U.S. to announce milestone merger to create clean, cheap energy
The U.S. Department of Energy will announce tomorrow, Tuesday, that U.S. scientists have succeeded, for the first time, in producing a fusion reaction capable of generating a net energy gain, which could lead to unlimited, cheap and clean energy production.
According to U.S. media on Monday, the finding is a major milestone in research that has been going on for decades and with multi-million dollar investments to develop a technology that provides limitless and inexpensive energy.
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The goal of fusion research is to replicate a nuclear reaction similar to what the sun uses to create energy.
“It’s a ‘holy grail’ of carbon-free energy that scientists have been pursuing since the 1950s. It would still be at least a decade, perhaps more, away from commercial use, but the (Joe) Biden administration is likely to achieve its full development with massive new investments in the next few years,” noted The Washington Post.
The Financial Times, meanwhile, said physicists have tried to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun, but no group has been able to produce more energy from that reaction than it consumes, a milestone known as net energy gain or objective gain, something that could provide a reliable and abundant alternative to fossil fuels and conventional nuclear power.
The financial daily explained that the Lawrence Livermore Federal National Laboratory in California, which uses a process called inertial confinement fusion that involves bombarding a small pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s largest laser, achieved a net energy gain in a fusion experiment in the past two weeks, people connected with the project told the newspaper.
Although many scientists believe fusion power plants are still decades away, the potential of this technology is hard to ignore.
Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and, in theory, a small cup of hydrogen fuel could power a house for hundreds of years, the FT notes.
The U.S. breakthrough comes as the world struggles with high energy prices and the need to move quickly away from burning fossil fuels to prevent average global temperatures from reaching dangerous levels, the newspaper recalled.
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It also recalled that Democrat Biden’s administration is investing nearly 370 billion dollars in new subsidies for low-carbon energy in an effort to reduce emissions and win a global race for next-generation clean technology.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post stressed that in the decades that scientists have been experimenting with fusion reactions, they had so far been unable to create one that produces more energy than it consumes, and while the achievement is significant, monumental engineering and scientific challenges still lie ahead.
