Projected timetables for when this will happen vary, but the ultimate exhaustion of fossil fuel supplies is a certainty. Alternative energy sources must be found. Arguably, the most promising alternative is fusion, the energy source that lights up the sun and every other star. And two U.S. Department of Energy laboratories are combining forces to solve the technological challenges that might bring this stellar energy down to earth. Fusion, the reaction that ignites the sun, would be a clean, safe, and virtually inexhaustible source of energy.
Fusion takes place when lighter atomic nuclei are combined to form heavier nuclei.
It is a reaction that releases roughly one million times the energy released by the burning of oil. Enough fusion water to supply a year s worth of electrical power to a metropolitan city could be delivered in a pickup truck. Unlike the burning of oil or other fossil fuels, a fusion reaction does not contribute to global warming. One approach to harnessing fusion as a power source is a technique called inertial fusion energy. In an IFE reactor, pea-sized capsules of fusion fuel are heated so quickly and uniformly, they burn while confined by their own inertia.