[freebeard]

The clock started seven decades ago.

“Fusion research has been going on since the early 50s, and this is the first time in the laboratory that fusion has ever produced more energy than it consumed,” says Campbell.

The experiment safely qualifies as ignition, a benchmark measure for fusion reactions that focuses on how much energy went into the target compared to how much energy was released. However, while the fusion reactions may have produced more than 3 megajoules of energy — more than was delivered to the target — NIF’s 192 lasers consumed 322 megajoules of energy in the process.

“It’s a big milestone, but NIF is not a fusion-energy device,” says Dave Hammer, a nuclear engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
[snip]
Why are these results significant?
At one level, it’s about proving what is possible, and on that front many scientists have hailed the result as a milestone in fusion science. But the results carry particular significance at NIF: the facility was designed to help nuclear-weapons scientists to study the intense heat and pressures that occur inside thermonuclear explosions, and that is possible only if the facility produces high-yield fusion reactions.

.... Bodner says the big question now is what the Department of Energy will do next: double down on weapons research at NIF or pivot to a laser programme that is specifically geared toward fusion-energy research.

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7