UPDATE: Monday, Dec 12, 2022 · 6:39:20 AM +00:00
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WaWyWyWa
In the comments below jusjtim35 points to an excellent Twitter post (yes, I dislike linking to the dying bird, too) about the advance. In short, the advance using a massive laser system achieves the ignition of a fusion reaction with lasers rather than a nuclear fission explosion (if I follow correctly).
There’s a major story breaking out of the Department of Energy today. An article in the Financial Times reports that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have achieved a gain of energy in an experimental system, releasing 20% more energy than input into a system by lasers. There’s an announcement scheduled by the Department of Energy for Tuesday, presumably triggered by the news getting out in the Financial Times.
I am old enough to remember the fraud of cold fusion claims in the 1980s. At the time scientists in Utah let out news that they had achieved fusion at room temperature. My father, a chemist, thought it was nonsense. He and thousands of others attempted to reproduce the findings to no avail. The original results involved experimental errors (and possibly more). This is why in science we require both independent peer review of the scientific report and look for independent replication. We can expect that there will be immediate worldwide efforts to replicate today’s report, as well as a push for the science to be subjected to peer review ASAP.
If true, however, the ability to generate energy from the fusion of atoms would be a transformative change in energy production. It will likely take decades for the discovery to arrive in the real world, but the future would look very different for the environment if true.
There will be more coming along, as we can expect some additional insights from the Department of Energy press conference on Tuesday.
There has of course already been fusion reaction success. The large ITER project in Europe being the most obvious example of fusion research. Around the globe there are many small companies attempting to achieve fusion on a smaller scale. I am not a physicist, so my understanding of the current state of fusion research is limited. My understanding is that the current methods involve getting atoms in a state of plasma in which fusion can be performed. Achieving plasma is challenging and requires a lot of energy input. So the news coming out of LLNL may be more incremental (e.g. improving existing methods), but the tone of the Financial Times report seems to suggest a more substantive advance in which lasers can be used on a smaller scale to release energy from atoms. The scale of the advance has not been claimed by the LLNL and Department of Energy yet, so I think we need to wait until Tuesday to see whether the scientists involved actually think it is incremental or transformative.
