National Ignition Facility is Firing Up

VernonNemitz writes "Over near San Francisco in California, USA, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is starting to reach the end of 15 years of development work on the National Ignition Facility. The goal is to use 192 high-powered laser beams to blast a pellet of frozen hydrogen isotopes, turning it into a tiny (and thus safe) hydrogen bomb. Currently 4 of the lasers have been commissioned for use in tests; the eventual goal is to get more energy out of the exploding pellet than is dumped into it. Personally I think they'd have an easier time of it if they combined different ideas, but what do I know?"

Comments

Science

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think they'd have an easier time of it if they combined different ideas, but what do I know?

I don't think that the goal is simply to generate lots of electricity, but rather to setup and run an experiment that could teach them new things. (Oh, and generate oodles of research papers.)

Usually, in these kinds of basic "understanding" tests (which is still where we really are in terms of our understanding of quantum effects), you don't want to combine multiple strategies ...

Re:Hmmmm.....

[DeltaSigma]

There'd be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, but all of us geeks with a quirky sense of humor would die laughing our asses off. It would be as if God is Monty Python.

Solar fusion reactor

[Latent Heat]

While the Sun is cranking out energy from fusion, it is notworthy how low the reaction rate. Now it is burning H into He using the proton-proton reaction (hotter stars use the carbon cycle), not a reaction that is practical for any Earth-based fusion reactor, the temperatures and pressures at the core are enormous, but the reaction rates are rather low.

Think about it -- the Sun has an estimated 10 billion year Main Sequence lifetime, of which it has used up 5 billion years. Also consider that over the Main Sequence lifetime it cannot achieve anywhere near complete burnup of the hydrogen and you can figure that the amount of hydrogen burnt per year is measured in parts per trillion.

There are heavier stars that burn their hydrogen much more quickly, and it is good for us that the Sun is so thrifty, but if you could duplicate the conditions in the core of the Sun, it wouldn't make for an economical energy source in an Earth-based power plant.