The Independent Climate Newsletter

A technician working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (Damien Jemison/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via AP) |
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For the past seventy years, thousands of scientists and engineers have worked on fusing atoms together in an attempt to replicate the energy process that powers the sun. It is an enormously complex, and expensive, undertaking due to the high temperatures and pressures involved. The team at LLNL's National Ignition Facility (NIF) was the first ever to produce more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it. The test involved bombarding a pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world's largest laser. Scientists heralded the achievement but said decades more work was needed before inertial fusion energy (or IFE) could be powering our everyday lives. LLNL director Dr Kim Budil said this week that there are "very significant hurdles" to overcome in both science and technology before reaching commercial nuclear fusion. However Dr Budil said that it could happen in a "few" decades as opposed to 60 or 70 years as had previously been believed. "The pursuit of fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity, and achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering, and most of all, people," she said. Read more |
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"Coal is not exactly the direction that the world is trying to move in, or needs to move in." |
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