Here's the paper.<p><a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13008.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...</a><p>They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, <i>nature</i>-ally.<p>The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289</a><p>[WaPo] <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fusion-energy-milestone-reported-by-california-scientists/2014/02/12/f511ed18-936b-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fusion...</a><p>The "1%" energy efficiency figure [a] is misleading: 14 kJ is about 1% of 1.5 MJ of ultraviolet light hitting the fuel capsule. But creating that UV pulse consumed 3 MJ of infrared light, which in turn took 400 MJ from the flash bulbs driving the IR laser. So the system efficiency is more like 0.003% (and throwing in hypothetical turbines to generate electricity, 0.001%).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#NIF_and_ICF" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#NIF...</a><p>[a] I'm referring to this: <i>"while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser's energy ever reached the fuel."</i><p>(update: from yosyp's link, the fusion figures were 14.4 kJ, and 17.3 kJ, on two different runs:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227950" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7227950</a>
> led NIF's critics to label the facility an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars<p>> government shifted NIF away from its fusion goals to focus on its other mission: <i>simulating the conditions inside nuclear weapons</i><p>I think right there lies the problem with our world. People take up more issue with a multi-billion dollar research facility for science than one for military applications. If we spent a small fraction of the world's military spending on these big, as Google likes to put it, moonshot projects we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future vs. waiting many, many decades (if not centuries).
This sentiment is interesting "Over the past few years, NIF has been getting a fat 'F.'" Perhaps now that 'grade' will change.<p>Actually, I think framing it as a grade is beyond silly; it is irresponsible. Giving a letter grade to long-term scientific project makes little sense. It is not a one-shot thing with a predefined notion of correctness. What can we compare such a grade to?<p>Instead, we should be asking what we've learned and how the project has advanced science.
This is newsworthy despite "They didn't get more fusion power out than they put in with the laser"?<p>After decades of work they are orders of magnitude away from break-even. Makes me wonder if the goal is actually break-even and/or power generation. Not really; but it's a revealing question.<p>I'm no great fan of the budgets these huge projects pull down; I think the bang-for-the-buck is greater elsewhere. But modelling nuclear weapons is an even greater waste of time. It's all kind of a sad epigraph about national science and technology initiatives.<p>Assuming the modest proposition that fusion energy is possible, why not make fusion energy a 'man on the moon' kind of national goal? It's hardly in doubt that we need a large source of clean energy. Is it a failure of imagination? Is it a failure of the political system - Can't get Bubba to vote for no fusion thing. Is the status quo energy system resistant to change? Whatever, the NIF thing just makes me depressed.
<i>"Strictly speaking, while more energy came from fusion than went into the hydrogen fuel, only about 1 percent of the laser's energy ever reached the fuel. Useful levels of fusion are still a long way off."</i><p>The rest was lost to energy conversion losses. Yeah, not the best breakthrough I've heard today. Their best breakthrough was this CAD-flythrough video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sp1sDpn_M0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sp1sDpn_M0</a>
It was always my understanding that achieving nuclear fusion wasn't the problem. You can do that with a tabletop device like a Farnsworth Fusor.
The hard part is getting more energy out of it than you put in.
Wasn't this milestone reached sometime late last year? I remember writing about it: <a href="http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2013/10/08/fusion-milestone-reached-many-more-to-go/" rel="nofollow">http://www.therefinedgeek.com.au/index.php/2013/10/08/fusion...</a>
<i>Hurricane says no one knows for sure whether NIF can really reach the point of ignition. "It's not up to me; it's up to Mother Nature," he says. "But we're certainly going to try."</i>
Explained on reddit very well:
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1xq78u/scientists_have_created_nuclear_fusion/cfdmt5k" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/1xq78u/scientists_h...</a>
One of the proposed drives for the Daedalus starship design involved laser fusion. The pellet would detonate and would push against a magnetic nozzle to produce thrust, like the Orion nuclear craft, but more efficient. Also, the expanding magnetic fields could cause induced currents in networks of wires designed to capture energy, powering the ship and the next detonation.
Link to LLNL release:
<a href="https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2014/Feb/NR-14-02-06.html#.Uvwt3EJdWio" rel="nofollow">https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2014/Feb/NR-14-02-06....</a>
After the Fleischmann–Pons Cold fusion debacle of the late 1980's at least journalists are asking the right questions.<p>did you get more energy out than you put in?<p>Fusion is hard.
Oh please. That whole "fusion" thing from that facility is a trick to get taxpayers to fund more nuclear weapon research.<p>We should have finished this instead, what a waste:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider</a><p>Take a guess why congress only funded the one useful for weapons.
It all fits into my evil plan! You see, I plan to use this "laser" to turn the moon into a weapon. With this "death star", all the governments of the world will be powerless against me! If they try to stop me, I'll use the "death star" to create "nuclear fusion"! [holds right pinky to the corner of his mouth]