WASHINGTON, Jan 26 – U.S. government scientists said on Wednesday they have taken an important step in the long trek toward making nuclear fusion – the very process that powers stars – a viable energy source for humankind.
The energy produced was modest – about the equivalent of nine nine-volt batteries of the kind that power smoke detectors and other small devices. But the experiments at a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory facility in California represented a milestone in the decades-long to harness fusion energy, even as the researchers cautioned that years of more work are needed.
“If you want to make a camp fire, you want to get the fire to hot enough that the wood can keep itself burning,” said Alex Zylstra, an experimental physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory – part of the U.S. Energy Department – and lead author of theThe Target Bay of the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. NIF’s 192 laser beams converge at the center of this giant sphere to make a tiny hydrogen fuel pellet implode.
At very high temperatures, the nucleus of the deuterium and the nucleus of the tritium fuse, a neutron and a positively charged particle called an “alpha particle” – consisting of two protons and two neutrons – emerge, and energy is released.
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