00:00 [Music]
00:04 Nuclear fusion has long been the goal with regards to clean energy,
00:07 allowing humanity to finally harness the same type of energy that fuels our sun.
00:12 Last year, researchers at the National Ignition Facility in California
00:15 managed to sustain that very process in their lab.
00:18 Now they are announcing that over the course of the last year,
00:21 they've replicated that very nuclear fusion ignition three times.
00:24 A huge step forward for Earth's green energy future.
00:27 The ignition involves firing around 200 lasers at a pebble-sized bit of hydrogen fuel.
00:32 The resulting reaction actually creates more energy than was used to ignite it,
00:36 meaning a net energy gain.
00:38 Fusion is also a leg up over traditional nuclear fission,
00:41 which is used in nuclear power plants today.
00:43 That's because fusion does not split atoms, but rather fuses them,
00:47 meaning it does not leave behind radioactive waste.
00:50 One of the most recent successful fusion tests used 2 megajoules of energy,
00:54 but outputted 3.88 megajoules.
00:57 The next steps will involve scaling the experiments,
00:59 with the US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm saying that
01:03 "Harnessing fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific
01:06 and technological challenges of the 21st century."
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