![]() "But I think there’s a lot of possibility."īrooks Jarosz is an investigative reporter for KTVU. Extremely high temperatures (on the order of 1. "I don’t want to say the sky is the limit, that’s a bit too overused," Bernstein said. Nuclear fusion is a process in which atomic nuclei are fused together to form heavier nuclei. Still, this may be the first step in harnessing energy and sustaining it long enough to create long-lasting power. The major benefit is there’s no radioactive waste, creating clean energy.īernstein said right now, it only lasts 100-200 trillionths of a second, suggesting a need for more experimentation and replication on a larger scale in order to power electric grids. In this case, nuclear fusion ignition has generated extra energy as heat or helium. That’s in contrast to nuclear fission, which generates power by splitting atoms. ![]() Nuclear fusion happens when two atoms meld into one, creating a large burst of energy as heat. "They’ve been making small adjustments to many aspects of this system in an organized manner to try to approach this fusion goal." "This was years of effort to get this right," Bernstein said. That generates X-rays to begin flying around, which compresses the peppercorn-sized pellet of hydrogen with precision to one-thirtieth of the size. The lasers radiate and heat up inside the cylinder at temperatures exceeding five million degrees. Inside the cylinder is a spherical capsule containing two heavier forms of hydrogen. He said the work involves beaming 192 lasers at the same time at a metal cylinder that is only two millimeters. "You almost couldn’t advance beyond ‘go’ without this sort of event from occurring."īernstein worked on the government project for 22 years and said this is a major advancement toward clean, limitless energy. "This is super exciting," said UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Associate Professor Lee Bernstein.
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