Scientists report nuke fusion

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A tabletop experiment created nuclear fusion — long seen as a potential clean energy solution — under lab conditions, scientists reported.

But the amount of energy produced was too little to be seen as a breakthrough in solving the world’s energy needs.

For years, scientists have sought to harness controllable nuclear fusion, the same power that lights the sun and other stars. This latest experiment relied on a tiny crystal to generate a strong electric field. Although falling short as a way to produce energy, the method could have uses in the oil-drilling industry and homeland security, said Seth Putterman, one of the physicists who conducted the experiment at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The experiment’s results appear in today’s issue of the journal Nature.

Previous claims of tabletop fusion have been met with skepticism and even derision by physicists. In 1989, B. Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and Martin Fleischmann of Southampton University in England shocked the world when they announced that they had achieved so-called cold fusion at room temperature. Their work was discredited after repeated attempts to reproduce it failed.

Fusion researchers noted that the UCLA experiment was credible because, unlike the 1989 work, it didn’t violate basic principles of physics.

“This doesn’t have any controversy in it because they’re using a tried and true method,” said David Ruzic, professor of nuclear and plasma engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Fusion power has been touted as the ultimate energy source and a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Fossil fuels are expected to run short in about 50 years.

In fusion, light atoms are joined in a high-temperature process that frees large amounts of energy.

It is considered environmentally friendly because it produces virtually no air pollution and does not pose the safety and radioactive waste concerns associated with nuclear power plants.