The National Ignition Facility achieves fusion ignition

On 5 December 2022 at the National Ignition Facility of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, 192 giant lasers fired 2.05 megajoules of energy at a peppercorn-sized capsule of deuterium and tritium fuel, and the resulting fusion reaction released 3.15 megajoules, 54 per cent more than the energy of the laser light that hit the target, the first time that a fusion experiment achieved scientific 'gain'. It was announced on 13 December. The result does not mean net energy for a power plant, since the lasers needed about 300 megajoules from the grid, but it proved that inertial confinement fusion can ignite. The experiment has been repeated with higher yields.

Open on the timeline