Column by Dr. Richard Sternberg

Thermal Nuclear Fusion: A Christmas Hope

The most important news item of the 21st century occurred on Tuesday, December 13. It was not about the war in Ukraine. It was not about the U.S. political crisis or political crises anywhere else in the world. It had nothing to do with the ongoing three-year pandemic that we’ve gone through and which is now being exacerbated by epidemics of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, and other diseases. The most important news item of the 21st century was the announcement by the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California of the ability to create a thermal nuclear fusion reaction that generated more energy than it took to initiate it.

Allowing for the fact that there was additional energy needed to set up the experiment, the importance is that the actual reaction produced more energy than went into starting it.

The atomic bombs used in World War II and all current nuclear power plants, whether producing energy for commercial distribution or scientific and government purposes, are fission reactors. These rely on the splitting of radioactive materials to produce energy. These leave large amounts of radioactive waste, or fall-out, which are dangerously toxic both because of the radiation and because of the chemical properties of the elements left behind.

Fusion creates energy by forcing together two atoms of hydrogen in the form of deuterium or tritium, which are isotopes of basic hydrogen, thereby creating a helium atom with the release of energy. Isotopes are forms of an element that have more neutrons in their nuclei than the primary atoms of these elements.

When I had my epiphany about the importance of this news I thought that not very many other people would agree with me. I was very mistaken. Not only did many of my college classmates who trained as scientists and engineers think this way, I have found that many lay people also recognized the same.

Ever since scientists developed the hydrogen bomb—which is an uncontrolled fusion reaction device—70 years ago, they have dreamed of harnessing the energy produced in a controlled manner. This has proven very elusive and, until now, unobtainable. The experiment announced by no means solves all or even many of the problems related to developing controlled nuclear fission, but it is the major first step. It proves that the process is possible.

Why is this as important as I believe? Simply put, the earth is running out of easily obtained energy, fossil fuels. Current nuclear energy produces byproducts that are highly dangerous and have to be stored. Obtaining the raw material for fission, uranium, will prove to be more difficult in time as current known sources dry up. We are running out of energy on this planet. The amount of energy readily available through renewables cannot reliably supply the world’s population, which is rapidly approaching 8 billion. Additionally, if we can solve the problem of global warming and figure out a way to clean the atmosphere of the hydrocarbon pollution that has caused warming and climate change, massive amounts of energy, beyond current comprehension, will be needed.

This is a great Christmas present. It gives me, and a lot of other people, hope that there is a solution to the current crisis of climate change with increasing atmospheric pollution of molecules that trap heat and burn up the Earth.
Feliz Navidad.

Dr. Richard Sternberg is a retired Bassett Hospital orthopedic surgeon.