US scientists create world-first breakthrough in nuclear fusion

Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have produced a world-first nuclear fusion reaction, which generates more energy than it consumes.

The California-based lab used the National Ignition Facility project for the experiment, which comprises 192 ultra-powerful lasers the size of three football fields, all pointed into a thimble-sized cylinder filled with hydrogen.

Hydrogen was bombarded by the laser in a highly energy-intensive process called inertial confinement fusion to produce about 2.5 megajoules of energy in a nuclear fusion reaction — or about 120% of the 2.1 megajoules used by the lasers to initiate it.

The reaction is believed to have occurred in the past fortnight and could herald a breakthrough in the quest to unlock a “near-limitless, safe and clean” source of energy.

If experimental results are confirmed as accurate, researchers will be able to prove that fusion is a viable way to meet the planet’s growing energy demands by replicating a reaction which the sun has been creating for billions of years.

The “energy of the future” will produce zero greenhouse gases, leave little radioactive waste and carries no risk of nuclear accidents — making it a likely successor to the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.

The Department of Energy is expected to announce details of the findings next week.

Nuclear power plants around the world currently use fission — which is the splitting of a heavy atom’s nucleus — to produce energy.

Fusion on the other hand, combines two light hydrogen atoms to form one heavier helium atom, which releases a large amount of energy in the process.

It is the same process which occurs inside stars, including the sun.

Producing energy through nuclear fusion has been a long-held ambition for scientists and energy experts worldwide.

Scientists have tried to use it to produce electricity at a useable scale; however, replicating the reaction on earth has been highly challenging as it requires vast amounts of heat and pressure.

So far, science has not yet managed to produce more energy from the reaction than it takes to trigger the reaction.

Even if the Department of Energy’s findings confirm the fusion reaction, experts say there is a long way to go before the process can be developed on an industrial scale.

Such a project could take another 20 or 30 years to be completed.

To get there, researchers must first increase the efficiency of the lasers and then reproduce the experiment more frequently.

The technology is expected to become a game-changer for global energy production.