The scientific world has recently been launched into a frenzy as perhaps the most revolutionary breakthrough in technology and science since the introduction of computers. In a lab in California, west of San Francisco, scientists and engineers recently were able to harness the power of the stars. After nearly 75 years of trying, the scientists achieved controlled nuclear fusion. However, it was only for a billionth of a second in a laboratory, but it is the first step into the future of energy. If scientists can commercialize nuclear fusion energy, it would be an infinite energy source with no waste, no greenhouse emissions, and just clean energy.
In the 1930s, scientists began understanding more about the atom and nuclear energy. Discoveries and new technology revealed that within the bonds of an atom’s nucleus, there is an immense amount of stored energy. Perhaps the most famous example of this early understanding of nuclear energy is the Manhattan Project, the Trinity Test, and the first atomic bombs dropped in Japan on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, New Mexico, were able to harness nuclear fission, which is different from fusion. Fusion combines atoms and releases energy — fission breaks apart the nuclei of atoms. The first examples of fusion came in the 1950s with the development of a hydrogen bomb. Although never used in combat, it is much more destructive than atomic bombs with its use of a nuclear fusion of hydrogen atoms.
For most of the end of the 20th century, nuclear power plants globally used nuclear fission to produce energy. However, even though they did not release any greenhouse gasses, they have the potential to melt down and explode or emit radioactive waste. Nuclear fusion would not have any of these risks while also being a clean energy source. With the growing climate crisis, an infinite clean energy source like fusion could stop and reverse the damage of climate change at lightning speeds.
The fusion reaction was in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The LLNL houses the energetic lasers, built in the 1990s to create intense environments typical of the center of stars and super-sized planets. The project working on fusion, The National Ignition Facility (NIF), has attempted to reach controlled nuclear fusion 200 times in the past 13 years. On December 5, 2022, the laboratory fired the laser and caused atoms to fuse. It took 192 of the most powerful lasers on Earth, but the lab used the fusion of the nuclei of atoms and produced 50% more energy than was used. The director of NIF, Dr. Tammy Ma, says, “It was hotter than the center of the sun. We [LLNL] were able to achieve temperatures that were the hottest in the entire solar system”.
The prospects of controlled nuclear fusion energy are immense. It could lower energy bills to nearly nothing while nearly completely erasing the carbon footprint of most of the world. Although in very infant stages, the work of LLNL is the baby steps in a revolution that will change the world. Dr. Kim Budil, the director of LLNL, likens the breakthrough to the first flight by the Wright brothers saying, “it really is a remarkable feeling after working for 60 years to get to this point to have first– taken that first flight”.
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