National Ignition Facility is Firing Up

Posted by michael on Tuesday June 8, 2004 @08:36AM from the mr.-fusion dept.

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?"

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Science by Anonymous Coward · 2004-06-08 08:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 ...