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X-rays from the wall impinged on the spherical capsule. “192 laser beams entered from the two ends of the cylinder,” he said, “and struck the inner wall…. He noted that the process began with a spherical cylinder containing a small capsule, “about half the diameter of a BB.” Marvin Adams, NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Programs, described the process at Tuesday’s press conference. This simple – and incredibly replicable – change allowed something incredible to happen.ĭr. The shell around the capsule they used was thicker than in past experiments, meaning that small flaws effect the experiment less. But on December 5, researchers tried something new. In the past, the energy input from the lasers far exceeded the energy output from the fusion reaction. The fusion process releases enormous amounts of energy. The capsule contains two hydrogen isotopes that, when bombarded with energy, vaporize almost immediately. The nuclear energy breakthrough in a nutshellĭecember’s nuclear energy breakthrough occurred at the National Ignition Facility, which uses a process called “thermonuclear inertial fusion.”Įssentially, the $3.5 billion laser complex shoots 192 lasers at a tiny capsule. But running a fusion reaction that requires less energy in than it puts out, a process called ignition, has eluded scientists… Since fusion was discovered a century ago, scientists have raced to unlock and replicate the mechanics in a lab. That makes it the ideal candidate for powering everything from houses to manufacturing plants…if it could be scaled. Fission splits atoms, rather than combines them, generating dangerous radioactive waste in the process.īy contrast, nuclear fusion is far more efficient, generates almost no waste, and runs off hydrogen atoms readily available in seawater, rather than radioactive materials buried in the ground. Nuclear fusion differs from nuclear fission, the process used in nuclear power plants. The process generates enormous amounts of energy, and is the core reaction that drives our sun. Nuclear fusion involves combining atoms into a single, larger atom.