Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough

Nuclear+Fusion+Breakthrough

Clark French

On Tuesday, December 6, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have, for the first time ever, achieved net energy gain in a controlled fusion experiment. For many years, scientists have tried to master nuclear fusion, but due to the high costs and high temperatures required, they have never been able to achieve it stably. Until now, the only stable nuclear reactor that we are close to is the Sun. The sun takes atoms and then pushes them into one bigger atom instead of splitting them apart. The reason why we are so anxious to achieve this is because there is no waste to come out of it. Nuclear fission, what we have already been able to achieve, produces great amounts of toxic nuclear waste. This starts to take up space and is extremely dangerous, so if we have nuclear fusion, there will be no waste. If we can achieve stable nuclear fusion, it will be an extreme breakthrough in energy efficiency. Now we just have to wait until the next breakthrough happens and maybe we’ll be able to use it as a stable form of energy.