Nuclear option

It is a normal day in Culham.

Just a couple of miles away is one of the biggest scientific experiments. It is Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, home to one of the world's most advanced nuclear fusion reactors, JET. Yesterday, it made a huge breakthrough. In the space of five seconds, it produced 11 megawattsA unit of power, equal to one million watts. of energy - enough to boil 60 kettles. 

This is more than double what has been achieved before. And it could open the door to a new form of energy.

Fusion is the holy grailSomething that is eagerly sought after. The real holy grail was the cup that Jesus used at the Last Supper, for which Christians searched fruitlessly for centuries.. Today's nuclear power is created through fission. Uranium atoms are split apart. Fission relies on environmentally damaging mining, causes radioactive wasteNuclear fission uses uranium which stays radioactive. Fusion can only take place in the unique conditions of the reactor. and can lead to catastrophic accidentsThere have been several nuclear crises including the 1986 Chernobyl incident in Ukraine and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.. 

Fusion takes place when two nuclei collide. We see the process every day on the sun.

Recreating this process means having potentially unlimited supplies of energy. But it has proved difficult. Fusion was achieved in 1951. It took until 1991 for scientists to achieve a controlled release. So far, all attempts have used up more energy than they produced. 

Temperature has been a hurdle. A gas has to reach 150 million C to create a reaction. Scientists at Culham have reduced the temperature to about 300C - similar to a car engine. 

A working fusion reactor could revolutionise how we create energy. Fusion can turn 1kg of fuel into 1,500 megawatts of electricity - enough to power over a million houses for a year.

Fusion is carbon-free and does not produce greenhouse gasses. And unlike nuclear fission, it does not produce nuclear waste.

But there are snags. It is non-renewable. And there remains much work to be done: the Culham team plans to create a prototype fusion plant in the 2040s. This may not be enough time to save us from climate change.

Is fusion our best hope for the climate?

Yes: Fusion does not rely on specific natural conditions. It might be tough to achieve, but it is the only solution to fix a problem as large as the climate crisis. We have to make it work. 

No: Just because there was a breakthrough this week, this does not mean fusion can magically fix our problems. We still have no guarantee that it will ever work efficiently. 

Or... It is one solution of many. We know that fusion could provide the energy we need to power the world. But we also know that it is not working yet. Right now, we need to reduce our environmental impact with the tools we have already - renewable energy.