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Talk about the power of concentration!

The world’s largest and most powerful laser, California’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) is capable of focusing 192 giant laser beams onto a fusion target smaller than a peppercorn. The very fine point of this exercise? NIF is designed to enable scientists to create extreme states of matter, such as temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Centigrade and pressures of more than 100 billion times the Earth’s atmosphere.

By reproducing the conditions found in the sun, stars and nuclear explosions, NIF is making important advances in areas including national security, our understanding of the universe and the potential for an abundant, clean, safe energy source in the form of fusion fuel.

Operational since 2009, despite having managed to deliver 1,000 times more power to its target than the US uses at any given moment, NIF hasn’t yet achieved all-important ‘ignition’ – the point at which the energy liberated by the fusion reaction is equal to or greater than the energy used to create it. NIF’s thus far failure to live up to its name has prompted some critics to swap the ‘National’ in its title for ‘Nearly’. Turns out nuclear fusion takes more than just concentration. Maybe with a little Jumpstart…

* All costs calculated in 2017 $US

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