It's the scientific news of the week. A group of scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy managed to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that generated more energy than it consumed. This is the same reaction that stars produce and has the advantage of not producing radioactive waste, unlike current nuclear power plants, which use a nuclear fission reaction, in which atoms are split. Nuclear fusion could be a game-changing technology for the energy sector.

Scientists have been working on nuclear fusion experiments for decades, which require large amounts of energy. But obtaining more energy than is consumed in the process has been an elusive result.

Despite this, nuclear fusion research is attracting increasing investment from the private sector. According to a report by the consulting firm McKinsey, in 2021 there were 25 companies working on this research, compared to just one at the beginning of the 2000s. Private funding for this research has also increased, from a few tens of thousands of dollars 20 years ago to around $4.4 billion in 2021, directed to laboratories with a commercial, not just scientific, vision. Some of these laboratories have been set up by startups specifically for this purpose, while others are programs derived from university or state research centers.

The emergence of new technologies, such as 3D printing, which allows for the low-cost and rapid production of the complex geometric profiles of the elements that form the walls of fusion machines, as well as the increased computational processing capacity available today, are some of the factors that have made it possible to reduce costs and revitalize developments in the field of nuclear fusion.

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