USA: Nuclear fusion researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California have achieved a significant feat known as net energy gain.
For the first time, a reaction has generated more energy than was used to start it. In the coming decades, this could result in the production of carbon-free energy in unlimited quantities.
Today an announcement related to the same will be made by the US Secretary of Energy.
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Since the 1950s, physicists have tried hard to mimic the Sun's energy production process, but they have so far been ineffective. Unlike fossil fuels and conventional nuclear power, the net profit process has the potential to generate large amounts of energy (through fission).
Still, the switch cannot be implemented overnight and could take years to materialize.
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For the experiment, the researchers used a technique known as "inertial confinement fusion". The world's largest lasers were used at LLNL to bombard a small pellet of hydrogen plasma. It is roughly the size of three football fields and is made up of 192 laser beams.
The energy produced by the reaction, 2.5 megajoules, was much greater than the energy input from the lasers, 2.1 megajoules.
Fusion power technology has immense potential. First, fusion reactions do not emit carbon and do not create radioactive waste with long half-lives. Furthermore, a small cup of hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a home for years.
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According to Dr. Arthur Turrell, plasma physicist and author of the book The Star Builders, if this is verified, we are in the middle of history. Since the 1950s, researchers have struggled to demonstrate that fusion can produce more energy. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore have finally and completely achieved this decades-old goal, he continued.