Jazz Shaw:
Without bogging us down in too many technical details, suffice it to say that this is a big deal. Or at least it might be at some point. Scientists and engineers have been working on a way to build a workable fusion reactor for decades. A fusion reactor is quite different than the fission nuclear reactors you see around the world today. But there are enormous challenges involved in taking the fusion process from the hypothetical realm and creating a functional reactor capable of producing electricity for our energy grid. One problem is the fact that early experimental models required more energy to operate than they would be capable of producing. The other great challenge involved getting the tritium that fuels the fusion reaction to initially ignite and create a sustainable reaction. (Tritium or hydrogen-3 is a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen.) That latter hurdle has now officially been achieved. It actually happened a little more than a year ago, but it’s now been confirmed. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory National Ignition Facility in California successfully ignited the hydrogen fusion reaction last August.
# posted by Ranger @ 8:05 PM
