NIF lasers or ITER magnets: who will light the first star?

Since 1997, physicists from the Livermore National Laboratory (California) have been building a facility to launch a controlled thermonuclear reaction with lasers, and everything is almost ready. According to the latest news from the fields , the project reached the final stage: a few months left before the birth of a small star on our planet (if the experiment turns out to be successful, of course). Already this summer, the National Ignition Facility will launch the first test, in which the 5-micron star reaction will last for 0.0000000002 seconds (2 x 10 ^–10 s).

A controlled thermonuclear reaction is like a grail for physicists who have unsuccessfully tried to launch it for half a century. The ITER project has advanced the closest of all (it is planned to use superconducting magnets there to heat the plasma). Livermore physicists expect to outrun their European competitors, and they have already spent $ 2 billion in budget money to achieve this goal.

The National Ignition Facility building, the size of three football fields (built since 1997) is a tunnel structure in which 192 of the most powerful lasers will be focused on a tiny capsule 2 mm in diameter with deuterium and tritium (pictured above). If the calculations of scientists are correct, then when the lasers are turned on at full power, the temperature will exceed 10 ⁸ K, which will lead to the appearance of hot plasma, and after a few moments (depending on the plasma density and temperature holding time), this substance will start tritium in helium nuclei, similar to the one that occurs inside the sun.

However, as one physicist said, even if we can recreate the reaction on Earth inside the solar core, we will not have anything that will interest the industry. He meant that in the center of the solar core only 276.5 W / m ^{3 of} energy is generated, the efficiency is about the same as that of the metabolism in the body of a crocodile - too little for commercial use: The sun is a very cold star, which gives enough energy only at the expense of its volume, but not at the expense of efficiency. Something a thousand times more powerful is needed as a useful source of energy on the surface of the Earth.
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Physicists from the Livermore National Laboratory say that laser technology needs to be improved for at least another 20 years so that they can support the operation of a fusion reactor.