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Re:Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft by DennisP on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @12:49PM (#35889957)
NIF's lasers are only 1% efficient but they date back to the 1990s. Equivalent modern lasers are over 20% efficient. If they had modern lasers they'd have produced fusion power of about 20% of the input power.

They seem to scale well, too. In their big shot they increased the laser power by 8% and output went up 230%.

That said, compared to Helion it'd still be a lot harder to make a practical reactor with NIF's approach.

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