Technology
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They are getting more out than the laser puts in.
But the laser is about 10% efficient for starters, completely outweighing the generated power.
This is about testing nuclear weapon designs, this is not a stepping stone to a power plant. The people building it would tell you that. In fact, they did, repeatedly, in their original press conference.
This lab would have been shut down decades ago by oil and coal politicians if it were about power generation.
This is not about weapons. That's a ludicrous viewpoint. We've been able to create fusion weapons for decades now by starting them with fission. There's no way to build a pocket fusion device so it would only ever be a giant nuke, which we can already build.
No, this is really real research. Oil and coal barons know the end is coming for oil and coal, that's why they're the primary card holders in renewables too. They don't actually need to burn fossil fuels, it's just more profitable to do so right now. Once it's not, they'll just turn to the next most profitable thing they've got their fingers in.
He's partially true- LLNL and NIF's primary focus used to be weapons. But really nuclear weapons have hit the end of their development. This is all high theoretical physics at this point.
Yo, watch the press conference where the program director and scientists presented the original positive-energy result.
They were unanimously very clear that this research is about non-explosively testing whether our warheads still work.