tal , 11 months ago

I don't think that that's necessarily a huge issue, though, because their aim wasn't to address that.

That experiment briefly achieved what’s known as fusion ignition by generating 3.15 megajoules of energy output after the laser delivered 2.05 megajoules to the target, the Energy Department said.

In other words, it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it, the department said.

A 2020 article, before the current success or the prior one at the same facility:

https://www.powermag.com/fusion-energy-is-coming-and-maybe-sooner-than-you-think/

No current device has been able to generate more fusion power than the heating energy required to start the reaction. Scientists measure this assessment with a value known as fusion gain (expressed as the symbol Q), which is the ratio of fusion power to the input power required to maintain the reaction. Q = 1 represents the breakeven point, but because of heat losses, burning plasmas are not reached until about Q = 5. Current tokamaks have achieved around Q = 0.6 with DT reactions. Fusion power plants will need to achieve Q values well above 10 to be economic.

So if I understand this aright, on the specific thing they're working on, they're at 1.54 as of OP's article, that is (3.15/2.05), up from 0.6 in 2020. The target is somewhere "well above 10" for a commercially-viable fusion power plant. Still other problems to solve, but for the specific thing they're working on, that maybe gives some idea of where they are.