Nuclear Fusion Milestone Reached: More Energy Out Than In

From Latest Items from TreeHugger:

Although the National Ignition Facility (NIF) news page remains silent on the matter, the BBC reports that an NIF experiment in late September achieved the first step towards harnessing the power of the sun here on earth -- they got more energy out of a fuel burn than was put into it. The achievement falls short of the NIF's stated definition of "ignition", which requires that the fuel burn release more energy than all of the energy used by the machine. To be clear, at this point they achieved a release of energy greater than that which the laser beams put into the fuel capsule. Only about 10-20% of the laser energy actually reaches the capsule, with the rest of the energy going to heat the chamber, scattering or escaping, or to other losses.

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