Nuclear fusion energy breakthrough at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

LIVERMORE, Calif. - Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are expected to announce a major breakthrough in nuclear fusion research that could lead to future clean energy sources.

Researchers within the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, use giant lasers that when fired at once, create explosions similar to those in nuclear weapons.

Their recent fusion test successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction, resulting in a net energy gain, meaning it produced more power than it used, as first reported by the Financial Times.

While the result of the experiment has not been released, the US Department of Energy is expected to officially make the announcement Tuesday, a laboratory spokesperson said.

"This is super exciting," said UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering Associate Professor Lee Bernstein. "You almost couldn’t advance beyond ‘go’ without this sort of event from occurring."

Bernstein worked on the government project for 22 years and said this is a major advancement toward clean, limitless energy.

He said the work involves beaming 192 lasers at the same time at a metal cylinder that is only two millimeters. Inside the cylinder is a spherical capsule containing two heavier forms of hydrogen.

The lasers radiate and heat up inside the cylinder at temperatures exceeding five million degrees. That generates X-rays to begin flying around, which compresses the peppercorn-sized pellet of hydrogen with precision to one-thirtieth of the size.

"This was years of effort to get this right," Bernstein said. "They’ve been making small adjustments to many aspects of this system in an organized manner to try to approach this fusion goal."

Nuclear fusion happens when two atoms meld into one, creating a large burst of energy as heat. That’s in contrast to nuclear fission, which generates power by splitting atoms.

In this case, nuclear fusion ignition has generated extra energy as heat or helium. The major benefit is there’s no radioactive waste, creating clean energy.

Bernstein said right now, it only lasts 100-200 trillionths of a second, suggesting a need for more experimentation and replication on a larger scale in order to power electric grids.

Still, this may be the first step in harnessing energy and sustaining it long enough to create long-lasting power.

"I don’t want to say the sky is the limit, that’s a bit too overused," Bernstein said. "But I think there’s a lot of possibility."

Brooks Jarosz is an investigative reporter for KTVU. Email him at brooks.jarosz@fox.com and follow him on Facebook and Twitter @BrooksKTVU