Fusion Scientists Make 'Burning Plasma' Breakthrough With 129-Laser Experiment

The scientists at NIF, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, showcased a method for heating plasma to the incredibly high temperatures required, using the fusion reaction itself., study co-lead Alex Zylstra said"to get fusion we have to get the fuel very hot—something like 100 million degrees—and historically people have done that by heating the fuel.

two-millimeter capsule containing thermonuclear fuel. The laser blast causes the fuel to heat and compress, which in turn makes the fuel, composed of deuterium and tritium, fuse into a helium atom. The scientists were able to extract a yield of 170 kilojoules from the peppercorn-sized capsule of thermonuclear fuel. While that isn't a massive amount of energy in and of itself, the researchers believe the experiment can be scaled for full-scale fusion experiments.

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