For many years physicists in many countries have been working on a technique that would make it possible to run a thermonuclear reaction and at the same time to gain more energy than was spent on driving the process.
And at the beginning of 2014 it became known that they had succeeded.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, led by Omar Hurricane, were able to bring the energy obtained from a thermonuclear reaction out of negative values and reach a positive result.
The main component of such a system is a double capsule built from several alloys and two layers of gold. Tritium and deuterium sit inside the capsule itself.
The capsule acts as a kind of “press” whose function is to compress the fuel at the start of the reaction and throughout it. Under this pressing the alpha particles that form when deuterium and tritium combine lose their energy inside the capsule itself, which heats the fuel as the synthesis of energy requires. Only the most powerful laser pulse can start such a reaction. Under its action X-ray radiation is generated inside the capsule.
The scientists claim that the new technology can be used for full thermonuclear fusion. Even so, the physicists still have much to do. The authors have to solve the problems of the relatively low power of the lasers used and of the excessive heating of the fuel and the capsule during fusion.
In spite of everything, the laboratory's researchers are working in every direction, and even the first prototypes they have obtained fuse more energy than is spent on running them.