PBFA‐II is on the Air at Sandia National Lab

The second‐generation light‐ion‐beam fusion accelerator at Sandia, PBFA‐II, was successfully fired for the first time in December. This $48 million machine is ultimately meant to deliver megajoules of pulsed energy—ten‐nanosecond beam pulses of 20–30‐MeV ions of lithium or other light species—to a D–T fusion pellet. The goal is to compress the pellet to a thousand times normal density, approaching the conditions for thermonuclear ignition.