Hmm. It looks more like it exploded with no ignition. But they think they are close!
A decade and 3,000 failures and they are probably spinning some PR so they don’t get defunded
A decade and 3,000 failures and they are probably spinning some PR so they don’t get defunded
The NIF is the fourth shot at this, and has a target performance about an order of magnitude less power that what experimental tests (using nuclear weapons) indicate is needed to be directly supplied to the fuel.
> The facility is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and is a key element of NNSA’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the reliability and safety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing.
Most of the Department of Energy budget goes towards nuclear weapons, although they also do some work on civilian nuclear power and pure science. The name was always a bit of a euphemism.
Weapons research is one of the top level missions of LLNL [0], where the NIF is located. I guess it’s controversial to some, but it’s not like it’s supposed to be a secret or anything.