An inside look at the fusion reactor promising limitless energy

Scientists and big-name investors like Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are placing their bets on nuclear technology that could essentially recreate a star on earth.

Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita gets an exclusive look at the country’s largest magnetic fusion facility, DIII-D, where researchers are chasing clean energy through a process called nuclear fusion.

Unlike traditional nuclear fission, which splits a large atom apart, fusion smashes two atoms together – producing massive amounts of renewable energy without the release of harmful waste.

Tucked inside the heart of the operation lies the “tokamak.” The stakes are high in this vacuum chamber where temperatures can reach about ten times the core of the sun.

In order to commercialize, nuclear fusion facilities need to generate more energy than the amount of energy it takes to create a reaction. Success here can take us one step closer to charging our world through limitless power.

For more on our NEXT series, click here, and tune in to Yahoo Finance Live for more expert insight and the latest market action, Monday through Friday.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, the process of fusion has long been hailed for its potential to create unlimited amounts of clean energy. But decades of research have yielded few breakthroughs to bring the technology to commercial use. Now there's hope that could change with the emergence of startups backed by major tech investors, including Sam Altman and Bill Gates. I went inside the country's largest magnetic fusion reactor for an exclusive look at how this technology works for our latest episode of Yahoo Finance's NEXT.

[AUDIO LOGO]

Tucked inside the country's largest fusion reactor, researchers are racing to unlock the promise of unlimited amounts of clean energy. We were invited in for an exclusive look.

In addition to this jumpsuit, I've got to put on a hairnet, I've got to put on gloves, some booties, so that I could protect the reactor from any elements that are likely to come inside. All right, let's go in.

- Arms first, heads first, and you're pulling and wiggling yourself in.

- And then right above you is the handle right here.

AKIKO FUJITA: OK. Do I stay on my side? Or can I step-- OK. Whoa. This is harder than it looks. Just get my feet up.

- Yeah.

AKIKO FUJITA: Like really slippery. Whoa. Wow.

- Nailed it. Welcome to D3D.

AKIKO FUJITA: This kind of feels like we're in space, right?

- Some people call it the mothership.

AKIKO FUJITA: It's officially known as the tokamak, a vacuum chamber made up of magnetic coils. Once it's turned on, the plasma created inside is 10 times hotter than the center of the sun.

And you can catch the full episode of NEXT on Monday, April 1st, you can watch it on our site-- yahoofinance.com. And Josh, that was actually a government facility backed by DOE that we went into D3D. But the startups are really interesting. You've got more than 40 companies who are trying to be first here.

To bring this to commercial use, you've got a company like Microsoft, who's already partnered with one of them to bring fusion energy online in 2028, which is a really ambitious timeline, but certainly a really interesting space to watch.

- That's a lot of startups. Any in particular that are really making waves that seem to be out in front?

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, Helium is the one that's made a lot of waves. This is based in Seattle. They've gotten backing from some of the big name backers over in Seattle, including, I believe Bill Gates, well, Sam Altman certainly one of them as well.

Interesting to hear Sam Altman, talk recently about where he sees the promise of fusion energy saying, in order to realize where he thinks AI can really go, you've got to get a new energy source online, and of course fusion, for many, many decades has been hailed as this unlimited source, it just hasn't come to fruition. So there's still a lot of skeptics that are out there that says, startups alone aren't going to get this to commercializationm, those startups of course would disagree.

- Yeah. Good work. I can't wait to watch that, it's going to be good one.