National Ignition Facility

Assembled from 33 blocks · 4 evidence · 23 related

1. Story
2. The National Ignition Facility is a 192-beam laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, completed in 2009. Its primary mission is stockpile stewardship — studying thermonuclear conditions without nuclear testing — with inertial fusion energy science as a second purpose, a distinction often lost in coverage of its results. NIF fires a few shots per day at most, far from any duty cycle relevant to a power station, and its lasers are extremely inefficient: roughly 300 to 400 MJ is drawn from the grid, with about 330 MJ stored in capacitor banks, to deliver roughly 2 MJ of ultraviolet light to a target. On 5 December 2022 it became the first laboratory to produce more fusion energy from a target than the laser energy delivered to that target. It has since repeated and exceeded that result several times.
3. Knowledge
4. Inertial confinement fusion
5. National Ignition Facility
6. Breakeven
7. Connections
8. Breakeven
9. Inertial confinement fusion
10. Fusion energy gain (Q) and target gain
11. NIF exceeds the Lawson criterion for ignition
12. NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time
13. NIF repeats target gain and raises the yield to 3.88 MJ
14. NIF achieves ignition for the sixth time
15. NIF reaches 8.6 MJ yield and a target gain of 4.13
16. National Ignition Facility
17. Fusion energy gain (Q) and target gain
18. Plasma-facing materials and first wall
19. NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time
20. NIF reaches 8.6 MJ yield and a target gain of 4.13
21. Tritium
22. Fusion triple product (n·T·τ_E)
23. National Ignition Facility
24. NIF exceeds the Lawson criterion for ignition
25. NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time
26. NIF repeats target gain and raises the yield to 3.88 MJ
27. NIF achieves ignition for the sixth time
28. NIF reaches 8.6 MJ yield and a target gain of 4.13
29. Evidence
30. On 5 December 2022 a NIF indirect-drive implosion achieved a target gain of 1.5, with 2.05 MJ of 351 nm laser light producing about 3.1 MJ of fusion yield and significantly exceeding the Lawson criterion for ignition
31. The laboratory's own statement of the December 2022 energy figures, of the repeat target-gain shots in 2023, and of the 1,370-author PRL paper
32. The energy actually drawn from the grid to fire a NIF ignition shot exceeds the fusion yield by roughly two orders of magnitude, so target gain above unity is not wall-plug breakeven
33. NIF's highest reported fusion yield and target gain to date, and the cadence of repeat ignition shots since December 2022