Project
Laser-driven inertial confinement fusion facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, first to achieve net-energy-gain fusion ignition.
Ryan Lester and colleagues put windows in the gold cylinder that confines a National Ignition Facility shot. The escaping pulse reached tens of trillions of watts, on a par with the brightness of some red dwarf stars.
Reality
Xcimer took investment from RTX Ventures and Pacific Fusion signed an agreement with the NNSA. TechCrunch's reporting shows defense interest landing on machines that already exist, with both plant programs still running.
Reality
A corrected melting curve for carbon is the real product here. It does double duty, governing where diamond turns liquid inside Neptune and how hard a fusion capsule should be hit on the first shock.
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Ground broke on August 25 on a $1 billion, 156-module pulsed machine aiming at net facility gain by 2030. The commercial gap is five times the output and 86,400 shots a day.
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The startup says crystal growth now takes 30 minutes instead of up to a week, and a whole pellet two to three hours. Nine of its ten stated barriers remain.
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