The official announcement will come today but the news has already been anticipated by some media. The US has achieved a historic milestone on nuclear fusion by producing for the first time in history a reaction that generates more energy than is needed to ignite it . With the laser technique, and not with the magnetic confinement one in which the EU has preferred to invest instead.
The way is therefore opening for unlimited, clean and low-cost energy which in a single blow could make it possible to reduce pollution, curb climate change and guarantee the development of the poorest countries. And consequently change the balance of power on the geopolitical map, reducing the power of countries whose economy largely depends on the export of fossil fuels, such as Russia and the Gulf countries.
"There is great pride that this has happened in the United States," admitted David Edelman, a senior executive at Tae, a large private fusion energy company. Of course, it will take time to get commercial use of nuclear fusion energy, 10 years or perhaps decades , as experts warn, who are already wondering if it will not be too late to reverse climate change.
"For most of us, it's just a matter of time," one of the scientists at the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where the discovery was made, told the Washington Post.
Unlike the energy from nuclear fission, the one produced in atomic power plants with the dangerous splitting of a heavy nucleus into two lighter ones and the problem of waste, that from fusion reproduces the process that takes place in the stars and in the Sun, with the combination without risks of two light cores in one heavy core. Hydrogen is used as fuel, which is practically inexhaustible.
But how does it work? Two nuclei approach each other until they melt together at very high temperatures and densities (millions of degrees Celsius) to overcome the electromagnetic repulsion. In this way the energy of the reaction is transformed into electricity which can power homes, offices and companies without emitting carbon into the air or producing radioactive waste to be disposed of in the environment.
