temperatures hotter than the center of the sun, The
highest energy lasers in the world, magnets the size of
a basketball court and the promise of virtually
unlimited energy on earth. Nuclear fusion has
captivated scientists for decad But what is it And
why has it proven so challenging for scientists t
achieve dozens of universities and governments ar
the world are pursuing fusion energy. They're racing t
obtain a limitless energy source that produces no
carbon emissions here at zap energy. Outside Seattle
researchers are among the 35 private companies trying
to create this futuristic energy source where we need
to get to is getting more energy output from these
fusion reactions than is required as input. In other
words, to light the candle, you need a certain amount
of energy. No one here is wearing radioactive
protection. Scientists say nuclear fusion is very
different than nuclear fission, which powers hundreds
of power plants around the world vision, which is, you
know, commercially available an has been uh so since,
you know, right after World War Two is the breaking
apart of large nuclei. Think of uranium plutonium thes
things. When you take a large nucleus and split it
apart, you get a bunch of energy coming out and that's
great. It has its benefits and its drawbacks. But
nuclear reactors also produce thousands of tons of
radioactive waste each year. Fusion on the other hand,
is quite different and is not yet commercially
available. This is the process that exists in all the
stars in all the Galaxies in the universe. So the
challenge for us is how do you create a star on earth
So our sun is made up predominantly of hydrogen an
helium but the sun also has is a lot of gravitational
force. So it can compress all this hot gas hot enough
and dense enough that these nuclei of hydrogen comes so
close together that they actually fuse and they're
pushed together to create another nucleus ahead of your
nucleus, which is helium. And you get even more energy
than in the fission reaction to create that star on
earth, says Levitt, researchers must contain a
mysterious substance plasma in order of increasing
temperature, you can start at a solid, increase the
temperature to get to a liquid into a gas. What happens
when you go even hotter than a gas that's a plasma
plasma charged particles repel one another. The trick
is to force them together for long enough that they'll
fuse smashing charged plasma to achieve fusion takes
incredible force. A massive machine called the national
ignition facility in livermore California uses 100 and
92 giant lasers to push the plasma together. This
facility under construction in France called Iter will
use huge magnets to try to achieve fusion zap is
working to make smaller scale reactors. Their name
reflects their strategy by hitting the plasma with a
zap of lightning. They create magnetic fields that the
believe can eventually keep the plasma together. So if
we can create this actually confined plasma with i
own magnetic field, it will self confined without the
need for any other confinement technology. But big
hurdles loom, trillium gas is a rare isotope of
hydrogen that serves as a key ingredient for fusion.
Recent reports, including this article in Science
magazine, suggests the shortage of the gas could derail
efforts to achieve fusion. The bigger problem is that
despite billions of dollars of funding and decades of
research into fusion, no experiment has ever produced a
sustained fusion burn. We've been making fusion
reactions for more than a decade. Now, that's not the
issue. We know how to do that. The issue is producing
more energy output from fusion reactions that is
required to start the fusion reaction. That's what's
called this energy break. Even demonstration, we
believe we're right around the corner from doing so.
That achievement could make zap energy a household name
and transform the world energy system for centuries.
Eli Kentish Newsy