A “breakthrough” in nuclear fusion with water molecules: The company announced amazing results

Eng8 Not your typical nuclear fusion startup. Most companies try to combine deuterium and tritium, two heavy isotopes of hydrogen, to generate power. This is the same process that powers our sun. ENG8 chose a different approach: incorporating water molecules.

In the company’s reactors, water is heated under pressure to the point of forming plasma. In this super-hot plasma, the atoms that make up water molecules are first ionized and then compressed to form new, heavier elements. This process releases energy in the form of heat, among other things, which can be converted into electricity.

Great claims

a company Claims They made progress by finding a way to lower the temperatures required for fusion. That reports Interesting geometry. Eng8 He also says They do not require rare isotopes of hydrogen as in other experimental fusion reactors. In particular, tritium exists in nature, which is a hydrogen atom with two neutrons in the nucleus very rare.

With the alleged hack ENG8 says They can generate five times the electrical energy needed to start the reaction. This is unprecedented in the world of nuclear fusion. It was the last year Break even for the first time At the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Then was the experimental reaction that lasted only a fraction of a second. However, that was world news.

ENG8 now claims to have already run tests several times that lasted not just milliseconds, but ten minutes. During each test, the amount of electrical energy gained will be much higher than the starting energy required. The tests, ENG8 claims, were conducted by Underwriters Laboratories, an independent certification agency in the United States.

Eat it with a few grains of salt

However, the ENG8’s claims and interesting engineering reports should be taken with a pinch of salt. Never before has a company or fusion lab come close to the miracle numbers claimed by the startup.

Also, no peer-reviewed scientific studies have yet been published on ENG8 reactor technology. Moreover, the information that the company publishes on its website is very poor.

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