US Department of Energy officials a history-making accomplishment in nuclear fusion Tuesday; for the first time, US scientists produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to power the experiment.
A so-called "net energy gain" is a in a decadeslong attempt to source clean, limitless energy from nuclear fusion -- the reaction that happens when two or more atoms are fused together.
The experiment put in 2.05 megajoules of energy to the target and resulted in 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output -- generating more than 50% more energy than was put in. It's the first time an experiment resulted in a meaningful gain of energy.
"This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy," said Democratic US Sen. Alex Padilla of California.
The breakthrough was made by a team of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility in California on December 5 -- a facility the size of a sports stadium and equipped with 192 lasers.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the breakthrough a "landmark achievement" in a statement.
Granholm said scientists at Livermore and other national labs do work that will help the US "solve humanity's most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing."
The director of Livermore, Dr. Kim Budil, called scientists' attempts to realize fusion ignition in the lab "one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity" and cheered the work of her lab's scientists.
"Achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people," Budil said in a statement. "Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit. These are the problems that the US national laboratories were created to solve."
Why a net gain in energy matters
We are still a very long way from having power the electric grid, never mind one power plant itself. The US project, while groundbreaking, only produced enough energy to boil about 2.5 gallons of water, Tony Roulstone, a fusion expert from the University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering told CNN.
That may not seem like much, but the experiment is still hugely significant because scientists demonstrated that they can actually create more energy than they started with. While there's many more steps until this can be commercially viable, that is a major hurdle to cross with nuclear fusion, experts say.
"This is very important because from an energy perspective, it can't be an energy source if you're not getting out more energy than you're putting in," Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist a Livermore, told CNN on Monday. "Prior breakthroughs have been important, but it's not the same thing as generating energy that could one day be used on a larger scale."
Past fusion experiments including one in the United Kingdom have generated more energy, but have not had nearly as big of an energy gain. For instance, earlier this year, a record-setting 59 megajoules of energy -- about 20 times as much as the US-based project. Even so, the UK project only showed an energy gain of less than one megajoule.
There's still many years and a long way to go to make the project commercially viable. Neither the US or UK-based projects "have the hardware and steps in place to convert fusion neutrons to electricity," Anne White, head of MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, told CNN.
But Roulstone pointed out that big ambitious nuclear energy projects must start somewhere: In 1942, ran the first fission nuclear reactor for just 5 minutes in its first run; 15 years later, the first US-based nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.
The-CNN-Wire
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