Scientific American:

Fusion researchers at the U.S. National Ignition Facility created a reaction that made more energy than they put in

By Jeff Tollefson, Elizabeth Gibney, Nature magazine

Scientists at the world’s largest nuclear-fusion facility have achieved the phenomenon known as ignition—creating a nuclear reaction that generates more energy than it consumes. Results of the breakthrough at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF), conducted on 5 December and announced today by US President Joe Biden’s administration, has excited the global fusion-research community. That research aims to harness nuclear fusion—the phenomenon that powers the Sun—to provide a source of near-limitless clean energy on Earth.

“It’s an incredible accomplishment,” says Mark Herrmann, the deputy director for fundamental weapons physics at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which houses the fusion laboratory. The landmark experiment follows years of work by multiple teams on everything from lasers and optics to targets and computer models, Herrmann says. “That is of course what we are celebrating.”

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