In a press conference held this week, the US Department of Energy led by Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced that their scientists in one of its laboratories, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, achieved on 5 December what is called "fusion ignition" which is the creation of more energy from fusion reactions than the energy used to start the process.

Sec. Granholm states that the achievement at the National Ignition Facility of LLNL is the first time ignition has ever been done in a laboratory anywhere in the world and considers it as "one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st Century."

Nuclear fusion involves the conversion of the lightest atom, hydrogen, into helium. It's the same energy that is produced by the Sun. We have known how to make nuclear fusion for more than half a century. Powerful countries have developed weaponry (thermonuclear bombs) involving the use of nuclear fusion. In fact, the B-83 bomb, a thermonuclear bomb, is said to be the most powerful nuclear weapon in the US arsenal first designed and developed at the LLNL in the 1970s. The challenge, therefore, is not how to create nuclear fusion but how to create it in a controlled way and harness it to produce an abundant and cheap source of fuel for commercial power generation.

We already developed nuclear fission technology (splitting of uranium and plutonium atoms) for nuclear power plants. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is a conventional nuclear fission reactor. But nuclear power plants come with them several huge potential hazards: meltdown from accidents (Chernobyl) to natural disasters (Fukushima Daiichi), and as vulnerable targets in military conflicts (threats posed in the Ukraine war). Nuclear fission reactors also produce highly toxic and highly radioactive substances which we have not learned to manage yet.

Energy derived from nuclear fusion, many scientists say, is the only solution that may save the world from the ill effects of climate change. Imagine replicating the energy of the Sun using cheap hydrogen (which can be produced abundantly in seawater) to fuel it. It is seen as the revolutionary technology that will eliminate our reliance on fossil fuels and produce an energy source that will not harm the environment and has the potential of ending conflicts and poverty (due to energy sovereignty).

The ignition achievement of the LNLL in the first week of December is far from producing a commercially viable energy source. This will not mean the immediate construction of nuclear fusion power plants. In fact, the LLNL experiment needed about 300 megajoules from the power grid to fire up their lasers to get 2.05 megajoules to produce a Fusion Energy of 3.15 megajoules.