The key thing is that with today’s results we know that fusion power is within reach.” If everything aligns we could see fusion power in use in ten years, but it could take far longer. It’s hard to say how quickly we might be able to get to that point. We’ll also need to find a way to reproduce the same effect much more frequently and much more cheaply before we can realistically turn this into a power plant. “To turn fusion into a power source we’ll need to boost the energy gain still further. This brings us closer to generating fusion power on a much larger scale. It proves that the long sought-after goal, the ‘holy grail’ of fusion, can indeed be achieved. This is a true breakthrough moment, which is tremendously exciting. Professor Jeremy Chittenden, Co-Director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, said: “Everyone working on fusion has been trying to demonstrate for over 70 years that it’s possible to generate more energy from fusion than you put in. The College retains strong links with the facility, and others throughout the world, through the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies (CIFS). Imperial has also produced more than 30 PhD students that have gone on to work at the NIF. Imperial College London physicists are already helping to analyse the data from the successful experiment, which was conducted on 5 December 2022. It was released in the form of energetic neutrons. The energy from the fusion reactions was 50% higher than the energy of the laser pulse. The energy in the laser pulse was 2.05 megajoules – equivalent to the energy of two Mars chocolate bars, or enough to boil six kettles of water.
However, fusion reactions have proven difficult to control and no fusion experiment had previously produced more energy than had been put in to get the reaction going.Īt a press briefing today, it was announced that a fusion experiment at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US has achieved this ‘holy grail,’ producing more energy than the laser pulse that was used to heat the fuel. Once a fusion plasma is ‘ignited,’ it will continue to burn for as long as it is held in place. Professor Jeremy Chittendenįusion has the potential to produce vast quantities of clean energy using few resources, requiring only a small amount of fuel and generating limited carbon emissions.
Scientists have hailed a ‘true breakthrough’ as a fusion reaction has successfully generated more energy than was used to create it.įor over seventy years, scientists have been attempting to harness thermonuclear fusion - the power source of stars - to generate energy.
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