"WE HAVE IDENTIFIED A GENUINE ROUTE TO COMMERCIAL FUSION."
First
Light, a UK-based firm, claims to have made a "breakthrough" in
fusion energy by launching a projectile at four miles per second into a fuel
target to release energy – a novel way to fusion power that could theoretically
generate an infinite amount of green electricity.
Ina statement, First Light Chairman Bart Markus said, "We have uncovered a
genuine route to commercial fusion." "Fusion must demonstrate that it
is more than a costly science experiment."
In
other words, the business claims to have demonstrated its method by fusing
atoms using its gadget, but it has yet to achieve the ultimate goal of
extracting more energy from fusion reactors than was required to initiate the
reaction, a problem that experts have been pondering for decades.
Big Friendly Gun
The
majority of scientists working on the challenge have chosen to heat plasma to
extreme temperatures, roughly 10 times that of the Sun, in order to bind atoms
together in a process that can release massive amounts of energy inside
massively complicated, donut-shaped reactors.
For
example, scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) lab in the United Kingdom
broke their own 25-year-old record earlier this year, creating 59 megajoules of
energy in five seconds, about the equivalent of 30 pounds of TNT.
First
Light, on the other hand, is taking a completely different strategy, using a
gadget called the "Big Friendly Gun" to fire small bullets onto small
fuel targets at 10 times the speed of a typical rifle bullet.
According
to First Light, these deuterium isotope targets might be created for as little
as $10 to $20 per.
Last
year, CEO Nicholas Hawker told the Financial Times, "It is the ultimate
espresso capsule."
Pursuit of Fusion
While
we don't know how much energy each target can actually release, the company
believes that it could theoretically power a typical UK home for two years.
In
a statement, First Light co-founder Yiannis Ventikos said, "This pursuit
of practical and inexpensive fusion will offer us the clean and abundant
baseload electricity that we so sorely need in our fight to combat — and
hopefully reverse — global warming."
However,
the evidence is in the pudding — or, in this case, tiny packets of deuterium
isotopes — as with other reports of scientific achievements..
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