‘It was surprising how big the improvement was’

Photo Credit: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Several groups of scientists around the world are working to create a nuclear fusion reactor that is commercially viable and scalable. One of those groups is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where the scientists just made a major breakthrough, Interesting Engineering reported.

The lab’s nuclear scientists found that changing its fuel mix — reducing the required amount of tritium, a rare and radioactive isotope of hydrogen — could improve the efficiency of its reactor, taking it one step closer to being able to create virtually unlimited clean, renewable energy. 

“In a fusion device, typically, the tritium isn’t fully burned, and it is hard to come by. So, we wanted to improve the tritium-burn efficiency,” said Ahmed Diallo, one of the co-authors of the resulting paper, published in the journal Nuclear Fusion.

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Of course, it is still unknown how many more steps remain between this one and the final one that makes nuclear fusion, which has been referred to as the “holy grail” of clean energy, a reality. 

Although nuclear power plants do exist, they rely on nuclear fission, where atoms are split apart. Nuclear fusion is when atoms are slammed together, mimicking the process that powers the sun. It would, in theory, create energy much more efficiently, and with far less radioactive waste.

While the entire process is very dense and technical, the main takeaway here is that the scientists involved seem very excited about their new discovery, which is good news for the rest of us.

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“Fusion is really, really hard, and nature doesn’t do you many favors. So, it was surprising how big the improvement was,” said Jason Parisi, the first author on the paper.

Other groups pursuing nuclear fusion include the U.K.’s Tokamak Energy group, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France, and Focused Energy, a German-American company based in San Francisco.

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