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.