>
Pesticides Are Making Farmers Sick. Big Chemical Doesn't Want To Pay For It.
Blue Origin launches 1st New Zealander to reach space, 5 others on latest New Shepard...
Parents Should Sing More to Their Babies For the Positive Impact on Infant's Mood–And Their Own
Simple Summer Herbal Remedies to Make Now to Be Ready for Summer
New AI data centers will use the same electricity as 2 million homes
Is All of This Self-Monitoring Making Us Paranoid?
Cavorite X7 makes history with first fan-in-wing transition flight
Laser-powered fusion experiment more than doubles its power output
Watch: Jetson's One Aircraft Just Competed in the First eVTOL Race
Cab-less truck glider leaps autonomously between road and rail
Can Tesla DOJO Chips Pass Nvidia GPUs?
Iron-fortified lumber could be a greener alternative to steel beams
One man, 856 venom hits, and the path to a universal snakebite cure
Dr. McCullough reveals cancer-fighting drug Big Pharma hopes you never hear about…
Nextbigftuure covered detailed National Ignition Facility presentations six weeks ago at the 2023 International Conference on Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications. The National Ignition Facility has increased power to 2.2 megajoules for tests this month which is up from 2.05 megajoules earlier in the year. They are investigating a series of new targets. IF this round of experiments goes well the power output could increase to 5-10 megajoules which is up from the best 3.88 megajoule shot. There is a clear path to increasing power to 2.6 megajoules which could achieve 10-20 megajoules of output. The current facility could be maxed out at 3.0 megajoules if substantial upgrades are funded. The 3.0 megajoule tests would be around 2030 and each step up in power takes 1-2 years.
Nextbigfuture has covered all of the laser fusion startups:
Focused Energy, a laser-based fusion startup dedicated to developing fusion as a means of generating clean alternative energy, raised an additional $11 million in Series A funding, bringing their total funding to $82 million. The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, and previous investors VCP Capital and Tony Florence joined the round as well.
Focused Energy wants to build a demonstrator in 8 to 9 years with a 100-beam compression laser producing 500 kilojoule pulses, one-quarter the energy of NIF's. For the short ignition pulses, they plan to use lasers developed for Europe's Extreme Light Infrastructure, a research facility. Each produces pulses of 1.5 kilojoules so Focused Energy will need 100 of them, combining their output into a single beam to set the fuel alight.