First fusion ignition at NIF
On December 5, 2022, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory achieved fusion ignition for the first time — the laser pulses delivered 2.05 megajoules to the fuel target, which produced 3.15 megajoules of fusion output. It was the first time any fusion experiment had produced more energy from the fuel than the laser delivered to it (though far more energy was used to power the lasers themselves). The result did not bring commercial fusion any closer in any practical sense, but it ended the long-running joke that 'fusion is always 30 years away' by turning at least the fuel-gain milestone into a verified historical event. Multiple private fusion companies — Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion, TAE Technologies — were operating with serious capital by 2024 on plans to deliver pilot reactors in the early 2030s.
NIF's primary mission has always been nuclear-weapons stockpile stewardship, not energy research — the inertial-confinement fusion physics it studies is what happens inside a hydrogen bomb. Commercial fusion energy will almost certainly use a different technical approach (magnetic confinement, like ITER and tokamaks, or compact alternatives like Commonwealth's high-field SPARC). NIF demonstrated the physics; the engineering is a separate problem.
05 · The Transition
Three energy revolutions are running simultaneously. American shale fracking has made the U.S. the world's largest oil and gas producer for the first time since 1973. Solar and battery costs have collapsed by 80 to 90 percent in fifteen years, with China dominating both production and the rare-earth supply chain. And weaponized energy — Russia's gas cuts to Europe, Western sanctions on Russian oil, the price-cap mechanism, the Nord Stream sabotage — has demonstrated that the petrodollar system can be unwound, in pieces, in months. The wealth ranking of the next era is being decided right now, and not all of the candidates know they're competing.
Read the full era →- 2008 — 2014U.S. shale oil revolution
- Nov 27, 2014Saudi price war against shale
- 2010 — 2024Solar electricity becomes the cheapest power
- 2017 — presentCobalt and lithium become geopolitical
- Apr 20, 2020Oil futures go negative
- Sep 26, 2022Nord Stream pipelines sabotaged
- Aug 16, 2022Inflation Reduction Act passed