Any truth to that?
Any truth to that?
Modern lasers can also repeat shots much more quickly. Power gain on the capsules appears to scale faster than linear with the input power, so getting to practical gain might not be as far off as it appears at first glance.
These are some of the reasons that various fusion startups are pursuing laser fusion for power plants.
https://physicsworld.com/a/national-ignition-facilitys-ignit...
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/Online/31501/The-commercia...
NIF's latest shot is 2 MJ in, 7 MJ out[1], for a 3.5X fusion gain. So they've got an order of magnitude to go before getting to modestly practical levels. NIF seems to scale much better than linear with respect to the laser power, so an order of magnitude better gain is probably not a big change to the device.
(This does neglect energy loss in the hohlraum, so it assumes that direct drive laser fusion will get similar results. There are several projects working on that. Based on another comment here[2], the main reason for the hohlraum was that it made the experiment more relevant to weapons.)
[1] https://physicsworld.com/a/fusion-industry-meets-in-london-t...
Btw, NIF achieved those recent results by adding strong magnetic field around the target (penny-shrinkers knew that tech for 20+ years :). There are other things like this around that can potentially be similarly useful. Only if somebody had money and interest ...
I know motor windings have gotten pretty funky of late to do a little bit of this, but do they do multi tesla magnetic fields that use several different windings to create the same sorts of bias in field strength? The ITER windings seem to be an extremely mild form of this.
Bear in mind that I wasn't directly involved, and this my impression picked up from conversations during my time in fusion research, which was about 10 years ago.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/what-is-nif
>NIF is a key element of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the reliability, security, and safety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing.
So it seems more likely to me that some physicists figured out how to get their fusion power research funded under the guise of weapons research, since that's where the money is. NIF's original intent was mostly weapons research but it's turned out to be really useful for both, and these days, various companies are attempting to commercialize the technology for power plants.[3]
[1] https://theaviationist.com/2025/04/26/us-nuclear-weapons-wil...
[2] https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/congress-provides-...
[3] NYTimes: https://archive.is/BCsf5
The purpose of it is to show that the USA is still capable of producing advanced hydrogen bombs. More advanced then anybody else.
The '2.05 megajoules' is only a estimation of the laser energy actually used to trigger the reaction. It ignores how much power it took to actually run the lasers or reactor. Even if they update the lasers with modern ones there is zero chance of it ever actually breaking even. It is a technological dead end as far as power generation goes.
The point of the 'breakthrough' is really more about ensuring continued Congressional approval for funding then anything else. They are being paid to impress and certainly they succeeded in that.
However I suspect this is true of almost all 'fusion breakthroughs'. They publish updates to ensure continued funding from their respective governments.
People will argue that this is a good thing since it helps ensure that scientists continue to be employed and publishing research papers. That sentiment is likely true in that it does help keep people employed, but if your goal is to have a working and economically viable fusion power plant within your lifetime it isn't a good way to go about things.
If the governments actually cared about CO2 and man-made global warming they would be investing in fusion technology and helping to develop ways to recycle nuclear waste usefully. Got to walk before you can run.