After 12 years of sustained effort and hundreds of experiments, LLNL achieved fusion ignition, meeting a milestone that tantalized the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) community for more than 60 years and launching the era of controlled fusion ignition in the laboratory.

Steady progress from a few kilojoules of energy yield when ignition experiments began in 2011 to the December breakthrough was due in large part to the steady evolution of experimental designs — closely coupled with continuous improvements in diagnostic, optics and simulation technology, target quality, and the energy, reliability and energy balance of NIF’s 192 laser beams.

When scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory  achieved fusion ignition on Dec. 5, 2022 — an extraordinary scientific breakthrough that was decades in the making — the primary mission and driving goal behind the experiment that day was stockpile stewardship science.

To achieve fusion ignition on Dec. 5, 2022, the National Ignition Facility's laser system needed to operate flawlessly at both ends of the performance spectrum, delivering immense energies while controlling the energy balance across all 192 laser beams with extreme precision.

If Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility were a race car, it would run at the redline most of the time. Since NIF became operational in 2009, the LLNL optics team has persisted in hardening the optics to withstand ever-increasing laser energy, as NIF routinely exceeded its design specification of 1.8 megajoules and the debris that results from every experiment.