“An experiment suggests the goal of “ignition”, where the energy released by fusion exceeds that delivered by the laser, is now within touching distance.” And has been for quite a while. What NIF have basically done is what JET did more than ten years ago.
Once they’ve resolved the problems caused by asymmetries in the hohlraum x-ray flux or overcome hydrodynamic instabilities (aka ‘turbulence’) – and the closer you get to ignition the more unstable it all becomes – then we’ll really have something to celebrate.
Me – I still think we’d be better off investing in Thorium. China’s going to beat us all to it – they’ve already invested US$3.3 billion on reactors in the Gobi Desert and what has Britain done? Dipped our toe in the water in the 1970’s (Dragon at Winfrith) and then literally ‘pulled the plug’. I think we had a team from Cambridge University give it another look under Geoff Parks a few years ago, but I don’t think it came to anything.