Previous Fusion experiments, even though we could get Fusion reactions to occur, required more energy to start and sustain the reaction than was generated from it. For the first time, more was generated from the reaction than put in.
Note that while this is important progress, it's a bit of specific accounting. The entire system still requires more energy input than output, but this isolated piece can now output a little more than input.
> This is indeed a promising and exciting result, but we need to remember that this does not take into account the energy required to run the lasers that confine the reaction and other inefficiencies and losses.
Their goal was to produce a fusion reaction not to improve laser efficiency. That's a bit like complaining they didn't account for the energy used to structure the fuel. I don't think it's 'specific accounting' when (output/input)>1 was their goal from the start
The goal in the eyes of the layman is to produce a stable fusion reaction that outputs more than input.
While this is great progress, I feel that it's important to have the full picture. There's a lot of "fusion reaction breakthrough fatigue" stemming from the misunderstanding that fusion power isn't a technology that requires a singular breakthrough.
There are many breakthroughs required to get to fusion powered energy, and this is an important one (worth celebrating) on a long road ahead.
yeah but why is that a worthy goal? does anyone know how to make the lasers 100x more efficient? or did we shift the problem from one impossibility (efficient fusion) to another (efficient lasers)
Because their mandate is to study a different part of the puzzle from what the laser researchers do. The NIF uses really old laser tech, and in parallel the world has moved onto 20x more efficient lasers. The NIF just wanted to prove they could get a laser (bad one) to hit a pellet and the pellet would send out more energy than the laser put on it. Improving the laser, improving the pellet materials, improving transfer from pellet to usable energy are all different problems being solved by different people.
Since there will necessarily be overhead in any kind of finished design, this "threshold" is an arbitrary one to pass, no more significant that 90% or 125%, or any other round number.
We don't have a commercially viable technology here yet, but we've proven that it's at least viable for the part that needs to produce energy actually can produce energy.
As I understand it, now we start down the road of improving the ratio and optimizing the process.
FWIW, from my lay perspective it seems like the research NIF is doing is significantly smaller scale than the work being done elsewhere. That's a good thing in this case, because the output:input ration - the Q - seems to increase exponentially relative to input power.
It is an obvious necessary condition that input power < output power, however merely satisfying this could have no special practical significance for any design that could end up being devised. The obviousness of that condition is what makes this a PR accomplishment only.
sounds more like someone tells you “hey, I finally found how to do fusion, I just need one more thing, a super efficient laser that no one has built before”
