The US Is Building A Commercial Nuclear Fusion Power Plant
Is this the start of the fusion age?
In December of last year, humanity took a monumental leap forward. I’m not talking about the release of Avatar 2, but rather the fact that we achieved ignition in a fusion reaction for the first time ever. This means we can now replicate the processes that power the Sun and use them to create copious amounts of ultra-clean energy. As such, the US has decided to dive headfirst into this technology and build a fully functioning commercial fusion power plant. But things aren’t as straightforward as they might seem.
Before we get into this fantastic news, let’s first understand what fusion actually is and why this breakthrough was so spectacular.
Nuclear fusion is the process of smashing two atoms together with enough force that they fuse into a single, heavier atom. Because larger atoms have more electrons and mass, they require much higher energies to fuse, so most fusion reactions happen with the lightest element, hydrogen. When two hydrogen atoms fuse, the resulting helium atom is actually slightly lighter than the sum of the two hydrogens. This is because helium’s core requires fewer gluons (the fundamental particles that keep protons and neutrons glued together). So what happens to this spare gluon? Well, it is turned into energy…
