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videoalex t1_j09xry7 wrote

Reply to comment by Pyro_Light in Fusion energy breakthrough and national security implications explained by TheScienceAdvocate

They said themselves that the lasers are especially suboptimal for this-they were made in the 1980’s are very inefficient. but your point is true-but assuming this scales easily-perhaps even logarithmically-(it won’t actually be easy) we could end up on the other side of the looking glass.

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Rippedyanu1 t1_j0biwcb wrote

The max energy output expected from NIF is 40 to 50 MJ for energy put in. That's still 8 to 10x less than what is needed to break even for the system.

Even if they swap the laser diodes and whatnot out we're still extremely far off with this design to achieve practical fusion

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ItsAConspiracy t1_j0cr2hr wrote

Equivalent modern lasers are 40 times more efficient than NIF's lasers. 40MJ output would be plenty.

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