Part I — Effective Fusion Power Is Near, and It Will Destroy Everything — Beginning with Our Politics

The NIF standing in for the Enterprise’s warp core in Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013 Paramount)

There’s quite a bit to understand about the recent fusion milestone achieved by the Lawrence Livermore folks. It’s nothing that can be explained in under two minutes, hence, our science journalism engine is mostly at a loss. We necessarily end up with a something that is simultaneously over and under-hyped, and in any case, under-explained.

The Three Break-evens

There are, and always have been, three break-even points for effective fusion power:

1. Physics break-even — the point at which the output of a fusion reaction creates more power than is put into it. This is the milestone that was recently achieved by the National Ignition Facility.

2. Engineering break-even — the point at which the output of a fusion reaction creates more power than the entirety of the chain used to create the input power. The input system of the NIF experiment system is only about 1% efficient, so the total system needs to be made 100x before this point is reached.