Fusion, The Ultimate Energy SourceAs stable, reliable, cheap, and carbon-neutral energy supplies become an increasingly pressing issue, all eyes have been on nuclear solutions.This includes nuclear fission, or the splitting of heavy atoms like uranium, thorium, or plutonium. This technology is making a dramatic comeback on the back of the phasing out of coal and gas power plants, despite the need for baseload power generation, as well as the trends of electrification of transportation, heating, and industrial production.It is, however, not without problems, even for the more advanced 4th generation of nuclear power plants. Most notably, it still involves the handling of highly radioactive materials, something the public is still wary of and never going to be fully environmentally neutral.This is why scientists have been looking at the promises of nuclear fusion, which merge together atoms like hydrogen, the same phenomenon powering the Sun.This would use a fuel that is the most abundant element in the Universe and produce only harmless helium or lithium. It would also be powerful enough to make available essentially infinite energy, with zero risk of explosion or runaway chain reaction.The problem is that producing the required conditions is so hard to achieve that no fusion reactor has ever come close to commercialization so far.This might change in less than a decade, at least according to Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). The company has just announced that it is moving toward building the first commercial fusion reactor in Virginia .CFS Reactor ProjectCommonwealth Fusion Systems is aiming for its ARC reactor to generate 400 MW for the Virginian power grid, which is enough to power 150,000 homes.This is a radical advancement for the field of nuclear fusion, as it always seemed that the first scale-up reactor was 20-30 years away. Even the massive international endeavor that is ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is not expected to be finished before 2039.In comparison, the CFS reactor is planned to be built on a site owned by the energy company Dominion (D +0.2%)

Does Nuclear Fusion Mean Hot Fusion Only?Nuclear fusion is the Holy Grail of energy research. It would deliver massive amounts of clean energy, producing no nuclear waste or carbon emissions, while using a fuel so abundant that it makes up the majority of matter in the universe.It is also incredibly difficult to achieve, simply because the only way we know for nuclear fusion to occur is to replicate the conditions inside stars, with unfathomable pressure and temperature in the tens or hundreds of millions of degrees.This can be achieved using powerful magnetic fields to contain and compress the ultra-hot plasma. Or with hundreds of powerful lasers all synchronized to aim for the same spot. However, all these methods struggle to sustain the fusion reaction for long enough to “pay back” the energy spent initiating nuclear fusion.The complexity of nuclear fusion technology and its potential to solve our energy problem was discussed in further detail in our article “ Nuclear Fusion – The Ultimate Clean Energy Solution on the Horizon .”But what if nuclear fusion could happen in different circumstances, using material science, rare metals, and chemistry instead of high-power plasma physics?This is the promise of “cold fusion,” a field that was long considered unscientific and derided by the scientific community. This was until a scientific paper was published in the prestigious journal Nature, titled “ Observation of neutron emission during acoustic cavitation of deuterated titanium powder .”History Of Cold FusionIn 1989, researchers Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann claimed to have achieved cold fusion. Unfortunately, years of trying to replicate the findings by the scientific community have, so far, been unsuccessful, leading to accusations of poor-quality science or even outright fraud.The following controversy permanently damaged the image of this concept

The Power Of StarsNuclear power has a bad reputation with many people. It is partly justified, with disasters like Chernobyl or Fukushima having stained its reputation.Other people have the opposite opinion, considering that anything short of splitting atoms is a primitive and inefficient way to produce energy. They also point to the low carbon emissions and highly stable baseload power that nuclear energy can provide.It is likely that nuclear energy will be part of our future energy mix , especially as the 4 th generation of nuclear reactors starts to come online , which will be cleaner, safer, and more efficient.However, all of these reactors rely on the concept of nuclear fission. They take very heavy atoms like uranium, thorium, or plutonium, and collect energy when they break into lighter elements.Another form of nuclear energy is nuclear fusion. It relies on taking very light elements and making them fuse into heavier ones.Nuclear fusion is literally what powers the universe, with every star a gigantic nuclear fusion reactor. Every second, the sun consumes 600 million tons of hydrogen