On December 20th, 2023 Livermore Lawrence National Lab made history by successfully replicating a historic nuclear fusions 3 times. They say that there’s still a long way to go and the journey has been long and there’s been hardships.

The whole experiment started in 2022 when they first did the reaction which required 2 megajoules and produced 3.15 megajoules. That’s enough megajoules to boil around 10 kettles of water, which is very impressive considering the whole process is very dangerous. The most impressive thing about it is that they copied the process 3 times over the year. With no mishaps or mistakes, and considering how hard it is to make the process work at least once, it’s very impressive feet for the lab.

The second ignition on July 30th had the same 2 megajoules to power up, but this time made 3.88 megajoules. That is the highest amount they have ever recorded. The third ignition had the same reaction yielding the same results but considering nothing bad happened it’s still impressive. The scientists love the breakthrough but still want to improve because this only proved that the fusion could create energy. The next step they want to do is to power up electric grids and heating systems. But the focus they are now moving to is figuring out how to scale up fusion projects and majorly bring down costs.

Secondly, we have the carbon dioxide removal plan announced by the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. On December 11th Lawrence Livermore National Lab researchers completed a high-resolution assessment. They plan to eliminate all greenhouse gasses by 2050 with this plan. They want to remove CO2 from the air and store it at the gigaton scale. Which would mean they would be removing at least a billion tons of CO2 per year. 

Another plus is that it would create more than 400,000 long-term jobs for people around the world. They say it will cost roughly $130 billion in 2050, and some reasons are because they would have to build storage tanks all around the world to help better get rid of the CO2—some more news about the CO2 removal plan better known as the road to removal report. One thing is that it can help with the water quality because if CO2 keeps spreading it would make the water more acidic and dangerous to drink.

The Lawrence Livermore National Lab has made a scientific breakthrough and has a plan for carbon dioxide removal. They did a fusion laser test 3 times and all 3 were successful which is a huge achievement. Also, they have a plan to remove carbon dioxide by 2050 already outlined with how much it would cost. Those were the things happening at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, a fusion laser process 3 times successfully and a carbon dioxide removal plan.