I am wrong. These reactors are more like a coal fired boiler. Instead of nozzles to control the fireball magnets and lasers are used.
Does this have potential to replace short arc for searchlights?
I do not buy it for a second, the lab is asking for more gvmnt grants, and since political climate today is very anti fossil fuels, they saw it as right timing, it is also doubles as distraction, not everyone happy what white house is doing these days, they have totally wrong priorities, but that is for another thread.
Ha yeah totally agree dude.
I’m surprised no one is asking the important question here… when can I buy a 1 megawatt handheld nuclear fusion flashlight?
But i want to live 
Probably soon after we figure out how to make Adamantium
Twenty years away for the last Twenty years
I’m still waiting for The Omega Molecule…
The National Ignition Facility team has been working on this with great determination for over a decade, and they have faced more challenges than they anticipated achieving the heating symmetry and/or duration of confinement needed to reach unity. Over the last year or so, they have been working on a significant change that complements the inertial confinement technique with magnetic confinement, which has resulted in significant progress in recent months.
The White House has nothing to do with this. The project spans 5 presidential administrations.
Not to mention, the NIF is not an energy generation project. The NIF research helps understand the deepest details of fusion reactions. What they learn should be helpful for the energy projects like ITER, but there is no major effort at this time to develop inertial confinement fusion into a viable powerplant.
The big energy project in the fusion world is the ITER magnetic confinement fusion test reactor, currently under construction. There is also the possibility one of the more novel techniques that have been proposed in recent years and are being worked on by a variety of research or private organizations might demonstrate a breakthrough that leapfrogs them ahead of ITER. Time will tell.
With that said, I don’t want to downplay the significance of this achievement to the NIF team. They have been working on this a long time, and it took a lot of ingenuity and perseverance to get here. It’s just not as significant to the goal of developing a fusion power plant as the media keeps making it out to be.
Hi everyone, please be careful to avoid the political aspects of this topic.
Think about it, have you ever seen or heard of a device that could deliver “Over-Unity”? More power or energy Out, than In?
There are a multitude of such claims on utoob and websticle sites. Even some patents that have wink-wink indirect claims of OU.
OU is a holy grail that doesn’t exist.
The mass and gravitational field provide the energy and confinement for that big fusion ball in the sky that is the Sun. But even the Sun has to pay the price and it’s on a one-way ticket to midnight.
Vast majority of people believe OU is getting more energy than you puit it, this is a flawed way of thinking, you do not get more, you just take energy from where it is believed by many, there isn't any. We have very limited knowledge how universe works, i have little doubts there are vast amounts of energy around us that we've yet to discover. no one questions hydro, solar or wind power. yet it is energy that is free around us, we falsely believe that this is all there is we can tap into. I have no doubt some who are not bound by these beliefs will find, or may have already found new sources, and know how to get energy from them, It is in no way getting more than putting in, it is just getting it from places we do not yet believe possible.
When I was younger, I thought fusion and fusion disintegrated some of the subatomic particles and converted them to energy. I was quite surprised to learn that fission for instance releases binding energy and no particles are converted to energy (E=mc2). Some fusion reactions change protons to neutrons though, like protium fusion in the sun
Not very impressed yet. 2 megajoules of laser energy produced 3 megajoules of fusion energy, but it took 300 megajoules from the grid to produce those 2 megajoules of laser energy. Net loss of 297 megajoules from the whole operation isn’t really noteworthy.
Baby steps.
no but the lasers are old and inefficient
yeah but not one killing the atmosphere
50 years away, always
:+1: Well said, thank you!
Yes it is a magnificent achievement for sure. Perhaps they’ll find a way to keep dropping pellets in one after another into the baby Star and not need to use as much (or any) laser input power.
Sounds so simple, just get some hydrogen pellets.
how much energy and $$$ does it take to package hydrogen in a “pellet”?
Is it solid, liquid or gaseous?
Is it molecular H2 or atomic H ? 