“This is just the beginning,” US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said at a news conference. While the results represent great progress, there is still a long way to go to create a viable technology (talk of decades for commercial use).
Euskaraz irakurri: Energia garbi et mugagabea sortzeko fusio nuklearrean mugarri historikoa iragarri du AEBk
On Dec. 5, a team from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved the first produce by fusion more energy than used to generate it. “This is just the beginning,” said the US Secretary of Energy. Jennifer Granholmin a press conference with White House Science and Technology Policy Director Arati Prabhakar and other government officials and scientists.
Although the results represent great progress, there is still a long way to go to create a viable technology (talk decades for commercial use), not to mention providing enough clean energy to help the world move away from fossil fuels and mitigate climate change.
The Secretary of State for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Jill Hruby He stated in the media appearance that December 5, when scientists achieved nuclear fusion with net energy gain, was “an important day for science.”
“Achieving ignition in a controlled fusion experiment is an achievement that comes after 60 years of global research development, engineering and experimentation,” Hruby said.
192 lasers against a popcorn-sized target
He explained that to achieve this feat, scientists aimed 192 lasers at a popcorn-sized target, specifically a capsule containing deuteron and triton, at about 3 million degrees Celsius.
In this way, they “briefly simulated the conditions of a star and achieved combustion,” Hruby noted.
However, the director of the California laboratory, Kim Budilhas qualified that there are still “significant obstacles, not only scientific but also technological” when it comes to having commercial purposes.
“This is just one capsule burned once and to have commercial fusion power it takes many capsules to achieve several fusion ignition events per minute,” Budil explained.
In this sense, it has calculated that it will last “a few decades” with a joint effort of investments and efforts to be able to build a power plant that works with nuclear fusion.
For his part, the NNSA’s Vice Administrator for Defense Programs, Marvin Adamsrecalled that fusion is an “essential process in modern nuclear weapons and has the potential to create abundant clean energy.”
He has assured that this finding will enable lab experiments that will aid NNSA’s weapons deterrence programs, “without explosive nuclear tests.”
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Source: EITB
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
