Scientists in the US achieved greater energy after conducting nuclear fusion, as they were also behind a breakthrough of a historic nuclear fusion carried out in December last year, reported AFP Monday.
The world was amazed in December as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced it had carried out an experimental nuclear reaction that put out more energy than was put into it — a holy grail of science in the quest for unlimited — clean power to bring an end to the use of fossil fuels.
“We can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December 2022 experiment,” public information officer Paul Rhien said Monday in a statement, without providing further details.
He added: “The California lab planned to report the results at upcoming scientific conferences and in peer-reviewed publications.”
The nuclear fusion was first reported by the Financial Times.
Nuclear fusion is regarded as a clean, abundant, and safe source of energy that could eventually allow humans to ditch coal, crude oil, natural gas, and other hydrocarbons that are behind the global climate crisis.
However, it is a long journey before fusion is viable on an industrial scale, providing power to residences and commercial spaces.
Nuclear power plants around the world currently use fission — the splitting of a heavy atom’s nucleus — to produce energy.
Fusion on the other hand combines two light hydrogen atoms to form one heavier helium atom, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.
On Earth, nuclear fusion reactions can be provoked by heating hydrogen to extreme temperatures inside specialised devices.
Like fission, fusion is carbon-free during operation, and has additional critical advantages: it poses no risk of nuclear disaster and produces much less radioactive waste.
During December’s experiment, the lab used 192 ultra-powerful lasers to deliver 2.05 megajoules of energy to a tiny capsule smaller than a pea containing isotopes of hydrogen. It produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy output.
While the result was a net energy gain, 300 megajoules of energy were needed from the electrical grid to power the lasers.
