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The United States announced on Tuesday December 13 a “historic breakthrough” in the field of nuclear fusion, a breakthrough that could revolutionize the production of energy on Earth within a few decades.
With our correspondent in Miami, David Thomson
This experiment was carried out last week around 1 a.m. by a Californian laboratory: 192 lasers were pointed at a target the size of a thimble in which a tiny capsule was placed. These lasers generated a temperature of 150 million degrees, ten times the temperature of the sun, causing the fusion of hydrogen atoms, the time of a fraction of a second.
Currently, nuclear power plants use the fission of the atom to release energy, nuclear fusion on the contrary, generates an immense amount of energy by merging two light nuclei.
No greenhouse gas emissions
Fusion has many advantages over fission: no risk of nuclear accident and less radioactive waste and, unlike coal or gas-fired power plants, no greenhouse gas emissions.
It will probably take decades, according to the director of the national laboratory Lawrence Livermore, before the first industrial applications, but it is a success which will remain in the history books, welcomes Jennifer Granholm, the Minister of Energy of Joe Biden.
The announcement also arouses the enthusiasm of the scientific community, because for years researchers have been trying to develop nuclear fusion in the hope of breaking away from the fossil fuels responsible for climate change.
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