Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away".
I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations
Getting fusion right is done a magnitude at a time. Right now NIF is within 1 magnitude if they built it with modern laser tech. Many fusion designs are 10 magnitudes away or more.
Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps:
https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-im...
This includes
- Cryo-cooling the main target
- New alloys
- Magnetic compression of targets
The recent advancement that helped reach ignition (in the last article) boosted performance 40%.
The advancement between then and now: nearly 60%.
Within the past 6 months, NIF has nearly doubled energy output of the reaction.
Plus, if you know anything about fusion research, you'd know that energy outputs tend to scale non-linearly with energy input and size. This tends to be on the order of the power 3 or 4. Hence the existence of ITER.
NIF has uncovered some new science, closed the magnitude gap, and made it actually realistic for inertial confinement to be a feasible tech for a power producing plant.
I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations
Getting fusion right is done a magnitude at a time. Right now NIF is within 1 magnitude if they built it with modern laser tech. Many fusion designs are 10 magnitudes away or more.
Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps:
https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-im...
This includes
- Cryo-cooling the main target
- New alloys
- Magnetic compression of targets
The recent advancement that helped reach ignition (in the last article) boosted performance 40%.
The advancement between then and now: nearly 60%.
Within the past 6 months, NIF has nearly doubled energy output of the reaction.
Plus, if you know anything about fusion research, you'd know that energy outputs tend to scale non-linearly with energy input and size. This tends to be on the order of the power 3 or 4. Hence the existence of ITER.
NIF has uncovered some new science, closed the magnitude gap, and made it actually realistic for inertial confinement to be a feasible tech for a power producing plant.