Updated 18:29 IST, January 28th 2025
China Building Bigger, Massive Laser Nuclear Fusion Research Facility Than US' National Ignition Facility
China is building a new laser based nuclear research facility bigger and massive than US' National Ignition Facility to design nuclear weapons.

Beijing: China is building a new nuclear fusion research facility to build nuclear weapon designs and discover power generation methods. According to Reuters, China is using laser based fusion research since full nuclear testings are banned in the world. Reports say that China’s experiment-research facilty is being built in Mianyang and is said to be 50 per cent larger than US NIF.
The National Ignition Facility is also a laser-based inertial confinement fusion research device, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, United States.
NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition with high energy gain.
Let's deep dive into what China is building in new nuclear fusion facility
Satellite photos show four outlying "arms" that will house laser bays, and a central experiment bay that will hold a target chamber containing hydrogen isotopes the powerful lasers will fuse together, producing energy, said Decker Eveleth, a researcher at US-based independent research organisation CNA Corp.
It is a similar layout to the $3.5 billion US National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Northern California, which in 2022 generated more energy from a fusion reaction than the lasers pumped into the target - "scientific breakeven".
Eveleth, who is working with analysts at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), estimates the experiment bay at the Chinese facility is about 50% bigger than the one at NIF, currently the world's largest.
The development has not been previously reported.
"Any country with an NIF-type facility can and probably will be increasing their confidence and improving existing weapons designs, and facilitating the design of future bomb designs without testing" the weapons themselves, said William Alberque, a nuclear policy analyst at the Henry L. Stimson Centre.
China's foreign ministry referred Reuters questions to the "competent authority". China's Science and Technology Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
In November 2020, US arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea released satellite images he said showed China's buildup of nuclear weapons support facilities. It included images of Mianyang showing a cleared plot of land labeled "new research or production areas since 2010".
That plot is the site of the fusion research centre, called the Laser Fusion Major Device Laboratory, according to construction documents that Eveleth shared with Reuters.
With inputs from Reuters
Published 18:29 IST, January 28th 2025