Controlled fusion is little nearer now than it was a week ago

On December 13thNIFINIF America’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, announced that the country’s National Ignition Facility () had lived up to the “” in its name, by achieving ignition. The stuff ignited was some pellets of a frozen mixture of deuterium and tritium—isotopes of hydrogen that have, respectively, one and two neutrons in their nuclei in addition to the single proton that is hydrogen’s nuclear characteristic.That an American cabinet member should make time in her diary to grace the announcement of an arcane result in physics is odd. But so is the whole episode. For the result in question has been the centre of a media storm, starting on December 11th with an article in the , based, apparently, on a leak from , and followed by a hurricane of publicity when the actual moment came.