U.S. government scientists at a California laboratory have reportedly made a monumental breakthrough in harnessing the power of fusion energy.
The scientists, working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently achieved a net energy gain in a fusion reaction, the Financial Times reported, citing three people with knowledge of the experiment. [emphasis, links added]
Scientists have been struggling since the 1950s to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun. But no group has been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes.
Though developing fusion power stations at scale is still decades away, the breakthrough has significant implications as the world seeks to ween itself off of fossil fuels.
Fusion reactions emit zero carbon and do not produce any long-lasting radioactive waste. Per The Times, a small cup of hydrogen fuel could potentially power a house for hundreds of years.
“If this is confirmed, we are witnessing a moment of history,” said Dr. Arthur Turrell, a plasma physicist, told the paper.
“Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal.”
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and undersecretary for nuclear security Jill Hruby are expected to formally announce “a major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Tuesday.
Read more at Fox News
Any scientific break through is good news be it in astro-physics, geology, or archeology. However, as this article pointed out nuclear fusion to power your toaster is decades away. Technology has to advance not only to the point of full scale use, but also to the point of being economically viable. The supersonic transport was feasible on the full scale and was even in commercial use, but unfortunately as developed it wasn’t economically viable. You can’t book a flight on one today. Wind and solar power are also not economically viable. They only exist because of subsidies way beyond what is received by fossil fuels, and where that isn’t enough, mandates. The middle and lower income classes are suffering. The cost of renewable energy is often calculated based on their maximum output rather than the average. The relative short life and high end of use costs of solar panels and wind turbines are ignored. The cost of upgrading the grid to support renewable energy is often assigned to fossil fuel power. When fusion power is heating home toasters, I hope that they will have waited until technology advanced to the point where it became economically viable.
I’m waiting for the details and then the opinions of qualified physicists.I remember the excitement generated by ” cold fusion “. It generated nothing else.
If this announcement lives up to today’s headlines, it will be interesting to see the reaction from the Big Green Money Sucking Machine and its government cheerleaders. I’ve said it before… what if the $trillions spent on renewables subsidies had been directed toward harnessing fusion? Will the warmists change course without a fight?
They probably achieved three milliseconds of net gain after pumping staggering amounts of energy into the plasma. Only a factor of 10.5 billion away from a year of operation.
I’m guessing the amount of net energy gain was some very minute percentage greater than the nearly astronomical energy input required to cause the fusion to occur.
Good news, but… Life on earth is carbon-based and has been since life’s beginning on earth. That carbon all comes from CO2. A planet without CO2 would be a dead planet. Because more CO2 makes life greener, stronger, more drought tolerant, and abundant. How? With the green metabolism of life – photosynthesis. Photosynthesis evolved shortly after life on earth began about 3.6 billion years ago. Its use of sunlight energy to power life has also allowed life to spread to every corner of our planet. And to feed nearly eight billion people better than we fed 3.5 billion a century ago. Its formula is sunlight plus CO2 plus H2O with the green pigmented enzyme chlorophyll produces high energy sugar bonds plus every molecule of the oxygen we breathe – O2. Making 85% of the world’s energy, fossil fuels, our ONLY GREEN ENERGY. Sunlight creates life’s energy. And when life dies, the energy that remains becomes coal, oil, and gas. We then use that coal, oil, and gas to make us the best fed, longest living, most prosperous human beings that have ever existed. And this consumption not only releases abundant, cheap energy, but it also recycles the two most important molecular ingredients of life – CO2 and H2O (see the ingredient side of photosynthetic metabolism above.)
Good Barry
You’re working within the 1st Law of Thermodynamics as I see it. Nothing is lost, it only recycles. It’s all about Earth time, not Human time.