Since 1986, humorist and National Public Radio commentator Tom Bodett has been telling Americans about Motel 6. Each commercial ends with the famous tagline he reportedly ad-libbed: “We’ll leave the light on for you.”
Even allowing for time to change bulbs, that’s still nearly 39 years of continuous illumination, which means a lot of electricity usage and the associated environmental impacts such energy consumption entails.
Luckily for Motel 6 and the rest of the world, a cleaner and more plentiful energy supply might be available sooner rather than later.
Scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) have been pursuing nuclear fusion.
According to Jeff Tollefson writing for Nature, these scientists have been using lasers “to compress hydrogen isotopes into a white-hot core, where their nuclei would meld to create helium and enough surplus energy to drive a cascade of fusion reactions [. . .] that was expected to achieve ‘ignition’: when an experiment generates more energy than the laser supplies.”
This was accomplished in December 2022, and on Feb. 5, 2024, the team behind the achievement published a paper in the academic journal Physical Review Letters explaining how they pulled it off.
It’s an exciting and promising development because a controlled fusion reaction would generate abundant electricity without negative consequences.
The use of nuclear fusion to produce energy is “considered by many to be the holy grail of clean energy,” Tom Clynes wrote for IEEE Spectrum, which is a technology magazine and flagship publication for the nonprofit Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “Fusion offers the prospect of a nearly limitless source of energy with no greenhouse gas emissions. And unlike conventional nuclear fission, fusion comes with no risk of meltdowns or weaponization, and no long-lived nuclear waste.”
That’s because nuclear fusion isn’t the same type of fission reaction that current nuclear power plants use.
As Justin Klawans explained in The Week, “Unlike nuclear fission, which splits atoms to create energy, nuclear fusion generates power by combining atoms. It is best known as the process that powers the sun.”
Of course, creating a star on Earth isn’t easy, even if reality television might have us think differently.
For it to become a viable energy alternative, the price of the fuel needs to come down, the reaction has to produce more energy than it consumes in the process, and the size of the confinement system needs to be smaller and scaleable, among other hurdles and challenges.
Still, the progress being made suggests energy derived from nuclear fusion could be keeping those Motel 6 lights on within the next decade, even if some are skeptical.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is not skeptical, though. Rather, they are going all in on nuclear fusion.
According to Laura Paddison of CNN, CFS plans to build “the world’s first grid-scale nuclear fusion power plant” near Richmond, Virginia. “When operational, the plant will be able to plug into the grid and produce 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150,000 homes,” Paddison reported.
After all, a “fusion reaction releases around four million times more energy than burning coal, oil or gas, and four times more than fission,” as reported by Angela Dewan and Ella Nilsen for CNN.
I’m not a nuclear physicist or an energy scientist, so I can’t begin to predict when this will come to fruition. I am a nerd, though, and I am extremely excited by the possibilities of a safe, clean, inexpensive, and renewable energy source.
I hope 2025 proves to be a year of scientific advancement that brings us closer to implementing nuclear fusion as our country’s energy needs.
As Tom Bodett said, “In the America I see from here, anything is possible — especially the impossible.”
Todd R. Vogts, Ph.D., is a native of Canton, a resident of McPherson County, and an assistant professor of media at Sterling College. He can be contacted with questions or comments via his website at www.toddvogts.com.
