Inertial Confinement Fusion: The Quest for Ignition and Energy Gain Using Indirect Drive

The energy that can, in principle, be obtained from the fusion of hydrogen (actually deuterium) in seawater would provide an energy many orders of magnitude greater than that in all fossil fuels combined. Unfortunately, harnessing fusion for commercial power production has proven elusive. One approach is based on trying to scale down thermonuclear explosions to a sufficiently small size that can be routinely used in a power plant. In such a process the inertia of the fuel itself provides the confinement necessary to maintain the thermonuclear reaction for long enough for more energy to be produced than was needed to start the reaction: hence the name Inertial-Confinement Fusion.