Americans claim new breakthrough in nuclear fusion, but ‘stable reactor still a ways off’

It is there, at the NIF, that a new breakthrough has been achieved. “At Livermore they apparently came up with a new method to make the reaction even more efficient,” says nuclear physics professor Jef Ongena of the Royal Military Academy. “Then they could have generated an explosion of 2.5 megajoules of energy. Since the lasers used in the experiment itself require 2.1 megajoules of energy, this is called ‘fusion ignition’: the reaction with others has enough energy to sustain itself .