High-Powered Lasers Deliver Fusion Energy Breakthrough

A new experiment releases more energy than is pumped into fuel—a major milestone—but a long journey still remains for sustainable energy from fusion

The power of the sun has edged a little closer to Earth. Under x-ray assault, the rapid implosion of a plastic shell onto icy isotopes of hydrogen has produced fusion and, for the first time, 170 micrograms of this superheated fusion fuel released more energy than it absorbed. Experimental shots of the 192 lasers at the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have reproduced such fusion at least four times since September 2013. The advance offers hope that someday in the far future scientists might reliably replicate the power source of the sun and stars.
 
"This is closer than anyone's gotten before, and it's really unique to get out of the fuel as much energy as put in," says Livermore physicist Omar Hurricane, lead author of the paper presenting the results published in Nature. "We got more fusion energy out of the DT fuel than we put in to the DT fuel." (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)