Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab
Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. &quot;NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program&quot;, &quot;it&#x27;s not actually generating power&quot;, &quot;fusion still 30 years away&quot;.<p>I think it&#x27;s very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are <i>very</i> rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to &quot;solve&quot; inertial fusion.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lasers.llnl.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;papers-presentations" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lasers.llnl.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;papers-presentations</a><p>Getting fusion right is done a magnitude at a time. Right now NIF is within 1 magnitude if they built it with modern laser tech. Many fusion designs are 10 magnitudes away or more.<p>Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lasers.llnl.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;magnetized-targets-boost-nif-implosion-performance" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lasers.llnl.gov&#x2F;news&#x2F;magnetized-targets-boost-nif-im...</a><p>This includes<p>- Cryo-cooling the main target<p>- New alloys<p>- Magnetic compression of targets<p>The recent advancement that helped reach ignition (in the last article) boosted performance 40%.<p>The advancement between then and now: nearly 60%.<p>Within the past 6 months, NIF has nearly doubled energy output of the reaction.<p>Plus, if you know anything about fusion research, you&#x27;d know that energy outputs tend to scale non-linearly with energy input and size. This tends to be on the order of the power 3 or 4. Hence the existence of ITER.<p>NIF has uncovered some new science, closed the magnitude gap, and made it actually realistic for inertial confinement to be a feasible tech for a power producing plant.