US officials announce nuclear fusion breakthrough

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility have made history by successfully producing a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain, a breakthrough hailed by US officials as a “landmark achievement” and a “milestone for the future of clean energy.”

Here are key things to know about today's announcement — and possible next steps:

What is nuclear fusion and why does it matter? Nuclear fusion is a man-made process that replicates the same energy that powers the sun. Nuclear fusion happens when two or more atoms are fused into one larger one, a process that generates a massive amount of energy as heat.

Scientists around the world have been studying nuclear fusion for decades, hoping to recreate it with a new source that provides limitless, carbon-free energy – without the nuclear waste created by current nuclear reactors. Fusion projects mainly use the elements deuterium and tritium – both of which are isotopes of hydrogen.

The deuterium from a glass of water, with a little tritium added, could power a house for a year. Tritium is rarer and more challenging to obtain, although it can be synthetically made.

“Unlike coal, you only need a small amount of hydrogen, and it is the most abundant thing found in the universe,” Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, told CNN. “Hydrogen is found in water so the stuff that generates this energy is wildly unlimited and it is clean.”

Why was today's announcement significant? This is the first time scientists have ever successfully produced this, instead of breaking even as past experiments have done.

While there’s many more steps until this can be commercially viable, it’s essential for scientists to show that they can create more energy than they started with. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense for it to be developed.

“This is very important because from an energy perspective, it can’t be an energy source if you’re not getting out more energy than you’re putting in,” Friedmann told CNN. “Prior breakthroughs have been important but it’s not the same thing as generating energy that could one day be used on a larger scale.”

What are the next steps? Scientists and experts now need to figure out how to produce much more energy from nuclear fusion on a much larger scale.

At the same time, they need to figure out how to eventually reduce the cost of nuclear fusion so that it can be used commercially.

Scientists will also need harvest the energy produced by fusion and transfer it to the power grid as electricity. It will take years – and possibly decades – before fusion can be able to produce unlimited amounts of clean energy, and scientists are on a race against the clock to fight climate change.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said the history-making accomplishment in nuclear fusion that was announced on Tuesday "essentially unlocked a whole new source of clean energy." 

For the first time, US scientists produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy they used to power the experiment, resulting in a "net energy gain."

"More energy came out of these reactions than put into it," she explained about the breakthrough.

"If we could get this scale, this will be an amazing endeavor of ... achieving the goal of zero-carbon emission power," she said on CNN.

Granholm said the private sector is "very interested" in this development as well, and she referenced President Joe Biden's 10-year goal of getting to a commercial fusion reactor.

"We have a goal of getting to net-zero energy by 2050, so that would be within that time frame. But now that this breakthrough has happened, the scientists can go to work on improving the process," she said. 

As the climate crisis continues, Granholm also said that the onus is not just on the United States or on a specific type of clean energy.

"We have a lot more work to make sure it's not just the United States, it's other countries as well. So our example, both in the the fusion example — as well as in all of these other of the technologies and policies — are being looked at very seriously by other countries who also want to do their part," she said.

Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said there are still "significant hurdles" to overcome with the nuclear fusion technology before commercialization will be possible.

She pointed out that today's announcement is marking one fusion ignition event, and that to "realize commercial fusion energy" you will need to "do many, many things" — including producing "many many fusion ignition events per minute" while having a "robust system of drivers to enable that."

"I think it’s moving into the foreground — and probably with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant," she added.

A team of scientists at Budil's laboratory in California made history on Dec. 5 after successfully producing a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain, according to US Department of Energy officials.

Jill Hruby, under secretary for the Nuclear Security and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) administrator, said that "going forward," this work will have further "breakthroughs" and "setbacks."

Hruby added that their work is focused on "promoting national security" while "pushing towards ... a clean energy future."

She said that today's "unprecedented' announcement confirms what she and others have been saying for decades, which is that there isn't a "more dedicated or talented group of scientists" working today.

Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and science adviser to President Joe Biden, said the nuclear fusion breakthrough announced on Tuesday is a "scientific milestone" and also an "engineering marvel."

Prabhakar spoke about how as a 19-year-old student, she spent three months at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California working on its nuclear fusion project.

