Irish Examiner view: Nuclear breakthrough is a win in the battle against climate change

The dream of producing a clean energy source is now just a “few decades” away, rather than the 50 or 60 previously expected.

The NIF Target Bay in Livermore, California, which uses laser beams converging to make a tiny hydrogen fuel pellet implode, producing energy.  Picture: Damien Jemison/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/AP

While it comes with a number of caveats, news that scientists have made a historic breakthrough in fusion technology, is an important and optimism-generating milestone on the tortuous road to producing clean energy.

Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California “will go down in the history books”, to quote US energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, for producing more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it. 

The achievement opens up the possibility of finding a way to mimic the life-sustaining energy of the sun and, ultimately, developing an energy source that does not produce the greenhouse gases caused by burning fossil fuels.

There are significant hurdles to overcome before it becomes a commercial reality. Now, however, the dream is just a “few decades” away, rather than the 50 or 60 years that was previously expected.

Researchers say fusion technology is moving into the foreground and, with a concerted effort and investment, they might be in a position to build a power plant sooner than was thought. 

The key words there are “concerted effort” and “investment”, vital components that have been missing from so many climate action programmes worldwide. If we are to achieve our goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, we have to draw on every possible avenue to do that.

And, as we saw with the unexpectedly swift development of a Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic, science has an often underrated role to play.

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