A team of researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has achieved a new milestone in physics: producing more energy than was used to trigger the fusion reaction . Physicists compressed the equivalent fuel to almost three times the density of the Sun's core. The results of the experiment have been published in the journals Nature and Physical Review Letters .
This is the first time in history (scientists have been trying for 50 years) that a fusion reaction triggered by laser succeeds in producing more energy than is used. Taking into account that nuclear fusion is the same that occurs inside the stars to activate them , including our own Sun, this achievement opens the doors to a future of very abundant, cheap and, last but not least, energy , a clean, green energy. But in order for that moment to arrive, it is first necessary to obtain that energy for the entire system, for the entire nuclear reactor, in such a way that the energy produced is always higher than required.
To carry out this experiment, the inertial confinement method has been used, where 192 lasers are used to heat and compress the small fuel pellets located in a spherical capsule, until they implode, thus generating plasma and energy; and, fortunately on this occasion, the performance of the reactions has been around ten times higher than that achieved in previous experiments.
