by WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Energy on Tuesday announced that scientists at a national laboratory have made a breakthrough in fusion, the process that powers the sun and stars that could one day provide an economic source of electricity, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have achieved a net energy gain for the first time, in a fusion experiment using lasers, one of the people said.
While the results are a milestone in scientific research that has been developing since at least the 1930s, the ratio of the energy going into the Livermore reaction to the energy yielding it must be about 100 times greater to create a process that would produces commercial quantities of electricity, one of the sources said.
The FT reported the experiment first.
Fusion works when the nuclei of two atoms are subjected to extreme heat of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit) or higher which causes them to fuse into a new, larger atom, giving off huge amounts of energy.
But the process consumes huge amounts of energy and the trick was to make the process self-sustaining and get more energy than it goes in and do it continuously instead of for short moments.
If fusion is commercialized, which proponents say could be in a decade or more, it would have further benefits, including virtually carbon-free electricity generation that could help fight climate change without the quantities of nuclear waste. radioactive emissions produced by today’s fission reactors.
However, operating a fusion power plant presents difficult hurdles, such as how to contain heat economically and keep lasers burning consistently. Other melting methods use magnets instead of lasers.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will hold a media briefing on Tuesday at 10am EST (1500 GMT) on a “major scientific breakthrough.”
The department has no information ahead of the briefing, a spokesman said.
Lawrence Livermore’s main focus is on national security issues related to nuclear weapons, and the fusion experiment could lead to safer testing of the national arsenal of such bombs.
But advances in the labs could also help companies hoping to develop fusion-powered power plants, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Focused Energy and General Fusion.
Investors including Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and John Doerr have poured money into the companies building the merger. Private industry secured more than $2.8 billion last year, according to the Fusion Industry Association, for a total of about $5 billion in recent years.
Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Philippa Fletcher, Marguerita Choy and Richard Chang
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