Nuclear fusion, the United States towards the turning point: the announcement tomorrow

“Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion”. This is what the US Department of Energy is about to announce in a highly anticipated press conference scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday 13 January. But the rumors and journalistic reconstructions are already multiplying. The first to report it was the Financial Times. And nuclear fusion as a possible solution to the energy and climate crises soon became the headline of many online newspapers, starting with Washington Postvery close to the White House.

However, despite the efforts of the reporters, it was difficult to go beyond two fixed points: for the first time in the history of these experiments, a fusion reaction would have produced more energy than that used to trigger it. The second certain element is that the discovery took place at the National Ignition Facility housed in the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in California.

Some researchers interviewed by the Washington Post confirmed the advances but behind anonymity. The delivery of silence is in fact rigorous, waiting for tomorrow the Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm reveal to the world “a great scientific breakthrough”.

Nuclear fusion (the one that powers the Sun and produces energy from the fusion of two hydrogen atoms, generating one of hydrogen) has been the dream of scientists for over 50 years. Unlike fission, it does not create radioactivity or waste, it does not need rare and usable fuels to build atomic bombs (hydrogen is easily obtained from water).

Fact checking

What is true and what is not about “fourth generation” nuclear power

by Laura Loguercio, Carlo Canepa (Political Report Card)

January 24, 2022

However, so far the experiments had frustrated the expectations of the scholars, who had indeed managed to trigger the fusion, but using much more energy to obtain it than the reaction itself then released.

In order to achieve the objective, gigantic reactors were designed (one, Iter, is under construction in the South of France) of unprecedented complexity. Just one example: to produce the very powerful magnetic fields that confine and squeeze the atoms until they fuse with each other, temperatures close to absolute zero (-273 degrees) are needed, but a few centimeters away the fusion can heat up the reactor up to hundreds of millions of degrees: in short, it’s like having to recreate the hottest and coldest place in the universe in the same room at the same time. It is understandable that these technical difficulties have always moved a goal forward that on paper seemed within reach.

Now, however, the news of a real turning point could arrive from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory: the fusion has taken place and has produced extra energy, rather than consuming it. We will have to wait for tomorrow’s press conference to find out the details and understand if it is yet another small step towards the clean energy of the future. Or if instead it is really, immediately, the beginning of a new era.