Historic step by American scientists – The “holy grail” of clean energy

American scientists made an important discovery regarding the production of energy from nuclear fusion. For the first time, American scientists at the National Ignition Laboratory at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction, according to CNN.

The US Department of Energy is expected to hold an interview on Tuesday to address this new breakthrough.

The development was first reported by the Financial Times and later confirmed by Reuters and CNN sources.

Nuclear fusion occurs when two or more atoms fuse into a larger one, a process that produces a huge amount of energy as heat.

Last February, British scientists announced that they had more than doubled the previous record for producing and sustaining nuclear fusion.

In a huge doughnut-shaped machine called a tokamak equipped with giant magnets, scientists working near Oxford managed to generate a record amount of continuous energy. Even so, it only lasted 5 seconds.

The heat retained by the process of fusing atoms together holds the key to helping generate energy.

The result of the experiment is a giant step in a decades-long effort to unlock an infinite source of clean energy that could help end dependence on fossil fuels. Researchers have tried for decades to recreate nuclear fusion – replicating the fusion that powers the sun. Unlike nuclear fission reactions, in which heavy atoms such as uranium split into lighter ones, in fission reactions hydrogen atoms combine to form heavier helium atoms.

A key obstacle is that these reactions require temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius, more than 10 times hotter than the temperature at the heart of the Sun.

“This result is far from the actual positive energy balance required for electricity generation. We can therefore say that this is a scientific success, but it is far from providing free energy,” Tony Raulstone of the University of Cambridge in Britain commented to CNN.

The official announcement about the discovery is expected at 17:00 Greek time by the US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm.

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