun.
Here’s what you need to know about this new form of nuclear energy that could eventually turn on your lights.
What is nuclear fusion and why does it matter?
Nuclear fusion is a man-made process that replicates the same energy that powers the sun. Nuclear fusion happens when two or more atoms are fused into one larger one, a process that generates a massive amount of energy as heat.
Scientists around the world have been studying nuclear fusion for decades, hoping to recreate it with a new source that provides limitless, carbon-free energy — without the nuclear waste created by current nuclear reactors. Fusion projects mainly use the elements deuterium and tritium — both of which are isotopes of hydrogen.
The deuterium from a glass of water, with a little tritium added, could power a house for a year. Tritium is rarer and more challenging to obtain, although it can be synthetically made.
« Unlike coal, you only need a small amount of hydrogen, and it is the most abundant thing found in the universe, » Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, told CNN. « Hydrogen is found in water so the stuff that generates this energy is wildly unlimited and it is clean. »
How is fusion different from nuclear fission?
When people think about nuclear energy, cooling towers and mushroom clouds may come to mind. But fusion is entirely different.
Whereas fusion fuses two or more atoms together, fission is the opposite; it is the process of splitting a larger atom into two or more smaller ones. Nuclear fission is the kind of energy that powers nuclear reactors around the world today. Like fusion, the heat created from splitting atoms is also used to generate energy.
