Starpower: Boost In Quest For Nuclear Fusion
Reporting in the journal Nature, researchers said they were the first to tease more energy out of a fusion reaction than had been absorbed by the fuel used to spark it.
Via AFP:
Scientists on Wednesday announced an important advance in the long quest to harness nuclear fusion, a field that has sparked dreams of clean and limitless energy.
Fusion, the process that powers the Sun and other stars, entails forging the nuclei of atoms to release energy, as opposed to splitting them, which is fission -- the principle behind the atomic bomb and nuclear power.
Decades of work in fusion have run up against a giant hurdle -- the energy yield from the reaction has been dwarfed by the vast amounts of energy needed to trigger the process.
But, in lab experiments describe...