bore through a 'corona' plasma. However, the presence of the cone affects the implosion process in significant ways that are not fully understood. Several projects are currently underway to explore fast ignition, including upgrades to the OMEGA laser at the University of Rochester and the GEKKO XII device in Japan. HiPer is a proposed £500 million facility in the European Union. Compared to NIF's 2 MJ UV beams, HiPER's driver was planned to be 200 kJ and heater 70 kJ, although the predicted fusion gains are higher than NIF. It was to employ diode lasers, which convert electricity into laser light with much higher efficiency and run cooler. This allows them to operate at much higher frequencies. HiPER proposed to operate at 1 MJ at 1 Hz, or alternately 100 kJ at 10 Hz. The project's final update was in 2014. It was expected to offer a higher Q with a 10x reduction in construction costs times. Other projects The French Laser Mégajoule achieved its first experimental line in 2002, and its first target shots were conducted in 2014. The machine was roughly 75% complete as of 2016. Using a different approach entirely is the z-pinch device. Z-pinch uses massive electric currents switched into a cylinder comprising extremely fine wires. The wires vaporize to form an electrically conductive, high current plasma. The resulting circumferential magnetic field squeezes the plasma cylinder, imploding it, generating a high-power x-ray pulse that can be used to implode a fuel capsule. Challenges to this approach include relatively low drive temperatures, resulting in slow implosion velocities and potentially large instability growth, and preheat caused by high-energy x-rays. Shock ignition was proposed to address problems with fast ignition. Japan developed the KOYO-F design and laser inertial fusion test (LIFT) experimental reactor. In April 2017, clean energy startup Apollo Fusion began to develop a hybrid fusion-fission reactor technology. In Germany, technology company Marvel Fusion is working on laser-initiated inertial confinement fusion. The startup adopted a short-pulsed high energy laser and the aneutronic fuel pB11. It was founded in Munich 2019. It works with Siemens Energy, TRUMPF, and Thales. The company partnered with Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in July 2022. In March 2022, Australian company HB11 announced fusion using non-thermal laser pB11, at a higher than predicted rate of alpha particle creation. Other companies include NIF-like Longview Fusion and fast-ignition origned Focused Energy. Applications Electricity generation Inertial fusion