Researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) are celebrating the end of 2022 with a long-awaited result. The team reported yesterday at a press briefing that one of its laser-powered fusion reaction trials produced 1.5 times more energy than it consumed. The result is the second major advance reported this year by the NIF team (see Viewpoint: Fusion Turns Up the Heat). That demonstration produced a gain (the ratio of energy out to energy in) of 0.72, while this experiment achieves a gain greater than one—a first for any fusion experiment. The breakthrough signifies the culmination of over 60 years of work on fusion research, motivated by the dream of clean, abundant energy. However, researchers note that a commercial laser-based fusion reactor remains “decades away.”
To read more, click here.