In a sense NIF, the world’s highest-energy laser system, is one big laser amplifier. As with most large lasers, NIF uses intense flashes of white light from giant flashlamps to “pump” electrons in large slabs of laser glass to a higher-energy state that lasts only about one-millionth of a second. On Aug. 8, 2021, an experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) made a significant step toward ignition, achieving a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ). In December 2022, after more than a decade of effort and frustration, scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had set a world record by producing a fusion...
In December 2022, after more than a decade of effort and frustration, scientists at the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced that they had set a world record by producing a fusion... NIF enables scientists from across the nation and around the world to conduct unprecedented experiments in nuclear physics, high energy density science, materials science, weapon physics, and many other scientific disciplines. National Ignition Facility Overview. 1.1. National Ignition Facility and Users. 1.2. History. 2. Governance, Roles and Metrics. 2.1. Governance Plan. 2.2. Time Allocation and Experiment. NIF Experiments and Record-Breaking Results. The inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiment at NIF on February 10, 2024, produced 5.2 megajoules (MJ) of energy. That record-breaking shot also resulted in the highest target gain, about 2.3 times more energy than laser beams delivered. Since it opened in 2009, NIF has pursued one approach to the challenge: forcing those hydrogen atoms together by hitting them with powerful laser beams with the goal of reaching ignition, as...
National Ignition Facility Overview. 1.1. National Ignition Facility and Users. 1.2. History. 2. Governance, Roles and Metrics. 2.1. Governance Plan. 2.2. Time Allocation and Experiment. NIF Experiments and Record-Breaking Results. The inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiment at NIF on February 10, 2024, produced 5.2 megajoules (MJ) of energy. That record-breaking shot also resulted in the highest target gain, about 2.3 times more energy than laser beams delivered. Since it opened in 2009, NIF has pursued one approach to the challenge: forcing those hydrogen atoms together by hitting them with powerful laser beams with the goal of reaching ignition, as... On Dec. 5, a team at LLNL’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) conducted the first controlled fusion experiment in history to reach this milestone, also known as scientific energy breakeven, meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it.