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Given the amount of energy required to compress the deuterium-tritium and initiate the reaction.
I think weaponising it would present some interesting challenges of packaging and deployment.
Grumpy_Git-
Good point, the first thermonuclear ‘device’ in the 1950s was the size of a small building though. The question might be whether they can miniaturise the first laser/d-t stage and use that to initiate a cascade of larger fusion stages, but my grasp of physics isn’t remotely sufficient to know if that’s possible.
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Modern physics package in nuclear weapons can be under 700 pounds. Nobody would bother weaponising that laser powered doohickey.
rodan
davidual
Crumbs. The image of what they’re doing is striking - it’s essentially the second (fusion) stage of a nuclear weapon, except they’re using lasers to create the x-ray flux that compresses the deuterium-tritium fuel, instead of a traditional primary (plutonium implosion). Never mind clean energy, this might have the potential to create a nuclear weapon that doesn't produce nuclear fallout.