#63 What is nuclear fusion?

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Your faithful writer,
Dr. Daniel Smith

Yesterday, a bipartisan group of Senators introduced a bill to Congress called the Fusion Energy Act.

The bill would support research and investment in power plants that use nuclear fusion — a different scientific technique than nuclear fission, which is used in nuclear power plants around the world.

Senator Alex Padilla, who co-sponsored the bill, said:

If nuclear fusion can really produce a “sustainable supply of nearly unlimited, reliable, and carbon-free electricity,” then the whole climate change problem should be solved.

The only problem? Scientists are still figuring out how to make nuclear fusion happen.

What is nuclear fusion?

The International Atomic Energy Agency defines nuclear fusion as: “the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy.”

The key things to know about nuclear fusion are:

• It’s the process that powers the sun and other stars

• Unlike nuclear fission, which is used in nuclear power plants around the world, fusion doesn’t produce long-lasting nuclear waste

• It could hypothetically serve as an unlimited energy source, but…

• Scientists have only managed to trigger a nuclear fusion reaction a few times

In December 2022, physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory were able to achieve fusion ignition for the first time in what was one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century.

Fusion ignition has been defined as “producing more fusion energy than the amount of laser energy delivered” to the fusion device.

During their experiment, the researchers at the lab were able to produce 3.15 megajoules of energy from 2.05 megajoules of laser energy delivered to the device.

Here’s how CNN described the ignition process:

Physicists at the lab have repeated the ignition process several times since their first breakthrough in December 2022, opening the possibility that their techniques could be used on for energy production on a mass scale.

But: 3.15 megajoules is just enough energy to boil ten kettles of water, so we still have a long way to go before nuclear fusion can be used to power the world.

Investing in Fusion

It shouldn’t be surprising that governments and companies around the world have responded to the ignition breakthrough by committing money and resources to nuclear fusion research.

Every year, investors are providing more and more funding to companies working on nuclear fusion:

The Biden administration has taken major steps in advancing research and development in nuclear fusion-based energy, hosting a Fusion Summit in 2022 and announcing public-private partnerships around fusion research.

Last May, the U.S. Energy Department committed to investing $46M in eight companies working on developing commercial fusion power sources.

At last year's COP28 climate conference, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry announced that the U.S would back an international plan for developing nuclear fission as an emissions-free energy source.

MIT nuclear science professor Anne White said that the new phase of investment is “very exciting” because “we've always had the basic research, but we didn't have companies and private investors being willing to take a lot of that and translate it.”

Let’s hope that all this investment and attention leads to more good news about nuclear fusion-based energy production in the coming years.

Thank you for reading. Please reply to this email if you have any thoughts or feedback.

Yours,
Dan