The Department of Energy announces that an experiment has succeeded for the first time in generating more energy than it uses


 The United States Department of Energy announced this Tuesday a "historic scientific achievement" carried out by a group of scientists at a federal facility in California. The Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, has assured in a press conference that "for the first time" it has been possible to successfully produce a nuclear fusion reaction that generates net energy gains. In other words: that it has generated more energy than what it has spent. This development "is only the beginning", he ventured, given that it represents an important step in the transition towards cleaner energies (without carbon emissions) and potentially unlimited. However, experts warn that it could take decades to commercialize nuclear fusion, and therefore


It is "one of the most impressive scientific achievements of the 21st century", insisted Granhold this morning. Specifically, to carry out this experiment, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have directed 192 lasers at a small ball of hydrogen plasma, with deuterons and tritons, at about three million degrees Celsius. With this, they have managed to simulate "briefly" the conditions of a star, like the Sun, and "have achieved ignition", summarized the undersecretary of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA, for its acronym in English ) July Hruby.



This development reproduces in a controlled manner in a laboratory the same nuclear reaction that makes stars shine, something that scientists around the world have been pursuing for decades, and which, for the first time, has generated more energy from the employee when starting the reaction Its application may in the future improve the ability of the US to maintain its nuclear weapons without the need for nuclear tests, while at the same time it could create the conditions for new developments leading to the use of laser fusion as a clean source of energy


"Many said it wouldn't be possible, that the laser wasn't powerful enough, that the targets would never be precise enough," California lab director Kim Budil recalled, celebrating the historic milestone of fusion ignition, which " It's been an incredibly ambitious technical aspiration." Since the 1950s governments and scientists around the world were deploying investments of billions of dollars to achieve this purpose. "Progress has taken time, but in August they achieved a record yield of 1.35 megajoules, which put us on the threshold of ignition, and that's when a lot of people started paying attention Budil said. After this success, last week (December 5),



Will have to wait "a few decades"


Despite the euphoria generated as a result of the achievement - which the Financial Times made public for the first time on Sunday -, Budil wanted to calm spirits. "There are still significant obstacles, not only scientific, but technological" when it comes to achieving commercial goals, he clarified. In this way, it will still be necessary to wait "a few decades", if the necessary investment is given, to be able to build a power plant that works on nuclear fusion, beyond the small-scale trial in Lawrence Livermore's laboratory.



"This was just one popcorn-sized capsule that burned once, but to get commercial fusion energy you need many capsules to be able to produce several ignition events per minute," he said. highlighted the scientific. Although it is at an early stage, the potential applications of nuclear fusion generate hope in the scientific community. But it also carries dangers. According to NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs Marvin Adams, fusion "has the potential to create abundant clean energy," although it is also an "essential process in modern nuclear weapons."


At the same time, he has assured that this achievement will allow future laboratory experiments to take place that will be of great help to deterrence programs "without explosive nuclear tests". This Wednesday's announcement "underpins the credibility of our deterrence, and demonstrates to the world a leadership in experience and in relevant weapons technology," he said.


The National Ignition Facility, where the experiment took place, began construction in 1997 and became operational in 2009. The federal government invested $3.5 billion (about 3.319 million of euros), an expense that initially generated doubts, given that in the first years no nuclear fusion could be generated. In 2014, a first success was publicly announced, although the energy produced was still far from what was achieved this year. The event announced on Tuesday by the US Department of Energy has been recognized by scientists around the world as a giant step for the generation of clean energy.