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Except it’s not and it won’t. It’s just a fraction of a second pop and done. There’s no sustained reaction because inertial confinement by it’s nature is extremely temporary, and there’s no way to introduce new fuel. If they do some monster fuel pellet that outshines the laser then sure - they can claim a net surplus. If they find some contrivance to keep a reaction going after it’s started then fantastic, well done, the day is saved. But they’re not likely to do that at the NIF because, shhh! NIF is not really about generating energy.
Wikipedia’s figures for the last time they made this claim. The exact figures might be a bit different this time round, but I doubt they’ve found 99% efficiency gains. Livermore sends out this sort of press release pretty regularly and it always comes down to the same creative accounting
Basically, there’s a whole load of input energy that they just don’t count. Heat? Doesn’t count. UV? Doesn’t count. Plasma? Doesn’t count. this diagram from the wiki might be instructive. There may be decent justifications for counting it like this - I don’t know, I’m not a nuclear physicist. But I think the way they continue to report it to the media is simply dishonest.
Yeh that was me being circumspect. Last time i called it a weapons facility I got one of the researchers in my replies complaining that they totally intend to get round to some energy research one of these days. He didn’t bother to correct any of the people in the same thread who were excited about their fusion power dreams finally coming true.
It’s a shame. Blasting tritium into a mini sun with a massive frikken laser is plenty cool without having to misrepresent it so much.
There’s a collection of spooky indie game reviews on Errant Signal’s channel. Faith looks like something you could be interested in.