A breakthrough in fusion science is a long-awaited scientific advancement, but the electric utilities sector will have to wait to see its benefits, according to the U.S. government scientists behind the experiment.

The U.S. Energy Department confirmed Dec. 13 that the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, the previous week produced more fusion energy than the laser energy used to drive the reaction, thus achieving a net energy gain.

The result was the culmination of about six decades of scientific research and "one of the most significant scientific challenges ever tackled by humanity," said Kim Budil, director of the DOE's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where the ignition facility is located.

The project is "probably decades" away from commercial readiness, Budil told reporters at a DOE press briefing.

"Not six decades, I don't think. Not five decades, as we used to say. I think it's moving into the foreground, and probably, with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant," Budil predicted.

Fusion is a nuclear reaction that merges two atoms, producing energy in the same manner as the sun. Scientists have long sought to replicate that reaction on earth, holding up "ignition" as an important milestone for the development of fusion energy.

But Budil explained that a reactor would have to drive "many, many fusion ignition events per minute" in order to create a sustained energy source that could be commercialized. That challenge has not stopped private sector projects from trying to connect fusion energy to the grid on a more ambitious timeline.

During the same press briefing, U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm doubled down on the Biden administration's "decadal vision" for commercial fusion energy, a strategy announced in March.

"The president has a decadal vision to get to a commercial fusion reactor in, obviously, 10 years," Granholm said. "So we've got to get to work, and this shows it can be done."

Sector is attracting investment

Financiers are also showing confidence in fusion science.

"This last year was the first year where private sector investment in fusion actually surpassed public sector investment in fusion," Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems LLC, said in an interview.

In December 2021, Cambridge, Mass.-based Commonwealth raised $1.8 billion in funding as the company seeks to build a reactor prototype that could be commercialized. The previous month, Everett, Wash.-based fusion developer Helion Energy Inc. raised $500 million, with an additional $1.7 billion tied to specific performance milestones. Another fusion energy company, TAE Technologies Inc. in Foothill Ranch, Calif., raised $250 million in July for a total of $1.2 billion to date.

The difference between the new entrants and the NIF is that such projects are building on more recent technological developments, according to Mumgaard. Unlike the NIF, which was built for science experiments, newer entrants are designing reactors around commercial viability.

"We now have the toolsets and the science to be able to make really good guesses and designs and then go build them," Mumgaard said, adding that the next milestone will be building a commercial prototype that achieves net energy gain.

While "much has to happen" before fusion can be commercialized, Clean Air Task Force Executive Director Armond Cohen agreed that newer technologies could speed the process.

"Many new approaches are looking to significantly reduce the costs that have been associated with the large fusion science demonstration projects" such as the NIF and the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor, Cohen said in a statement.

An example is magneto inertial fusion, which requires fewer energy inputs than the NIF and lower capital costs than the International Experimental Thermonuclear Reactor's large tokamak reactor design. "Such approaches can help accelerate both additional science and commercial demonstration efforts," Cohen said.

When asked to reconcile her assessment with private industry's, Budil did not rule out that a commercially viable fusion power plant could be developed far sooner than the many decades being predicted by some.

"If we could not ignite capsules in the laboratory, you could not see a pathway to an inertial confinement fusion energy plant," Budil said at the press conference. "So this was a necessary first step, but the NIF is built, foundationally, on 1980s laser technology."

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