Today, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) reported going energy positive in a fusion experiment for the first time.

The experiment was carried out just 8 days ago (on december 5th) and, as such, there is not yet a scientific publication. This means posts on this announcement violate /r/science rules regarding peer reviewed research. However, the large number of removed posts on the subjected makes it obvious there is clearly a strong desire to talk about this result and it would be silly to not provide a place for that discussion to take place. As such, we have created this thread for all discussion regarding the NIF result.

The DOE has an announcement here and there are plenty of articles describing this breakthrough (my personal summary will follow):

Financial Times

New Scientist

BBC News

And countless others, Fusion is obviously a popular topic and so the result has generated a lot of media buzz.

So what they say (in extremely brief terms): NIF is designed to use an extremely short pulse IR -> UV laser which rapidly heats a secondary gold target called a Hohlraum, this secondary target emits x-rays which are directed at the surface of a frozen Hydrogen pellet containing fusion fuel. The x-rays compress and heat the pellet with conditions in the centre reaching the temperatures and densities required to fuse deuterium and tritium into helium, releasing energy.

NIF had a very long period of incremental progress before last year they managed an increase in their previous record energy output of a sensational 2,500% taking them tantalisingly close to 2MJ which is a significant milestone, but one they were unable to exceed or even reproduce until todays announcement, the next step forward in energy production at NIF.

On December 5th, NIF conducted an experiment where 3.15 MJ of energy was released compared to the incoming UV laser energy of 2.05 MJ. NIF is reporting this as the first ever energy positive fusion experiment.

The total energy required to fire the laser is close to 400MJ but this still represents a significant step forward in the fusion program at NIF. There are lots of other caveats to this announcement which should be saved for the comments.

Please use this thread for all posts related to NIF, if you have any questions about NIF or fusion, I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity for good discussion within.