for the first time in historyUS scientists at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (USA), They have successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction that results in a net energy gain., according to various international media reports. US scientific officials are expected to make the announcement official this Tuesday.
The result of the experiment is a A giant leap forward in the search for an endless source of clean energy that could help end dependency on fossil fuels. Researchers have spent decades trying to recreate nuclear fusion, the fusion that powers the sun.
US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm will announce a “significant scientific breakthrough” on Tuesday.
Nuclear fusion occurs when two or more atoms combine into a larger atom, a process that produces enormous amounts of energy. in the form of heat
According to US media released this Monday, the discovery represents an important milestone. Research developed for decades and multi-million dollar investments to develop a technology that provides unlimited and economical energy. The goal of fusion research is to replicate a nuclear reaction similar to what the sun uses to create energy.
non-urgent application
“This is a ‘holy grail’ carbon-free energy There’s still at least a decade, maybe more, for the scientists that scientists have been chasing since the 1950s. commercial usehowever, the (Joe) Biden Administration is likely to achieve full development in the coming years with major new investments,” says ‘The Washington Post’.
In February, British scientists announced that they had more than doubled the previous record for creating and maintaining nuclear fusion.
In a giant donut-shaped machine called a tokamak, equipped with giant magnetsWorking near Oxford, scientists were able to generate a record amount of sustained power. Despite that, it only lasted 5 seconds, CNN reports.
The heat sustained by the process of fusing atoms is key to helping produce energy.
The fusion process creates helium and neutrons that are lighter than the parts from which they were originally made.
The lost mass is then converted into an enormous amount of energy. The neutrons that manage to escape from the plasma hit a “blanket” covering the walls of the tokamak, and their kinetic energy is transferred as heat. This heat can be used to heat water, create steam and create power turbines to generate power.
All this requires that the machine that generates the reaction be very hot. The plasma must reach at least 150 million degrees Celsius, which is 10 times hotter than the core of the sun.
The biggest challenge to harnessing fusion power is to sustain it long enough to power electrical grids and heating systems around the world.
A British fusion scientist told CNN: The outcome of the US breakthrough is promising, but it also shows that there is more work to be done before fusion can generate electricity on a commercial scale.
“They worked on the design and composition of the target and the shape of the energy pulse to achieve much better results,” Tony Roulstone of Cambridge University’s Department of Engineering told CNN.
“The counter-argument is that this result is miles away from the actual energy gain required for electricity generation.. So we can say it’s an achievement of science, but it’s far from providing useful energy.”
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