Watch live: Granholm holds press briefing on nuclear fusion breakthrough
In this 2012 image provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a technician reviews an optic inside the preamplifier support structure at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. (Damien Jemison/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory via AP)
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is set to make a major announcement regarding nuclear fusion at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
Nuclear fusion is a process that generates energy the same way as the sun.
Fusion has been a goal for decades, and the new technology still wouldn’t see commercial use immediately.
But a long-standing limit has finally been exceeded: for the first time, more energy has been produced than put into a nuclear fusion system. That is, although fusion has been possible in the past, it’s never been viable as a means of generating electricity.
And fusion has great appeal for scientists and policymakers, because — unlike nuclear fission, the similarly named process that powers today’s reactors — fusion comes without the as-yet problematic generation of nuclear waste. As Reuters notes, it also produces basically no carbon dioxide.
The only catch here is that the success is at a small scale, and bringing full-scale fusion plants online would still take years. But this proof of concept could be an impetus to bring further attention to the energy source that brought you sunlight.
The event is slated to start at 10 a.m. ET.
Watch the live video above.