Researchers achieve Nuclear Fusion breakthrough

On August 8, 2021, for the first time, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the yield of 1.3 megajoules (MJ) from Fusion research. One year later, the scientific results of the historic experiment have been published in three peer-reviewed papers.

There are two types of nuclear reactions that release energy - Nuclear Fission and Nuclear Fusion. Nuclear Fission is the process of splitting an atom into two or more smaller parts while releasing a substantial amount of energy. Nuclear Fusion on the other is a bit tricky as it needs an extremely high amount of energy, density, and temperature to achieve ignition. Nuclear Fusion is the process of fusing two smaller atoms into a bigger one.

While nuclear fission reaction does not occur in Nature, nuclear fusion is what powers the Stars like our Sun. Heavy hydrogen atoms collide with considerable amounts of force that fuse them together to form a helium atom, in turn releasing a copious amount of energy. Nuclear fusion reactions are also self-sustainable, as once the atoms collide and achieve 'ignition', they produce enough power to keep the temperature up without external inputs. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second.

Imagine harnessing the energy from Nuclear Fusion to produce electricity, Research into using fusion for the production of electricity has been pursued for over 60 years. The achievement of researchers at LLNL, is a big step towards this goal. However, the challenge to using nuclear fusion an as an energy source is about keeping the temperature super high to keep the reaction self-sustainable.