![]() Department of Energy’s (DOE) nuclear weapons program. ![]() ![]() The NIF facility’s origins lie within the U.S. While it is too early to tell, fusion-based energy-if the engineering succeeds and it is commercialized-could command greater public support than existing fission-based nuclear power for several reasons: It is inherently safer than existing fission-based plants it does not produce the type of long-lived nuclear waste that requires deep geological isolation and has proved very difficult to dispose of due to public opposition and the material, equipment, and technology collectively present less of a nuclear proliferation concern. federal laboratory in Livermore, California- announced that it had achieved a long-sought scientific milestone: to produce more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it-also known as “scientific breakeven.” Soon after the United States announced that it was the first nation in the world to achieve this goal, some wondered whether “ limitless clean energy” was at hand. 13, 2022, the National Ignition Facility (NIF)-part of a U.S. Fusion power plants are potentially relevant to the challenge of addressing climate change because they would represent another energy source that is both low-carbon and dispatchable-able to be turned off and on in response to demand this could, among other things, help to stabilize power grids in an era of rising variable renewable energy use. Stretching back to the middle of the last century, scientists have investigated whether fusion processes could be created and harnessed on Earth for energy applications. Given animals’ dependence on plants for food, it follows that life on Earth broadly depends upon the fusion reactions taking place in the sun. Plants and algae use that sunlight to produce oxygen and chemical energy as part of photosynthesis. The churn of light nuclei into heavier ones-releasing energy in the process-powers the sun and sends electromagnetic radiation more than 90 million miles to Earth to light our days. Every second, 620 million metric tons of hydrogen undergo fusion at the center of our solar system.
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