Still, the team at Lawrence Livermore Lab is determined to keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible with nuclear fusion. In order to do this, they will need to perfect the use of the laser and keep increasing the amount of energy produced in the reaction. This will require a lot of precision calibration, as well as possibly upgrading the facility itself, which would require funding and approval from the Department of Energy.
Arthur Pak, leader for diagnostics on the experiment, spoke about the significance of the team’s achievement in an interview with Bloomberg News: “You can work your whole career and never see this moment. You’re doing it because you believe in the destination, and you like the challenge. When humans come together and work collectively, we can do amazing things.”
The ultimate goal is to make the process of nuclear fusion simpler, easier, and more repeatable
The next fusion test for the team at Lawrence Livermore Lab is scheduled for February, with several more experiments planned in the months following. Pak and his fellow researchers are now faced with the daunting task of reliably repeating this process with increasingly higher energy yield. The ultimate goal is to make the process of nuclear fusion simpler, easier, and more repeatable so that it can be done more than once a day. This is an incredible scientific and engineering challenge, but one that the team is more than ready to take on.
World’s largest laser used to initiate groundbreaking fusion reaction
