Number 203 (Story #3), November 17, 1994 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein INERTIAL-CONFINEMENT FUSION RESEARCH at Livermore has partly come out from behind a cover of secrecy. In a series of four papers in Physical Review Letters, scientists at Livermore's Nova laser facility have described the state of their art. Nova shoots 10 beams of ultraviolet light (at a wavelength of 350 nm and a total peak power of 30 TW) into a uranium reaction vessel (2.5 mm long), where the energy is converted into x rays which converge on a tiny deuterium-tritium fuel capsule, causing fusion reactions to begin. So far temperatures above 1 million K have been achieved. The Livermore scientists and their Los Alamos collaborators believe that their experimental approach can be scaled up to the level needed for self-sustained fusion. The recently-announced, billion-dollar National Ignition Facility (NIF) is designed to do exactly that. (Four articles in Physical Review Letters, 24 October 1994.)