Britain has joined forces with America to investigate a hi-tech new way of producing 'clean energy' - not from wind or waves, but from firing huge arrays of high-powered lasers at pellets of hydrogen.
The process causes the hydrogen atoms to fuse together into helium - the same reaction found in hydrogen bombs and stars such as our Sun - but in a controlled reaction that could power homes and businesses.
Recent experiments at America's National Ignition Facility (NIF), have produced huge bursts of energy from the technology - using a stadium-sized building housing an array of 192 lasers which fire a 500-terawatt flash at a drop of hydrogen atoms just 1mm across.
Beams at the National Ignition Foundation blast the equivalent of America's entire electricity output into a pellet of hydrogen
For the instant during which NIF's laser is fired, it uses more power than the electricity consumption of the whole of America. But the returns are increasing.
In an experiment this week, a burst of power was released from the fusion reaction that was equivalent to the entire world's consumption.
The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now formally joined forces with the American facility, in a meeting at London's Royal Society.
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