
In mid-December, all the international media covered the news of a breakthrough in the science of electricity: in
the United States they managed to produce energy through nuclear fusion, producing more energy than needed to
trigger the production process.
Nuclear fusion, unlike nuclear fission – the process with which current nuclear power plants work – would produce
energy without giving off C02 and above all without producing waste.
Someone has already dubbed it ‘the discovery of the century’, even if it will take at least 30 years for its
commercial use, due to enormous scientific and technological difficulties.
Others, on the other hand, suspect that it is only speculative news and that therefore today the technique of
nuclear fusion still cannot find a place among man’s technologies.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm
said that “This is a scientific milestone” “It’s just the beginning,” she
added at a press conference. The Department of Energy has thus confirmed what was anticipated by the American
media: for the first time in history, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have
produced a greater quantity of energy from fusion than that which is consumed during the process, a known concept
as “net energy gain”.
“This is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” cheered Granholm, explaining that
researchers have been working on this for decades. “This strengthens our national security and the fusion allows
us to replicate conditions found only in the stars and the sun,” added the US minister. “This milestone brings us
significantly closer to the possibility of carbon-neutral fusion energy to power our society,” concluded Granholm.
The researchers achieved this very important milestone on December 5, 2022 using a nuclear fusion technology
called “inertial confinement”.
The experiment took place by generating energy thanks to 192 laser beams in a few billionths of a second, the
energy produced in the United States, in the National Ignition Facility experimental structure located in
California, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The experiment took place inside a vacuum chamber, i.e.
a container from which the air is pumped out, and the lasers were aimed at a perforated cylindrical container a
few millimeters long.
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