Defense contractor Lockheed Martin said Wednesday that it made a breakthrough in developing a power source based on nuclear fusion, the elusive process the company says can generate nearly 10 million times more energy than the same amount of fossil fuels, The Guardian reports.

The paper states:

Tom McGuire, who heads the project, said he and a small team had been working on fusion energy at Lockheed’s secretive Skunk Works for about four years, but were now going public to find potential partners in industry and government for their work.

Initial work demonstrated the feasibility of building a 100-megawatt reactor measuring seven feet by 10 feet, which could fit on the back of a large truck, and is about 10 times smaller than current reactors, McGuire told reporters.

In a statement, the company, the Pentagon’s largest supplier, said it would build and test a compact fusion reactor in less than a year, and build a prototype in five years.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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