That ain't good. Although fusion is clearly the future of energy, we have to get our sh*t together on earth so we don't kill ourselves off or devolve with endless wars. Or give up and use fusion to leave the planet efficiently.
So.. we attack our enemies by building large fusion power plants in their countries, and then blowing them up? Why not just build a traditional nuclear fission power plant and blow that up? It seems that would be a lot cheaper.
> The power densities needed to ignite a fusion reaction still seem attainable only with the aid of a fission explosion, or with large apparatus such as powerful lasers like those at the National Ignition Facility, the Sandia Z-pinch machine, or various magnetic tokamaks. Regardless of any claimed advantages of pure fusion weapons, building those weapons does not appear to be feasible using currently available technologies
Nothing about this result from NIF seems to suggest that igniting fusion is any easier than previously suspected.
Your takeaway does not match that article. The article details how "no measurable success was ever achieved" and that the large amount of energy required to start fusion is hugely prohibitive.
I don't see how the NIF's success here changes that.
We already have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons spread across the planet, with only two ever actually being aimed at anyone. Lots of problems but the threat of weapons at this scale are a well-feared thing already.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon
That ain't good. Although fusion is clearly the future of energy, we have to get our sh*t together on earth so we don't kill ourselves off or devolve with endless wars. Or give up and use fusion to leave the planet efficiently.