Major Fusion Energy Breakthrough to Be Announced by Scientists Researchers working with lasers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are expected to say they made a major advance that could lead to future energy sources.The advance is expected to be announced Tuesday by the Department of Energy, which said a “major scientific breakthrough” was made at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.The government official, who spoke anonymously to discuss results that are not yet public, said that the fusion experiment at NIF achieved what is known as ignition, where the fusion energy generated equals the laser energy that started the reaction.“Yesterday a scientist friend sent me a note stating that Livermore had exceeded energy gain of one just last week and would be announcing the result on Tuesday,” Stephen Bodner, a retired plasma physicist who has long been a critic of NIF, said in an email Monday morning.NIF’s lasers are extremely inefficient, meaning only a small fraction of the energy used to power the lasers actually makes it into the beams themselves."