Progress over previous milestone
This surge in energy production marks a pivotal development, substantially building upon the NIF’s landmark 2022 success.
It was then that scientists first achieved a controlled fusion reaction that demonstrably released more energy (3.15 megajoules) than the 2.05 megajoules of laser energy directly applied to the fuel target. This was the first controlled fusion experiment to do so.
Despite the reported increases in yield, the energy produced is not sufficient for grid-scale power generation, nor does it offset the total energy consumed by the NIF to conduct the experiments.