The major advance in fusion research announced in Washington overnight was decades in coming, with scientists for the first time able to engineer a reaction that produced more power than was used to ignite it.
Using powerful lasers to focus enormous energy on a miniature capsule half the size of a BB, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California started a reaction that produced about 1.5 times more energy than was contained in the light used to produce it.
There are decades more to wait before fusion could one day — maybe — be used to produce electricity in the real world.
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But the promise of fusion is enticing. If harnessed, it could produce nearly limitless, carbon-free energy to supply humanity’s electricity needs without raising global temperatures and worsening climate change.
At the press conference in Washington, the scientists celebrated.
“So, this is pretty cool,” Marvin “Marv” Adams, the National Nuclear Security Administration deputy administrator for defence programs, said.