"They never lost sight of this goal," Prabhakar said.

Prabhakar reflected on the generations of scientists who got to this point with nuclear fusion.

“It took not just one generation but generations of people pursuing this goal. It's a scientific milestone. ... It’s also an engineering marvel beyond belief,” she said.

“It’s a century since we figured out it was fusion that was going on in our sun and all the other stars. And in that century, it took so many different kinds of advances that ultimately came together to the point that we could replicate that fusion activity in a laboratory,” she added.

We are still a very long way from having fusion power the electric grid, never mind one power plant itself. The US project, while groundbreaking, only produced enough energy to boil about 2.5 gallons of water, Tony Roulstone, a fusion expert from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, told CNN. 

That may not seem like much, but the experiment is still hugely significant because scientists demonstrated that they can actually create more energy than they started with. While there’s many more steps until this can be commercially viable, that is a major hurdle to cross with nuclear fusion, experts say. 

“This is very important because from an energy perspective, it can’t be an energy source if you’re not getting out more energy than you’re putting in,” Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, told CNN on Monday. “Prior breakthroughs have been important but it’s not the same thing as generating energy that could one day be used on a larger scale.” 

Past fusion experiments including one in the United Kingdom have generated more energy but have not had nearly as big of an energy gain. For instance, earlier this year, UK scientists generated a record-setting 59 megajoules of energy – about 20 times as the US-based project. Even so, the UK project only showed an energy gain of less than one megajoule. 

There’s still many years and a long way to go to make the project commercially viable. Neither the US or UK-based projects “have the hardware and steps in place to convert fusion neutrons to electricity,” Anne White, head of MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, told CNN.  

But Roulstone pointed out that big ambitious nuclear energy projects have to start somewhere: In 1942, scientists in Chicago ran the first fission nuclear reactor for just 5 minutes in its first run; 15 years later, the first US-based nuclear power plant went online in Pennsylvania.  

 

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Tuesday morning that the nuclear fusion experiment conducted by US scientists replicated "certain conditions that are only found in the stars and sun."

"Ignition allows us to replicate for the first time certain conditions that are only found in the stars and sun. This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero-carbon abundant fusion energy powering our society," she said.

Granholm continued: “This is what it looks like for America to lead, and we’re just getting started.”

“If we can advance fusion energy, we could use it to produce clean electricity, transportation fuels, power, heavy industry and so much more.”

US Department of Energy officials announced a history-making accomplishment in nuclear fusion Tuesday: For the first time, US scientists produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to power the experiment.  

A so-called “net energy gain” is a major milestone in a decades-long attempt to source clean, limitless energy from nuclear fusion – the reaction that happens when two or more atoms are fused together. The experiment put in 2.05 megajoules of energy to the target and resulted in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output – generating more than 50% more energy than was put in. It’s the first time an experiment resulted in a meaningful gain of energy.

“This monumental scientific breakthrough is a milestone for the future of clean energy,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California.

The breakthrough was made by a team of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California on Dec. 5 ��� a facility the size of a sports stadium and equipped with 192 lasers.  

US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm called the breakthrough a “landmark achievement” in a statement. 

In the statement, Granholm said scientists at Livermore and other national labs do work that will help the US "solve humanity’s most complex and pressing problems, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.” 

The director of Livermore, Dr. Kim Budil, called scientists’ attempts to realize fusion ignition in the lab “one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity” and cheered the work of her lab’s scientists. 

“Achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people,” Budil said in a statement. “Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit. These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.” 

US scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain, a source familiar with the project confirmed to CNN.

This is the first time scientists have ever successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain, instead of breaking even as past experiments have done.

While there’s many more steps until this can be commercially viable, it’s essential for scientists to show that they can create more energy than they started with. Otherwise, it doesn’t make much sense for it to be developed.

“This is very important because from an energy perspective, it can’t be an energy source if you’re not getting out more energy than you’re putting in,” Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct and a former chief energy technologist at Lawrence Livermore, told CNN. “Prior breakthroughs have been important but it’s not the same thing as generating energy that could one day be used on a larger scale.”

Here’s what you need to know about this new form of nuclear energy that could eventually turn on your lights and help end dependence on fossil fuels: