US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by simplicio on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @01:25PM (#33973406)

I think the confusion here is at least partially due to most articles obscuring the primary purpose of the NIF. Its not supposed to support commercial energy development, its supposed to support nuclear weapons development under the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, where testing bombs via setting them off is banned.

So the NIF is supposed to give a testbed to study implosion created fusion reactions that produce enough energy to "ignite", that is, propegate the reaction to the rest of a hypothetical bomb. In that case, the amount of energy needed for the infrastructure to produce the initial implosion doesn't matter, what matters is that the energy coming out is more then the actual energy that triggered the reaction, so that the hypothetical bomb would blow up and not fizzle.

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Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by geysersam on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @06:14PM (#33977649)

Exactly! It's so strange this is somehow made to be about fusion as an energy source. I'm happy to announce that Q>>1 has already been achieved on multiple occasions. In the cores of the thermonuclear devices tested by the US and USSR in the 50s. (Unfortunately that technology proved unviable as a path to civilian fusion power.)

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