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LIVERMORE, Calif. — Coming out on the plus side of the energy equation has been the long-elusive outcome for fusion energy researchers.
But, according to a story first reported by the Financial Times, scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have finally produced a nuclear fusion reaction in which the energy coming out of the experiment has exceeded the energy going into it. An announcement of the breakthrough is expected to be made by U.S. Energy Department Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday morning.
Why is fusion energy a big deal?
Fusion works when nuclei of two atoms are subjected to extreme heat of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit) or higher, leading them to fuse into a new larger atom, giving off enormous amounts of energy, per a breakdown by Reuters.
But the process consumes vast amounts of energy and the trick has been to make the process self-sustaining, allowing more energy out than goes in, and to do so continuously instead of for brief moments.
It appears Livermore scientists have achieved this goal for the first time, in a process called "ignition," that used the world's largest and highest-energy laser system, called the National Ignition Facility, to fuse hydrogen atoms
A tiny capsule containing two forms of hydrogen is suspended inside a cylindrical X-ray "oven" called a hohlraum, according to a posting on the Lawrence Livermore website. When the hohlraum is heated by NIF's powerful lasers to temperatures of more than 3 million degrees Celsius, the resulting X-rays heat and blow off, or ablate, the surface of the target capsule, called the ablator. This causes a rocket-like implosion that compresses and heats the fuel to extreme temperatures and densities until the hydrogen atoms fuse, creating helium nuclei and releasing high-energy neutrons and other forms of energy.
The $3.5 billion ignition experiment device is massive, utilizing twin 10-story towers that produce 192 intense laser beams that travel some 1,500 meters before concentrating within the reaction chamber.
While the excess energy produced in the experiment is relatively tiny, the technique has huge potential if it can be scaled commercially as an energy source.
"It's about what it takes to boil 10 kettles of water," Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College in London, told CNN. "In order to turn that into a power station, we need to make a larger gain in energy — we need it to be substantially more."
What happens now that a successful fusion reaction has been produced?
Chittenden and Tony Roulstone, a fusion expert from the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering, told CNN that scientists around the globe now must work toward dramatically scaling up their fusion projects, and also bring the cost down. Getting it commercially viable will take years of more research.
"At the moment we're spending a huge amount of time and money for every experiment we do," Chittenden said. "We need to bring the cost down by a huge factor."
However, Chittenden called this new chapter in nuclear fusion "a true breakthrough moment which is tremendously exciting."
Roulstone said much more work needs to happen to make fusion able to generate electricity on a commercial scale.
"The opposing argument is that this result is miles away from actual energy gain required for the production of electricity," he said. "Therefore, we can say (it) is a success of the science but a long way from providing useful energy."
