FUSION IS THE FUTURE

Fusion technology is slated to be a complete game changer in the field of nuclear energy

- SATYEN MOHAPATRA

If nothing, 2022 will be remembered for the momentous breakthrough in the field of nuclear fusion energy coming 88 years after Italian scientist Enrico Fermi achieved nuclear fission.

In just eight years after Fermi’s discovery, the first nuclear reactor had been successfully tested at the University of Chicago in the US. One must wait and see how soon we can have a nuclear reactor running on fusion energy.

Fusion technology is slated to be a complete game changer in the field of nuclear energy—providing cheap, clean and limitless fuel for all our energy needs. Not only is the fuel abundant and inexpensive, but also there is very low-level radioactive waste.

Scientists have been working in different countries, including India, for several decades to make fusion successful. The problem was that they had to invest a huge amount of energy to get a little bit back.

Towards the end of 2022, it was reported that US scientists had made a historic breakthrough and got more energy than they used for initiating the fusion process, making nuclear fusion a viable energy source in the future.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s fusion facility targeted 192 lasers on a miniature spherical capsule creating temperatures multiple times hotter than the centre of the sun with high levels of energy to initiate a fusion reaction. It produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy using the 1.1 mJ of energy in the lasers to initiate the process, which is about 120 per cent net energy gain. Thus, making fusion energy commercially viable.

But what is fusion energy?

Understanding a few of the basic concepts may give us clarity regarding this technology.