One of the last remaining milestones in fusion research before attaining ignition and self-sustaining energy production is creating a burning plasma, where the fusion reactions themselves are the primary source of heating in the plasma. A paper published in the journal Nature on January 26 describes recent experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF) that have achieved a burning plasma state. "In these experiments, we achieved, for the first time in any fusion research facility, a burning plasma state where more fusion energy is emitted from the fuel than was required to initiate the fusion reactions, or the amount of work done on the fuel," said LLNL physicist Annie Kritcher, who, with Chris Young, served as one of the lead authors of the Nature paper, "Design of inertial fusion implosions reaching the burning plasma regime."
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