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Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a private company spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, plans what it calls the world's first grid-scale fusion power plant in Virginia, to generate ...
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Unlike nuclear fission — the process used in the world’s nuclear plants today, which is generated by the division of atoms — nuclear fusion leaves no legacy of long-lived radioactive waste.
Fusion ignition is the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. This occurs when the energy being given off by the reaction heats the fuel mass more rapidly than it cools. In other words, fusion ignition is the point at which the increasing self-heating of the nuclear fusion removes the need for external heating. [ 1 ]
Performance was gradually improved until, as of 2024, the fusion energy routinely exceeded 2 MJ. [31] To be useful for energy production, a fusion facility must produce fusion output at least an order of magnitude more than the energy used to power the laser amplifiers – 400 MJ in the case of NIF. [32]
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As of 2022, the record for energy production using nuclear fusion is held by the National Ignition Facility reactor, which achieved a Q of 1.5 in December 2022. [15] Beyond just heating the plasma, the total electricity consumed by the reactor and facilities will range from 110 MW up to 620 MW peak for 30-second periods during plasma operation ...
Though fuel was added to the fire by the U.S. achieving fusion ignition in December of 2022, realizing the promise of nuclear fusion still faces many engineering and technological obstacles.