 LLNL |
At the National Ignition Facility, the power of 192 lasers will be focused on a gold-plated cylinder like this one, containing a pea-sized pellet of fusion fuel. |
Experiments at the National Ignition Facility have given researchers confidence that they’ll achieve a milestone in nuclear fusion sometime this year.
The tests involved blasting a cylinder the size of a pencil eraser, known as a “hohlraum,” with 192 laser beams and seeing whether researchers could tweak the energy to create the right kind of implosion. The results suggested that they could – and that the $3.5 billion blaster in California just might produce the world’s first controlled fusion reaction, with more energy coming out than going in.
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