nuclear fusion reaction

The breakthrough at Livermore was a huge step in showing that engineers can create a controlled nuclear fusion reaction that is potentially self-sustaining.

After decades of trying, scientists for the first time carried out a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than went into it.

Despite billions in government and private investment, no one has been able to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that didn’t consume more energy than it created.

It also underlies, although invisibly, the process that supplies the energy needed for life: It accounts for the initial step in the nuclear fusion reaction that powers the sun.

In this kind of bomb, energy released from a fission-based device is used to trigger a separate secondary nuclear fusion reaction, in which hydrogen isotopes fuse together, typically releasing energy equivalent to megatonnes of TNT.