“[The deuterium and tritium capsule] enters the magnetic field at 10 kilometers per second. That’s about, that’s over 22,000 miles per hour,” explained NearStar Vice President Chris Faranetta.

The clever bit is that when the laser array shoots at a capsule, the beams cause the capsule to collapse into a sphere with the same density as deuterium-tritium liquid fuel that then implodes.

At the atomic heart of the world’s fusion efforts are two isotopes of hydrogen—deuterium and tritium—and the promise of this atomic coupling is enormous, as just one gram of deuterium ...

Researchers fire a 192-beam laser at a small capsule filled with deuterium-tritium fuel. The lab reported that an August 2021 test produced 1.35 megajoules of fusion energy — about 70% of the ...

It can be found inside gas giants such as Jupiter and is briefly created during meteorite impacts or in laser fusion ...

These capsules hold the deuterium and tritium fuel used in fusion reactions. These capsules, which must be nearly perfectly spherical, currently take months to manufacture.

In the Dec. 5 test, the process yielded – in a fraction of a second – an output of 3.15 megajoules of fusion energy, while the lasers consumed only 2.05 megajoules.

Richard Crane, Arthur Ruhlig’s thesis advisor, with the University of Michigan accelerator used for experiments. Photo ...

While deuterium is plentiful, tritium is exceedingly rare, costing as much as $30,000 per gram. The current stockpile consists of only about 55 pounds . Researchers hope to make fusion reactors ...

Deuterium/helium-3 fusion creates far fewer radioactive neutrons. However, creating and sustaining such a reaction is much more challenging than conventional deuterium/tritium.

The Livermore lab uses a different technique, with researchers firing a 192-beam laser at a small capsule filled with deuterium-tritium fuel.