US reaches milestone in nuclear fusion research

As the US Secretary of Energy has warned in recent days, Jennifer M Granholmas well as Deputy Secretary of Nuclear Security and Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Jill Hrubytogether with other members of the government and Livermore Lawrence National Laboratory (LLNL)made an important announcement today about a find concerning thermonuclear reaction.

And the fact is that this laboratory, which has achieved some of the greatest achievements in the field of nuclear fusion in recent years, has gone even further, having managed to obtain a significant amount of clean energy. It should be noted that until recently it was impossible to obtain more energy than was invested to start nuclear fusion. Therefore, it was completely impossible to offer it as a future replacement. fossil fuel.

However, results like today’s show that, little by little, this may actually become a real possibility. Before this becomes possible, there is still at least a decade left, as there are still many technical problems. But we are on our way.

Technical problems of nuclear fusion

Nuclear fusion is such an energetic process that it is supports lit stars like our sun

Unlike nuclear fission, which occurs in nuclear power plants, a heavy atom does not divide into smaller ones, but quite the opposite. are used very light atoms and they are made to collide until their nuclei merge to give rise to another, which is really no heavier than the sum of both. But why is this happening?

As a rule, atoms of two hydrogen isotopes are used, known as tritium and deuterium. Both fuse to give rise to the atom helium. Both tritium and deuterium, as good isotopes of hydrogen, have a proton in the nucleus. As for neutrons, deuterium has one, and tritium has two. Helium has two protons and two neutrons, so if we add the content of two nuclei spare the neutron which will be released individually with a large energy output.

So far, so good. The problem is that getting these nuclei to collide is not easy. In the stars it happens thanks to high temperatures and very high gravitational forces. However, here on Earth, such conditions cannot be easily achieved. Therefore, they can be used magnetic fields or raise the temperature lasers.

The latter is what they do in LLNL, but there’s a problem: usually, in order for fusion to occur, so much energy must be put in that the energy received is not enough. Through something known as ignitionnet energy gain will be achieved and this will be the first step towards obtaining carbon-free energyas pointed out by Granholm during the statement.