It is also true that thistypeof reaction couldpotentiallybe a useful energy source in the future.
Is nuclear fusion the same as nuclear power?
Nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs use afissionreaction, which isdifferent from the fusion reactionthat made the news recently.
Fission comes up whenever an atom is split apart.
Nuclear fusion is the opposite reaction: Smaller atoms are combined into a larger one.
Its an exciting possibility because it doesnt produce carbon emissionsorpresent issues with radioactive waste.
So fusion could be a waste-free, emissions-free power source?
We know that fusion reactions can create energy, because thats what the sun does all day.
It fuses hydrogen atoms so that they become helium (helium atoms being twice the size of hydrogen).
Fusion reactions are what create the suns heat and light.
Fortunately, hydrogen is easy to come by, at least; its themost common element in the universe.
As CNNreports, a glass of tap water contains enough deuterium to theoretically power a house for a year.
You also need tritium, a rarer form of hydrogen, but finding fuel is not the main problem.
The tricky part is that it takes a lot of energy to get a fusion reaction to happen.
What happened in the National Ignition Facility breakthrough?
For the first time, scientists managed to initiate a fusion reaction thatcreated more energy than it used up.
Big caveat on that.
Technically, the reaction created more energy than thelaser energythat powered it.
But those lasers themselves use a lot of electricitymore like300megajoules.
The whole setup for the reaction wasnt cheap or easy to put together, either.
Scaling this process up to the size of a power plant isnt likely to be possible anytime soon.
So well be waiting for our space-age power source for a little while longer.
