00:04Nuclear fusion has long been the goal with regards to clean energy, allowing humanity
00:08to finally harness the same type of energy that fuels our sun.
00:12Last year, researchers at the National Ignition Facility in California managed to sustain
00:16that very process in their lab.
00:18Now they are announcing that over the course of the last year, they've replicated that
00:22very nuclear fusion ignition three times, a huge step forward for Earth's green energy
00:26future.
00:27The ignition involves firing around 200 lasers at a pebble-sized bit of hydrogen fuel.
00:32The resulting reaction actually creates more energy than was used to ignite it, meaning
00:36a net energy gain.
00:38Fusion is also a leg up over traditional nuclear fission, which is used in nuclear power plants
00:43today.
00:43That's because fusion does not split atoms, but rather fuses them, meaning it does not
00:48leave behind radioactive waste.
00:50One of the most recent successful fusion tests used 2 megajoules of energy, but outputted
00:553.88 megajoules.
00:57The next steps will involve scaling the experiments, with the US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm
01:02saying that harnessing fusion energy is one of the greatest scientific and technological
01:07challenges of the 21st century.
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