Fusion startup Inertia Enterprises has reduced production of its laser-fusion fuel pellets from several days to about two to three hours, including a crystal-growth step cut to roughly 30 minutes. The company says the advance addresses one of 10 barriers to delivering the first phase of its commercial power plant. Inertia is adapting pellets developed at the National Ignition Facility, where production can take a week or more and costs are unsuitable for commercial operations. The pellets use spherical diamond shells, frozen and gaseous deuterium and tritium, and gold hohlraums that convert laser energy into X-rays for compression. Inertia’s planned laser will be four times more powerful than NIF’s current system, providing greater tolerance for manufacturing imperfections. The faster process could reduce the radioactive tritium inventory the company needs to hold; tritium costs about $30,000 per gram and roughly 25 kilograms is stockpiled globally, according to Science. Inertia expects its full-scale plant to consume 10 pellets per second and plans eventually to breed its own tritium through fusion reactions.