Nuclear fusion, finally?

The actual story is neat.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.075001

This is the same facility that last year was able to briefly get a self-heating nuclear fusion reaction. Then earlier this year it was able to cross the Lawson criterion- create a nuclear fusion reaction that generated more heat than it lost to the environment- and generated 70% of the energy they put into the fuel. Now they say they have generated 120% of the energy as the lasers put into the reaction.

Now for the caveats. The lasers take a lot of energy. And for any sort of commercial product at scale, there will be losses from energy collection and distribution. So the net gain here has to be many magnitudes larger. But this is an important demonstration of theory. Scientists have analogized this to an embryo with the eventual commercial product being a college graduate.

The eventual commercial product may in fact use a different design than what this facility uses. This facility uses inertial confinement fusion, but a competing method uses magnetic fields as containment for the fusion fuel.

The energy secretary will have a press briefing tomorrow on the results.