Energy analysts tend to agree that nuclear fusion will have to replace fission at power plants to bring back more support for nuclear as a clean energy source. The challenge here will be speeding up the development process and cutting down the huge costs for bringing fusion online as climate change mandates approach. A NASA research project may offer a pathway to making nuclear fusion commercial. The space agency has been releasing results from testing “lattice confinement,” which could transform production scale and bring costs way down for much-anticipated nuclear fusion energy. It may be able to remove, or at least reduce, a key barrier that has kept fusion years away from being deployed. NASA’s lattice confinement method allows fusion-level kinetic energy to come together at room temperatures. Conditions sufficient for fusion are created within the metal lattice that’s held at ambient temperature. The metal lattice is loaded with […]