Is This the Fusion Breakthrough We’ve Been Waiting For?

Yesterday, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory confirmed that they had discovered a pathway to the first potentially viable nuclear-fusion power. In a press conference earlier today, the U.S. Department of Energy officially announced the breakthrough. But is it too good to be true?

The federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, which uses a process called inertial-confinement fusion that involves bombarding a tiny pellet of hydrogen plasma with the world’s biggest laser, “had achieved net energy gain in a fusion experiment in the past two weeks,” anonymous sources “with knowledge of preliminary results from a recent experiment” told the Financial Times. In a press conference, Department of Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm elaborated on this “major scientific breakthrough.”