Madison Reporter

Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson isn’t shy about expressing his excitement over developments now coloring the world of fusion ignition.

“Are we close to harnessing the power of the sun for unlimited clean energy,” Larson recently posted to Twitter. “If a recent breakthrough by researchers in CA is any indication, the answer is ‘yes.’ Scientists were able to realize a net energy gain from a lab-created fusion reaction for the first time.”

The U.S. Department of Energy is also taking notice, recently announcing that fusion energy researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have accomplished nuclear fusion. Government officials haven’t been shy about pointing to the developments as huge scientific breakthroughs spurred by years of research, adding that over time they could lead to even more advancements, particularly in the areas of national defense and clean energy.

According to CNBC, nuclear fusion releases a large amount of energy by combining two light nuclei into a heavier one. For roughly the last eight decades, scientists have been working to replicate the sun's fusion energy production on earth. The fusion experiment attempted to generate more energy from the reaction than the laser energy used to cause it. In the experiment that took place on December 5, this ultimately occurred, with the reaction reportedly requiring two megajoules, and producing in the neighborhood of three megajoules.

As the discoveries continue, so too has the growing hope that fusion power plants could soon serve as a budding source of clean and abundant energy, thought he greatest levels of those technological advancements could still be years away.

"You have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that,” said director of the Lawrence Livermore Lab, Kim Budil. “So, you know, probably decades. Not six decades, I don’t think. Not five decades, which is what we used to say. I think it’s moving into the foreground and probably, with concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant."