Every time the plasma physicists at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, fire a shot on their fusion reactor, a big chunk of the hardware goes up in smoke. Their Z machine contains banks of capacitors that fill up with more electrical energy than a thousand lightning bolts. With the flip of a switch, 20 million amps surge toward a fuel-filled cylinder the size of a pencil eraser. The electrical current induces an overwhelming magnetic field, which pinches the tube so fast and furiously that hydrogen atoms inside fuse into helium, releasing a blast of high-energy neutrons and helium nuclei, as the fusion reaction is born.
The Machine That Could Bring Us Fusion Power
