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NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time

At the National Ignition Facility, 2.05 MJ of 351 nm ultraviolet laser light delivered to an indirect-drive target produced a total fusion yield reported in Physical Review Letters as approximately 3.1 MJ, and in the laboratory's public announcement as 3.15 MJ, giving a target gain of about 1.5 and significantly exceeding the Lawson criterion for ignition. This is scientific breakeven with respect to the laser energy delivered to the target, and it is the first time any laboratory achieved it. It is not wall-plug breakeven: firing that shot required on the order of 300 to 400 MJ drawn from the electrical grid, with about 330 MJ stored in the capacitor banks, an overall efficiency well below one percent. No electricity was generated. The Physical Review Letters paper reporting the result carried more than 1,370 authors from 44 institutions.

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Recorded on National Ignition Facility

  1. JET's DTE1 campaign sets the first deuterium-tritium fusion power record
  2. JET's DTE2 campaign releases 59 MJ in a single pulse
  3. NIF exceeds the Lawson criterion for ignition
  4. NIF achieves target gain greater than unity for the first time
  5. JET ceases plasma operations after 105,842 pulses
  6. NIF repeats target gain and raises the yield to 3.88 MJ
  7. JET sets the single-pulse fusion energy record of 69.26 MJ
  8. NIF achieves ignition for the sixth time
  9. NIF reaches 8.6 MJ yield and a target gain of 4.13
  10. Commonwealth Fusion Systems' declared target for net energy gain at SPARC
  11. ITER's declared target date for the start of deuterium-tritium operation

Related

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