That nuclear fusion, a grail of clean energy, hit “a moment” in the public’s imagination in December came as no surprise to Greg Twinney, CEO of Vancouver-headquartered startup General Fusion.

Fusion, the forcing of hydrogen atoms together under enough pressure to fuse them, is the reaction that powers the sun. Harnessing it holds the tantalizing promise of endless clean energy without emissions or the nasty radioactive waste that comes with nuclear fission.

On Dec. 5, physicists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved fusion for a small fraction of a second, shooting 192 lasers at a tiny fuel core. For the first time, they generated more energy than the energy the lasers blasted into the core.

The moment was called “a landmark achievement” by U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, and “an astonishing scientific advance” with the promise of replacing fossil fuels by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer.

Twinney added the more grounded observation that “it’s a combination of years of incremental progress,” for a process that has been researched for decades.

“But it does demonstrate to the world that fusion isn’t science fiction,” he told the CBC program The Current.

General Fusion was in the process of revealing its own milestone in developing a different method called magnetized target fusion at its facility in Burnaby.

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