A Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion Energy

Short Wave

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🗓️ 15 December 2022

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

On Dec. 5 at 1 o'clock in the morning local time, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California used lasers to zap a tiny pellet of hydrogen fuel. The lasers hit their target with 2.05 megajoules of energy, and the pellet released roughly 3.15 megajoules. It's a major milestone, and one that the field of fusion science has struggled to reach for more than half a century: producing a fusion reaction that generates more energy than it consumes. While progress, the technology is still a ways off from its promise to produce energy without creating greenhouse gases. Today on the show, Regina G. Barber brings us two NPR stories that explain what this experiment showed and what else needs to happen to make fusion a practical energy source.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.8	Hey folks, Regina Barber here.
0:07.9	You may have heard about a nuclear fusion experiment in the news this week.
0:11.1	It's a long-standing holy grail of clean energy.
0:14.5	I've been hearing about the promise of fusion energy since I was studying physics and undergrad.
0:19.0	And this week, there was an exciting development in this research, while there's still a long
0:23.7	way to go for practical applications.
0:26.3	Today, we're going to fuse two pieces of excellent coverage from NPR.
0:31.0	First, science correspondent Jeff Brumfield shares his reporting about this breakthrough.
0:36.4	Then we're going to hear a conversation NPR's Rob Schmitz had with Dr. Dennis White at MIT
0:41.4	about what the technology promises for the long-term and some of the barriers that still
0:45.5	must be overcome.
0:47.4	Today on the show, replicating what happens in the course of stars.
0:52.1	I'm Regina Barber, and you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.
1:05.2	This week, scientists announced a breakthrough in the field of nuclear fusion.
1:10.3	Fusion is what powers the sun, and scientists have been struggling for decades to harness
1:14.3	it on Earth.
1:16.1	Whenever we want the lowdown on nuclear tech, Jeff Brumfield is a guy that we call.
1:20.9	Here's a story on the breakthrough and what it could all mean.
1:23.9	To give you a sense of just how long this took, listen to President Biden's science advisor
1:28.7	Arati Prabhakar.
1:30.6	She remembers working on nuclear fusion in 1978.
	...

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