After news outlets reported that a federal facility had just accomplished a significant milestone in nuclear fusion research, the U.S. Department of Energy said it will reveal a "major scientific breakthrough" this week.
The experiment's outcome would be a significant milestone in the long-term goal to release an endless source of renewable energy that may help end dependence on fossil fuels. Nuclear fusion, the process that drives the sun, has been replicated by researchers for decades.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm would "announce a major scientific breakthrough" on Tuesday, according to the Energy Department and LLNL officials, who declined to verify or corroborate a report from the Financial Times.
The LLNL representative continued, saying that the "analysis is still ongoing"
"We look forward to sharing more on Tuesday when that process is complete," she said.
Nuclear fusion happens when two or more atoms are fused into one larger one, a process that generates a vast quantity of energy as heat. Unlike nuclear fission, which generates electricity all around the world, it produces no long-lived radioactive waste.
Scientists all across the world have been working toward a breakthrough, employing various ways to try to accomplish the same result.
The National Ignition Facility project uses "thermonuclear inertial fusion" to generate energy from nuclear fusion. In practice, U.S. scientists fire pellets containing hydrogen fuel into an array of nearly 200 lasers, resulting in a series of extremely fast, repeated explosions at a rate of 50 times per second.
The heat created when the energy from the neutrons and alpha particles is removed is the key to creating energy.
According to the FT, which cited three sources with knowledge of the preliminary findings, the fusion reaction that resulted in a net energy gain of 120 percent took place within the last two weeks.
Later, the Washington Post reported that two persons familiar with the research had confirmed the breakthrough, and that "To most of us, this was only a matter of time" according to a top fusion scientist.
Some experts believe that nuclear fusion has the potential to be the energy source of the future since it generates so little waste and emits no greenhouse gases.
"If this fusion energy breakthrough is true, it could be a game changer for the world," tweeted Ted Lieu, a member of Congress from California.
The method now utilized in nuclear power plants, fission, is different from fusion in that it fuses two atomic nuclei as opposed to dividing one.
Nearly 200 lasers the size of three football fields make up the LLNL fusion facility, which bombards a small location with a lot of energy to start a fusion reaction.
