{"id":126824,"date":"2021-08-28T16:02:35","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T23:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/us-achieves-laser-fusion-record-what-it-means-for-nuclear-weapons-research"},"modified":"2021-08-28T16:02:35","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T23:02:35","slug":"us-achieves-laser-fusion-record-what-it-means-for-nuclear-weapons-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/us-achieves-laser-fusion-record-what-it-means-for-nuclear-weapons-research","title":{"rendered":"US achieves laser-fusion record: what it means for nuclear-weapons research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/us-achieves-laser-fusion-record-what-it-means-for-nuclear-weapons-research2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the US$3.5-billion facility wasn\u2019t designed to serve as a power-plant prototype, however, but rather to probe fusion reactions at the heart of thermonuclear weapons. After the United States banned underground nuclear testing at the end of the cold war in 1,992 the energy department proposed the NIF as part of a larger science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program, designed to verify the reliability of the country\u2019s nuclear weapons without detonating any of them.<\/p>\n<p>With this month\u2019s laser-fusion breakthrough, scientists are cautiously optimistic that the NIF might live up to its promise, helping physicists to better understand the initiation of nuclear fusion \u2014 and thus the detonation of nuclear weapons. \u201cThat\u2019s really the scientific question for us at the moment,\u201d says Mark Herrmann, Livermore\u2019s deputy director for fundamental weapons physics. \u201cWhere can we go? How much further can we go?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here <i>Nature<\/i> looks at the NIF\u2019s long journey, what the advance means for the energy department\u2019s stewardship programme and what lies ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the US$3.5-billion facility wasn\u2019t designed to serve as a power-plant prototype, however, but rather to probe fusion reactions at the heart of thermonuclear weapons. After the United States banned underground nuclear testing at the end of the cold war in 1,992 the energy department proposed the NIF as part [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":650,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,873,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-nuclear-energy","category-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/650"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}