<story><title>Nuclear-fusion lab achieves ‘ignition’: what does it mean?</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>isoprophlex</author><text>So, they generated 3.15 MJ energy from the target, at a cost of an input of 2.05 MJ laser light. Pretty exciting.&lt;p&gt;However those lasers aren&amp;#x27;t very efficient, generating the 2.05 MJ required more than 300 MJ of electricity.&lt;p&gt;What is the path forward... Can anyone elaborate? Do we make the lasers 100x more efficient? Will hitting a target with a 100x mass yield 315 MJ?&lt;p&gt;Edit: thanks everyone for the clarification. Really helps me putting the numbers in context.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>femto113</author><text>Scaling the NIF&amp;#x27;s approach (laser inertial confinement) isn&amp;#x27;t about more reaction mass per pulse, it&amp;#x27;s about more frequent pulses, and is probably not going to be practical or cost effective in the foreseeable future.  The fuel pellets are tiny (~2mm), their container is only about 1cm and must be nearly perfectly spherical.  A continuous power plant would consume about half a million of them per day (6 per second), all of which need to be shot with perfect timing, precision, and reliability to the exact center of the laser sphere.  My guess is magnetic systems are much more likely to ever be used in power generation.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nuclear-fusion lab achieves ‘ignition’: what does it mean?</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>isoprophlex</author><text>So, they generated 3.15 MJ energy from the target, at a cost of an input of 2.05 MJ laser light. Pretty exciting.&lt;p&gt;However those lasers aren&amp;#x27;t very efficient, generating the 2.05 MJ required more than 300 MJ of electricity.&lt;p&gt;What is the path forward... Can anyone elaborate? Do we make the lasers 100x more efficient? Will hitting a target with a 100x mass yield 315 MJ?&lt;p&gt;Edit: thanks everyone for the clarification. Really helps me putting the numbers in context.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lordnacho</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t get it. Wouldn&amp;#x27;t that mean it required 302.05MJ to get 3.15MJ?</text></comment>