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NIF gets close to the 2 Megajoules Milestone

At 1:15 AM on March 15, all 192 NIF lasers delivered 1.875 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to the Target Chamber center in a 23-nanosecond ignition-shaped pulse that reached 411 trillion watts (TW) of peak power. This marked a key milestone in the National Ignition Campaign’s drive toward fusion ignition, but the real challenge will be to reach ignition and achieve sustained alpha heating.

This record certainly brings us a step closer to that moment, as 2 Megajoules has been mentioned for a long time to be approximately the energy you need for the ignition process. NIF will now start testing different hohlraum setups and materials in preparation for the upcoming series of deuterium-tritium experiments.

Read more on the laser energy output record in the NIF newsroom.

You can read an interview with Ed Moses, the director of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), in Canadian Business news.