“The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory experiment shows that scientists can get more energy out than put in by the laser itself. This is great progress indeed, but still more is needed: first we need to get much more out that is put in so to account for losses in generating the laser light etc (although the technology for creating efficient lasers has also leapt forward in recent years). Secondly, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could in principle produce this sort of result about once a day – a fusion power plant would need to do it ten times per second. However, the important takeaway point is that the basic science is now clearly well understood, and this should spur further investment. It is encouraging to see that the private sector is starting to wake up to the possibilities, although still long term, of these important emerging technologies.”
Yes, _but_ the problem of generating laser light efficiently has and is being
solved for elsewhere. Which is why the NIF didn't focus on, or update their lasers. This is a major problem for semiconductor lithography for example, and receives literally tens of billions in investment every year and one which has lasers that are already 20x more efficient than the ones used by the NIF.
The real question in the experiments here at NIF was about whether inertial confinement fusion would work. This is very promising progress.
Also NIF spends a good portion of its time on weapons research, not fusion power so it's only been a recent focus.
The loss just on the lasers is 100x (i.e. delivered power is 1% of the input energy). Add in a combined cycle effeciency of only 50%, you're looking at needing a 200x improvement to have commercially relevant "net gain"
Yes but NIF's lasers date back to the 1990s, and laser technology has improved a lot since then. NIF-class lasers with over 20% efficiency are available now.
Not only that, but the capsules that are used for the experiment are expensive and difficult to produce. And you'd have to be continuously blasting new ones for each burst of energy you want to generate.
Taking those costs into account, being able to use this method to generate power seems really non-optimal.
emphasis, etc