Last year researchers at the National Ignition Facility in California managed to sustain that very process in their lab. Now they are announcing that, over the course of the last year, they’ve replicated that very nuclear fusion ignition 3 times, a huge step towards Earth’s green energy future.
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00:00 [Music]
00:04 Nuclear fusion has long been the goal with regards to clean energy,
00:07 allowing humanity to finally harness the same type of energy that fuels our sun.
00:12 Last year, researchers at the National Ignition Facility in California
00:15 managed to sustain that very process in their lab.
00:18 Now they are announcing that over the course of the last year,
00:21 they've replicated that very nuclear fusion ignition three times.
00:24 A huge step forward for Earth's green energy future.
00:27 The ignition involves firing around 200 lasers at a pebble-sized bit of hydrogen fuel.
00:32 The resulting reaction actually creates more energy than was used to ignite it,
00:36 meaning a net energy gain.
00:38 Fusion is also a leg up over traditional nuclear fission,
00:41 which is used in nuclear power plants today.
00:43 That's because fusion does not split atoms, but rather fuses them,
00:47 meaning it does not leave behind radioactive waste.
00:50 One of the most recent successful fusion tests used 2 megajoules of energy,
00:54 but outputted 3.88 megajoules.
00:57 The next steps will involve scaling the experiments,
00:59 with the US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm saying that
01:03 "Harnessing fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific
01:06 and technological challenges of the 21st century."