Nuclear fusion breakthrough 2022

American scientists have announced what they have called a major breakthrough in a long-elusive goal of creating energy from nuclear fusion. The U.S. Department of Energy said on Dec. 13, 2022, that for the first time – and after several decades of trying – scientists have managed to get more energy out of the process than they had to put in. WATCH: Scientists announce fusion energy breakthrough, possible game-changer for climate But just how significant is the development? And how far off is the long-sought dream of fusion providing abundant, clean energy? What happened in the fusion chamber? Fusion is a nuclear reaction that combines two atoms to create one or more new atoms with slightly less total mass. The difference in mass is released as energy, as described by Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc 2 , where energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. Since the speed of light is enormous, converting just a tiny amount of mass into energy – like what happens in fusion – produces a similarly enormous amount of energy. Researchers at the U.S. Government’s The fuel is held in a tiny canister designed to keep the reaction as free from contaminants as possible. U.S. Department of Energy/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory The technique used at the National Ignition Facility involved shooting 192 lasers at a The fuel and canister get vaporized within a few billionths of a second during the experiment. Researchers then hope their equipment survived the heat and acc...

Now, fusion researchers at a national laboratory in the US have achieved something physicists have been working towards for decades, a process known as "ignition". This step involves getting more But just how close are we to producing energy from fusion that can power people's homes? While ignition is only a proof of principle and a first step in a very long process, other developments are also in the works and together they could spark renewed enthusiasm for making fusion a practical reality. First it's important to recognize that the latest result is indeed a real milestone. The researchers at the The fusion energy released by the implosion was more than that put in by the laser, a massive achievement given that, just a few years ago, the NIF laser could only get out about a thousandth of the energy it put in. However, around 10,000 times more energy had to be put into the laser than it produced in To produce a reactor for a working power station, you would need a laser that produced light energy at much greater efficiency (a few tens of percent) and shot targets successfully at ten times per second, with each target costing a few pence or so. In addition, each laser shot would need to produce many times—perhaps 100 times—more energy out than was put in. An artist’s rendering of the hydrogen fuel pellet (white ball) inside a capsule. Lasers heat and compress the pellet to the point where fusion reactions occur. Very little research has actually been done on fusion "react...

The scientists at the While the Nevertheless, ignition is a remarkable achievement, and one which promises to stimulate interest in, and possibly also leverage funds for, tackling these further challenges. The experiment: how it worked and what it achieved Let's take a look at the details of exactly has been achieved. The researchers used a This corresponds to a gain of around 1.5 (2.05 x 1.5 = 3.1). It was a burst of energy so intense that, for a split second, burning fusion fuel produced ten thousand times more power than the combined output of every power station on Earth. This is big science. The NIF building comprises not one but 192 individual laser beams, which bounce back-and-forth over a distance of more than a kilometre before they reach the target. The building which houses all of this tech is ten storeys high and the size of three (American) football pitches laid side by side. Research into fusion falls into two main strands: Laser-driven fusion instead involves imploding tiny capsules of fusion fuel to incredibly high densities, at which point the burn will proceed so rapidly that significant energy can be released before the fuel has had chance to fly apart. In both cases, the fuel must be raised to temperatures of tens of millions of degrees Celsius to start it burning. It is this requirement, more than any other, that makes fusion so difficult to achieve. Laser-driven fusion still poses major challenges Laser fusion is a pulsed technology, and a huge hurdle...

The United States has announced that scientists have made a breakthrough in At a press conference on Tuesday, US officials said that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California had produced more energy in a fusion reaction, the process that powers the sun and the stars, for the first time. “Monday, December 5, 2022, was an important day in science,” Jill Ruby, the undersecretary for nuclear security at the Department of Energy, told reporters on Tuesday. “Reaching ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that has come after more than 60 years of global research.” The scientific breakthrough has kindled hopes that fusion could become a powerful source of However, there is still a long way to go before fusion is viable on an industrial scale. The ignition achieved was a single event – to produce continuous power it would need to be done regularly many times a minute. Getting to that point will require further investment and research to create the technologies to build a power plant. The lasers at LLNL, for example, are decades old. BREAKING NEWS: This is an announcement that has been decades in the making. On December 5, 2022 a team from DOE's This breakthrough will change the future of clean power and America’s national defense forever. — U.S. Department of Energy (@ENERGY) The LLNL said a team at its National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history on December 5, achieving wha...

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, joined at right by Arati Prabhakar, the president's science adviser, announces a major scientific breakthrough in fusion research that was made at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, during a news conference at the Department of Energy in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2022. Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite Scientists announced Tuesday that they have for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it—a major breakthrough in the Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved the result last week, the Energy Department said. Known as a net energy gain, the goal has been elusive because fusion happens at such high temperatures and pressures that it is incredibly difficult to control. The breakthrough will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and other officials said. "Ignition allows us to replicate for the first time certain conditions that are found only in the stars and the sun,'' Granholm told a news conference in Washington. "This milestone moves us one significant step closer" to having zero-carbon fusion energy "powering our society." Fusion ignition is "one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,″ Granholm said, adding that the breakthrough "will go down in the history books." Appearing with Granholm, White House science adviser Arati Pr...