By one definition, NIF exceeded breakeven

摘要

The mystery of the National Ignition Facility's (NIF) experimental results from last September (NN, Nov. 2013, p. 80) was resolved for certain in the journal Nature on February 12, with the publication of a paper by Lawrence Liver-more National Laboratory researchers. It was already known that these experiments had produced the best results yet at NIF, although while the paper was undergoing peer review, LLNL declined to state officially that a break-even milestone had been achieved. It is a narrowly defined breakeven, however, far short of complete net energy gain or NIF's true goal, ignition of all of the fuel in a pellet.