The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has made history by achieving a breakthrough in fusion ignition.

On Dec. 5, 2022, a team at the laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., conducted the first controlled fusion experiment that resulted in “scientific energy breakeven”—producing more energy from fusion than the amount used by the laser energy to drive it the reaction.

Fusion energy is produced in the process of fusing two atoms. It is different from fission energy, which is produced by splitting one atom into two and is used by nuclear power plants. Unlike fission reactions, nuclear fusion produces no radioactive waste. However, achieving a safe, controlled fusion reaction has been a far more difficult process.

“The pursuit of fusion ignition in the laboratory is one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity, and achieving it is a triumph of science, engineering and most of all, people,” Kim Budil, the laboratory’s director,  said in the DOE’s December 13 announcement. “Crossing this threshold is the vision that has driven 60 years of dedicated pursuit—a continual process of learning, building, expanding knowledge and capability, and then finding ways to overcome the new challenges that emerged. These are the problems that the U.S. national laboratories were created to solve.”

The team’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating the fundamental scientific basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). The team was able to achieve this because the stadium-sized National Ignition Facility uses powerful laser beams to create temperatures and pressures like those in the cores of stars and giant planets.

“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “This milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery, like providing clean power to combat climate change and maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing.”

Now, the DOE and the private-sector investment are restarting a broad-based, coordinated IFE program, with an aim toward eventually commercializing fusion technology.

Andrew Sowder, senior technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, told Utility Dive in a December 2022 report that the effort is now on to turn the laboratory’s success “into something that can produce economic, practical electricity for the grid and possibly other uses. The hard part is building a machine to make something reliable and cost-effective, something that’s competitive with other sources.”

The effort will be more than worth it, he said.

“The beauty of fusion is it checks a lot of boxes,” Sowder said. “It produces energy when you want it to, it’s a small package, no carbon. It’s scalable. This becomes an important tool in the toolbox for energy as well as for climate concerns. The more tools you have, the better.”

Header image: Laser energy is used to drive the fusion reaction inside the reactor at the National Ignition Facility. Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.