Brief periods of theoretical breakeven have been achieved before...Source? I'm not aware of any reactor that has done that.
Not in a plasma reactor, yet. The laser Nuclear Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs claimed "scientific breakeven" back in 2014.[1] That's the setup where they have a huge building full of pulse lasers focused on one tiny target.
This is breakeven for a very weak definition of breakeven: “thermonuclear energy out” > “energy absorbed by the fuel capsule”. Not "> energy required to run the lasers." That's for a very brief period, nanoseconds. It's taken Lawrence Livermore 45 years of zapping tiny targets with big lasers to get to this point.
This was being touted as a potential approach to fusion energy back in the 1970s. It's not, really. It's mostly a way to study bomb-type fusion without setting off H-bombs. It's now part of "stockpile stewardship", keeping some people working on fusion to prevent forgetting how to make H-bombs.
And it’s important to note that “energy absorbed by the fuel capsule” is not measured; it means the absorbed energy calculated by a model using a classified code that no one outside the program is allowed to see.
Not in a plasma reactor, yet. The laser Nuclear Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore Labs claimed "scientific breakeven" back in 2014.[1] That's the setup where they have a huge building full of pulse lasers focused on one tiny target.
This is breakeven for a very weak definition of breakeven: “thermonuclear energy out” > “energy absorbed by the fuel capsule”. Not "> energy required to run the lasers." That's for a very brief period, nanoseconds. It's taken Lawrence Livermore 45 years of zapping tiny targets with big lasers to get to this point.
This was being touted as a potential approach to fusion energy back in the 1970s. It's not, really. It's mostly a way to study bomb-type fusion without setting off H-bombs. It's now part of "stockpile stewardship", keeping some people working on fusion to prevent forgetting how to make H-bombs.
[1] http://www.hiper-laser.org/News%20and%20events/index.html