The United States announces a “major scientific breakthrough” in clean, unlimited fusion power

Istanbul

US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday announced a “massive scientific breakthrough” in the decades-old effort to develop unlimited clean fusion energy.

“Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific achievements of the 21st century,” Granholm said at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of several places around the world where researchers are trying to advance the possibility of harnessing energy from nuclear fusion. .

“It’s the first time this has been done in a lab anywhere in the world,” he said, adding that the researchers have been working on the technology for more than 60 years.

“The ignition allows us, for the first time, to replicate certain conditions that only exist in stars and the sun,” he said.

Granholm stressed that the breakthrough strengthens the national security of the United States and is “an important step closer to the possibility of abundant, carbon-neutral fusion energy feeding our society.”

The minister noted that fusion energy can be used to produce clean electricity for transportation fuel to support heavy industries, as well as in the clean energy economy.

He added that private sector investment and merger research is already booming and reached $3 billion last year alone, which is in line with US President Joe Biden’s goal of achieving business consolidation within one of each.

Granholm noted that the Energy Department invested $50 million in September for a public-private partnership to begin work on pilot fusion plant designs.

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Fusion, which occurs when two nuclei combine to form a new nucleus, provides a potential long-term energy source that uses plentiful fuel supplies and does not produce greenhouse gases or long-lived radioactive waste, according to the US Department of Energy. .

He added that creating the conditions for fusion on Earth involves generating and maintaining plasma, which are hot gases whose electrons radiate from atomic nuclei.

* Aisha Sandoval Alaguna contributed to this note.

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