Nuclear fusion energy breakthrough

Stephen Shankland has been a reporter at CNET since 1998 and writes about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop. Expertise processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science Credentials • I've been covering the technology industry for 24 years and was a science writer for five years before that. I've got deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and other dee Scientists at major fusion milestone in December, using 192 lasers to ignite a fusion reaction that produced more energy than was used to trigger it. The surge lasted only for a fleeting moment, but its implications are lasting a lot longer. The achievement is a high-water mark for fusion, a field that produced thermonuclear weapons more than 70 years ago but still no reactor that can generate electrical power. The scientific and engineering challenges of controlled fusion are formidable. The National Ignition Facility uses infrared and ultraviolet laser light to produce X-rays in a chamber with a peppercorn-sized f...

• Scientific advancements in nuclear fusion have experienced exponential growth in the past three years. • Most notably, the National Ignition Facility in California has achieved net positive energy production, a significant milestone in fusion research. • Despite these achievements, the commercial viability of fusion power is still distant due to high costs, regulatory obstacles, and the need for further technological advancements. After decades of progress so incremental and expensive that it may have seemed pointless, nuclear fusion technology finally had a breakthrough worth writing home about. Last year, a team of scientists in California was able to achieve ignition, creating more energy from a laser-driven fusion experiment than was beamed into it. The breakthrough has signaled a new era for nuclear fusion, in which the nascent technology shifted from a pipe dream ripped out of the pages of science fiction to a model of clean energy production with actual potential for practical application and scalability. But critics still question whether creating an artificial sun here on Earth will ever be affordable and energy efficient enough to make a real impact on the global energy industry. In the last three years, nuclear fusion breakthroughs have increased exponentially, with scientists making incredible gains across the globe in different fusion experiments, often with completely different approaches. And it all happened nearly simultaneously when looking at the long t...

Scientists have finally managed to bottle the sun. At 1:03 a.m. PST on December 5, researchers with the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., ignited controlled nuclear fusion that, for the first time, resulted in the net production of energy. A 3-million-joule burst emerged from a peppercorn-sized capsule of fuel when it was heated with a 2-million-joule laser pulse. Details of the long-awaited achievement, which mimics how the sun makes energy, were revealed in a news conference December 13 by U.S. Department of Energy officials. “This is a monumental breakthrough,” says physicist Gilbert Collins of the University of Rochester in New York, who is a former NIF collaborator but was not involved with the research leading to the latest advance. “Since I started in this field, fusion was always 50 years away…. With this achievement, the landscape has changed.” Fusion potentially provides a clean energy source. The fission reactors now used to generate nuclear energy rely on heavy atoms, like uranium, to release energy when they break down into lighter atoms, including some that are radioactive. While it’s comparatively easy to generate energy with fission, it’s an environmental nightmare to deal with the leftover radioactive debris that can remain hazardous for hundreds of millenia. Controlled nuclear fusion, on the other hand, doesn’t produce such long-lived radioactive waste, but it’s technically much harder to achieve in the first place. In nuclear fusion, light...

• On December 5, U.S. scientists at the National Ignition Facility in California generated more energy from a nuclear fusion reaction than they put in • The experimental result is a massive nuclear energy breakthrough in a century-long quest to unlock the power of the sun on earth • With more research and financial investment, researchers believe we’re within four decades of producing 100% clean, limitless energy The subject: A nuclear energy breakthrough at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California. White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Dr. Arata Prabhakar heralded the achievement as a “scientific milestone” and an “engineering marvel beyond belief.” “This duality of advancing the research, building the complex engineering systems, both sides learning from each other, this is how we do really big, hard things, and this is just a beautiful example,” she added. The net energy gain from the fusion reaction is the first in human history. While more research (a lot more research) is needed to make the technology replicable, scalable and more efficient, it’s an essential step on the path to clean energy. Nuclear fusion involves combining atoms into a single, larger atom. The process generates enormous amounts of energy, and is the core reaction that drives our sun. Nuclear fusion differs from nuclear fission, the process used in nuclear power plants. Fission splits atoms, rather than combines them, ...