Other Australian participants include the ANU, University of Sydney, Curtin University, University of Newcastle, University of Wollongong and Macquarie University.

'ITER has a goal of demonstrating break-even in the early 2030s,' Professor Baldwin said. Unlike the Livermore National Laboratory's experiment, the ITER reactor uses the toroidal technique. Thirty-five nations are collaborating to build and operate the ITER Tokamak experimental fusion reactor in southern France. In 2016, Australia's nuclear agency ANTSO signed a cooperation agreement with the ITER international nuclear fusion energy organisation that's building what has been described as the world's biggest experiment. Yes, Australia is working with an international coalition of countries and institutions researching fusion energy. That's roughly equivalent to boiling a jug for 20 minutes. 'Assuming the entire energy yield can be harnessed, then it would produce 875 W/hr, just shy of 1kW hr,' Professor Hole said. The latest experiments ramped up the energy output to 3.15 megajoules, which is more than the 2.05 megajoules of energy delivered by the lasers. Using pressure to ignite an explosion - a technique known as inertial confinement - isn't new the same process occurs in hydrogen bombs, he said.Įarlier this year, the US team reported they'd been able to create 170 kilojoules of energy - the equivalent energy of 9-volt batteries – and reach a point where it self heated, kicking off more fusion reactions. 'You fire the lasers, they heat up the target, the target explodes and it is gone,' said Matthew Hole, a physicist at the Australian National University (ANU) who is working on other fusion experiments. Nuclei from deuterium and tritium in the plasma soup then fuse together, giving off relatively huge amounts of energy. Heat and pressure generated from the lasers compresses the isotopes until they overcome their mutual electrical repulsion by stripping off electrons. The process releases millions of times more energy than burning coal, oil or gas, and about four times as much as nuclear fission reactions (at equal mass of fuel). The process of fission has been commercially viable for decades and is used in conventional nuclear power plants to generate about 10 per cent of the world's power.Įnergy is created by splitting a big, heavy atom like uranium, which also produces radioactive waste.įusion fuses lighter elements such as hydrogen together to produce a heavier element. There are two types of nuclear energy: fission and fusion. So how did they do it, and are we much closer to fusion energy being a viable source of abundant, clean and reliable power? What is fusion energy? Now, scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco say they've achieved 'net energy gain' for the first time.

This is how nuclear weapons work.It's being hailed as a 'breakthrough', but how significant is the announcement?įor decades, scientists have tried to harness fusion energy, which is the process of making energy using the same phenomenon that powers the Sun.Īmong other issues, they've been unable to do so in a way that generated more energy than was expended. If an uncontrolled chain reaction occurs, a huge amount of energy may be released in an explosion. Control rods, which absorb neutrons, are lowered into the nuclear reactor to slow down the chain reaction and then lifted out of the reactor to speed up the chain reaction. In nuclear power stations, the amount of energy produced is controlled by controlling how fast the chain reaction can occur. In a nuclear power station, these gamma rays can be used to heat water, producing steam to turn turbines and generate electricity. This is called a chain reaction.Įnergy that is not transferred to the smaller nuclei or the neutrons is released as gamma rays. If any of these neutrons are moving slow enough to be absorbed by another atom, they may cause that nucleus to undergo fission as well. Two or three neutronsare also produced when fission occurs. All of the fission products have kinetic energy. The new nuclei are also unlikely to be the same size as one another. These will be of a different elementsthan the original nucleus. When the nucleus splits, two smaller nuclei are produced. This makes the nucleus unstable and forces fission to occur. In order to force a nucleus to split up, we can make it absorb a neutron. Nuclear fission rarely occurs spontaneously.

Nuclear fission occurs when an unstable nucleus splits into two or more pieces.

Nuclear fusion vs fission reactions