(#5198) Nuclear fusion is happening

      Fusing two Hydrogen atoms together, in order to create more energy from the energy that was used to fuse the atoms has been achieved. The difference between fusion and fission is that fusion does not leave radioactive waste whereas fission does. Fusion leaves as a byproduct Helium which is a non toxic and inert atom, unlike fission which also produces carbon dioxide and other harmful gases. Fission is a dirty process whereas fusion is a clean one. The breakthrough in December 2022 at Livermore Laboratories has cleared a hurdle that was an often thought an impossible imperative to accomplish if fusion was to become viable as an energy source.
     Now that we know how to create more energy from less energy we need to design and manufacture processes that will eventually become commercialized. How many years or decades that creativity of design and manufacturing innovations takes to bring about a fully clean energy society is now our challenge. The optimistic opinion on this new evolution of rubber hitting the road is a power plant coming into our power grid within the next 15 to 20 years. I think that given the exciting news of this nuclear fusion breakthrough that many more researchers will be applying themselves to this field of study and move that time scale along maybe even sooner.
     What is for certain now is that we know that nuclear fusing of Hydrogen atoms works and that was the initial breakthrough that needed to happen. We are now there and the rest of it is just now building the components necessary to make the fusing of Hydrogen atoms much more simplified. Lasers will need to be part of the process so anything to come along at first toward commercialization will have to be on a larger scale. Although given enough time the scale might be smaller if we can design a process that miniaturizes the equational components without detracting from the energy output. All this to say that an amazing thing happened in December 2022 and the concepts of our energy production will be forever changed because of it.