of a second. The material of the capsule shell was changed to diamond to increase the absorbance of secondary x-rays created by the laser burst, thus increasing the efficacy of the collapse, and its surface was further smoothed. The size of the hole in the capsule used to inject fuel was reduced. The holes in the gold cylinder surrounding the capsule were shrunk to reduce energy loss. The laser pulse was extended. This result slightly beat the former record of 67% set by the JET torus in 1997. These numbers are the ratio of energy created by fusion against the amount of energy reaching the plasma. This is not the same as overall power in to power out. The experiment used ~477 MJ of electrical energy to get ~1.8 MJ of energy into the target to create ~1.3 MJ of fusion energy. An exact year later, on August 8, 2022, three new studies were published confirming the ignition of the plasma under the Lawson criterion in the original experiment. December 2022 The NIF claims to have become the first fusion experiment to achieve scientific breakeven on December 5, 2022, with an experiment producing 3.15 megajoules of energy from a 2.05 megajoule input of laser light for an energy gain of about 1.5. Charging the laser consumed "well above 400 megajoules". In a public announcement on December 13, the Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm announced the facility had achieved ignition. The feat required the use of a slightly thicker and smoother capsule surrounding the fuel and a 2.05 MJ laser (up from 1.9 MJ in 2021). They also redistributed the energy among the split laser beams, which produced a more symmetrical (spherical) implosion. Similar projects Some similar experimental ICF projects are: Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) Nike laser High Power laser Energy Research facility (HiPER) Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) Magnetized liner inertial fusion (MagLIF) Shenguang-II High Power Laser Pictures In popular culture The NIF was used as the set for the starship Enterprise's warp core in the 2013 movie Star Trek Into Darkness. See also Chain reaction HiPER Inertial confinement fusion ITER Laser Mégajoule Nuclear fusion Nuclear reactor Notes References External links Nuclear research institutes Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Laboratories in California Research institutes in the San Francisco Bay Area United States Department of Energy facilities Engineering projects Inertial confinement fusion research lasers Nuclear stockpile stewardship Articles containing video clips