Scientists in California shooting nearly 200 lasers at a cylinder holding a fuel capsule the size of a peppercorn have taken another step in the quest for fusion energy, which, if mastered, could provide the world with a near-limitless source of clean power.
Last year on a December morning, scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (LLNL) managed, in a world first, to produce a nuclear fusion reaction that released more energy than it used, in a process called “ignition.”
Now they say they have successfully replicated ignition at least three times this year, according to a December report from the LLNL. This marks another significant step in what could one day be an important solution to the global climate crisis, driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
Read the article.
You’ve convinced me
Listen. I know that pessimism is so widespread that we have to cling to whatever flotsam of hope we can find, but you’re clinging to one of the top-three most unabashedly evil institutions the US maintains.
There’s real progress and hope for fusion, Commonwealth Fusion being one I suggest you look into, but the NIF is not a group to cheer on.
Also, the article is misleading to the point that it might be intentional deception. NIF only hit ‘breakeven’ if you ignore, like this article has, the 400MJ consumed to charge the capacitor banks for this test shot. No fusion system to date has achieved breakeven. All this experiment has done is prove 3 times the discovery of a novel way of increasing yield in a fusion bomb.