NIF has achieved 'ignition'#shorts

NIF has achieved "ignition"

This is how the Sun produces energy.

The big news is that the National Ignition Facility (NIF) dramatically increased the fusion output of its experiments. Scientifically, this represents progress, but it is not a game-changer for clean fusion power. NIF is still decades away from economically viable fusion. Here are two reasons.

Reason#1: A power plant needs to produce steady power. NIF currently executes, at best, one ignition blast per day. The machine takes hours to recover from each experiment. Making this happen 10,000 times faster is absurdly difficult.

Reason#2: The machine pellets contain tritium. The world’s entire supply of tritium is 50 pounds, and the market cost of tritium is nearly $1 million per ounce. A commercial operation would require two pounds of tritium per day at a cost of $32 million. Producing more tritium at a reasonable cost is a challenge.

Ultimately all would-be fusion reactors are still in the research stage, so Fusion is not ready for Net Zero in 2050.