The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is the size of a sports stadium—three football fields could fit inside. NIF’s unique energy and power enable cutting-edge research to help keep America safe and secure, explore new frontiers of science, and lay the groundwork for a clean, sustainable source of energy.

NIF is the world’s most precise and reproducible laser system. It precisely guides, amplifies, reflects, and focuses 192 powerful laser beams into a target about the size of a pencil eraser in a few billionths of a second, delivering more than 2 million joules of ultraviolet energy and 500 trillion watts of peak power.

NIF generates temperatures in the target of more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit and pressures of more than 100 billion Earth atmospheres. Those extreme conditions cause hydrogen atoms in the target to fuse and release energy in a controlled thermonuclear reaction.

NIF is a key element of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the reliability, security, and safety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing.

The High Energy Density science program studies material behavior under extreme pressure, enabling researchers to conduct weapon physics experiments in a controlled laboratory environment once possible only with underground testing.

These experiments contributed to NIF’s ability to achieve fusion ignition in the lab for the first time. In an ignition shot, more fusion energy is generated than the amount of laser energy delivered to the target.

The drive toward ignition helps ensure the reliability of the nuclear deterrent, while also opening new frontiers in laboratory astrophysics, materials science, hydrodynamics, and many other scientific disciplines.