Fusion energy: Strategic imperatives for government-private partnerships

Fusion energy: Strategic imperatives for government-private partnerships Dr. Kurt Schoenberg from Applied Science Enterprises, LLC, in Los Alamos, New Mexico in the U.S., discusses fusion energy with an emphasis on the strategic imperatives for government-private partnerships. For nearly one hundred years, humankind has strived to harness the immense energy potential of nuclear fusion. The dawn of fusion research was aligned with the quantum revolution in physics in the 1920’s. Quantum tunneling calculations indicated that light elements could be fused despite the repulsive Coulomb barrier between nucleons. Experimental research at the Cavendish Laboratory, using beams of deuterium (D), a heavy isotope of hydrogen, discovered the first evidence of deuterium fusion in 1934.