The United States Department of Energy announced this Tuesday, December 13, that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) managed to gain energy in a fusion reaction, an unprecedented scientific advance that will lead us to produce a carbon-free energy source.
The finding is a milestone in fusion energy, the same energy that occurs in stars and that promises a clean, inexhaustible source of energy without dependence on carbon.
Before, no one had been able to successfully produce more energy in a fusion reaction than was consumed during the process. Now, the experts managed to give “the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world”, according to Jill Hruby, Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
A report published on the website of gizmodo It adds that the Department of Energy confirmed that the facility achieved ignition just after 1 a.m. ET on December 5.
Figures in megajoules
For his part, Marvin Adams, Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs of the National Nuclear Security Administration, gave details in figures of the results obtained in megajoules (MJ), the unit of energy equivalent to one million joules or 106 joules.
“About 2 megajoules in, about 3 megajoules out”Adams celebrated.
“All this had happened before, a hundred times. But last week, for the first time, they designed this experiment so that fusion fuel would stay hot enough, dense enough, and round enough, long enough for it to ignite. And it produced more energies than the lasers had deposited.”, he detailed.
The experts will move on to analyze all the data in more depth, hoping to improve the results in the near future and figure out how to make the process simpler, easier, and repeatable.