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Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition. Research Continues
| Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity.
If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible.
No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium.
| Since the experiment last August, the team has been executing series of experiments in an attempt to repeat the performance and to understand the experimental sensitivities in this new regime. "Many variables can impact each experiment," the program's chief scientist said. "The 192 laser beams do not perform exactly the same from shot to shot, the quality of targets varies and the ice layer grows at differing roughness on each target...."
| While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest yield of 170 kJ from February 2021. The data gained from these and other experiments are providing crucial clues as to what went right and what changes are needed in order to repeat that experiment and exceed its performance in the future.
| Efforts to increase fusion performance and robustness are underway via improvements to the laser, to the targets and modifications to the design that further improve energy delivery to the hotspot while maintaining or even increasing the hot-spot pressure. This includes improving the compression of the fusion fuel, increasing the amount of fuel and other avenues.
https://www.llnl.gov/news/three-peer-reviewed-papers-highlight-scientific-results-national-ignition-facility-record
| Counter articles:
https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-breakthrough-nif-uh-not-really
https://www.independent.co.uk/space/fusion-power-breakthrough-studies-b2144190.html?amp
TL;dr, it's not self sustaining yet, but it's closer than ever before.
| >thinking the saudis won't mossad the engineering team whenever they start thinking fusion techn is viable
i wish i was a dreamer too, trust me
| >>888723
Even if its not self sustaining, this is a wild jump in technological advancement from "Cold Fusion is a hoax." Exciting stuff.
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| Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.
https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.106.025202
https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.106.025201
https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.075001