San Diego-based General Atomics applauded a White House plan unveiled Tuesday to encourage global commercialization of nuclear fusion to produce clean electricity.
U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry announced the international engagement plan to boost nuclear fusion, saying the emissions-free technology could become a vital tool in the fight against climate change.
Kerry said the plan involved 35 nations and would focus on research and development, supply chain issues, regulation and safety.
“The world is increasingly recognizing the transformative potential of fusion energy,” said Dr. Anantha Krishnan, senior vice president of the General Atomics Energy Group, after the announcement.
“International collaborations have played an important role in advancing fusion, and this strategy will ensure we continue to marshal the very best talent and capabilities across the globe as we address the remaining science and engineering challenges for commercializing fusion,” Krishnan said. “As a longstanding partner of the U.S. Department of Energy, we look forward to continuing to support this effort as we work together to make fusion energy a reality.”
Fusion, which powers the sun and other stars, can be replicated on Earth with heat and pressure using lasers or magnets to fuse hydrogen atoms into denser ones of helium, converting matter into energy.
The nascent technology could have an important advantage over today’s nuclear fission plants by producing huge amounts of power without long-lasting radioactive waste.
In August, scientists using laser beams at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California repeated a fusion breakthrough called ignition where for an instant the amount of energy coming from the fusion reaction surpassed that concentrated on the target.
Of the two main types of fusion, one uses lasers to concentrate energy on a pellet containing hydrogen. The other uses powerful magnets to trap a plasma of hydrogen heated to 100 million degrees.
General Atomics is involved in both approaches, and manages the the DIII-D National Fusion Facility on the UC San Diego campus.
Reuters contributed to this article.