Nuclear-fusion lab achieves ‘ignition’: what does it mean?
“However, while the fusion reactions may have produced more than 3 megajoules of energy — more than was delivered to the target — NIF’s 192 lasers consumed 322 megajoules of energy in the process.”Well that says it all right there and really cuts through all the fluff on this story. Sounds like a nice milestone that has absolutely nothing to do with our ability to get a useful amount of energy back out. We are still at least 2 orders of magnitude away from a power source.