#inertial-confinement

#inertial-confinement

Inertia Enterprises has raised $450 million to build one of the world's most powerful lasers, which it hopes will serve as the foundation of a grid-scale power plant the fusion startup intends to start construction on in 2030. Inertia Enterprises is building on technology developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility. The NIF is the site of the world's only controlled fusion reactions that have reached scientific breakeven, in which the reaction releases more energy than it took to start.

Nuclear fusion promises a green and infinitely renewable supply of energyif we can harness it. Fusion happens all the time inside the sun. But to recreate the process on Earth, we must control incredibly hot, chaotic matter in an exceedingly dense state. Prototypes of several different fusion-reactor designs are being tested around the world. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, for example, uses lasers to spark fusion in a small pellet of fuel.