Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced a "major scientific breakthrough" at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on December 13, where an experimental fusion reactor produced more energy than was used to ignite it for the first time ever.
Read more: Fusion breakthrough could be climate, energy game-changer
Granholm said the "landmark achievement" last week at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco will "go down in the history books." "As the president might say... This is a BFD," the Energy Secretary joked. "Ignition allows us to replicate, for the first time, certain conditions that are found only in the stars and the sun," Granholm explained. "This milestone moves us one significant step closer to the possibility of zero-carbon, abundant fusion energy powering our society... It would be like adding a power drill to our toolbox in building the clean energy economy."
"So today, we tell the world that America has achieved a tremendous scientific breakthrough, one that happened because we invested in our national labs, and we invested in fundamental research."
Watch NASA Deputy Administrator Marv Adams explain the significance of this achievement below:
"Last week, for the first time, they designed this experiment so that the fusion fuel stayed hot enough, round enough, and dense enough for long enough that it ignited and it produced more energy than the lasers had deposited," he explained. "So this is pretty cool!"
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