TOMORROW’S CLEAN ENERGY OR PERMANENT WILL O’ THE WISP? Fusion experiment breaks record, blasts out 10 quadrillion watts of energy. “Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California said they had focused 192 giant lasers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) onto a pea-size pellet, resulting in the release of 1.3 megajoules of energy in 100 trillionths of a second — roughly 10% of the energy of the sunlight that hits Earth every moment, and about 70% of the energy that the pellet had absorbed from the lasers. The scientists hope one day to reach the break-even or ‘ignition’ point of the pellet, where it gives off 100% or more energy than it absorbs.”