Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

National Ignition Facility is Firing Up

Posted by michael on 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?"

5 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Really Firing Up? by 4of12 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    From what little I understood, it was an extremely challenging, perhaps even overly ambitious effort to get all 192 lasers to be sufficiently well-focussed in a perfect sphere and with perfect timing, perfect power levels etc.

    Have any hard promises or milestones been met about Tera-Watt-seconds/mm^3 that the hohlraum will experience?

    It's a very hard problem. I would guess it would take even more time and money than it has already.

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  2. meanwhile, the big fusion reactor by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    in the sky continues to burn 24x7 at no cost, most of its energy completely unused

  3. I just applied to them for a job by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting


    It is an internal posting. Unix and OS X support. Hope I get it. Could be really interesting. I know people who work there and have toured it as it was built. I was a real kick to see the sphere lifted into the building. One hell of a crane!

    ac

  4. Re:Fluid dynamic instabilities, too by Iainuki · · Score: 3, Interesting

    NIL isn't a facility for researching fusion power: it's designed for nuclear weapons research, even though no one says that in public (it's said more often in private).

    The enormous technical difficulties involved in getting fusion from this method, much less positive energy returns, is one pointer to this fact; compare it to magnetic confinement, which has produced fusion though not positive energy returns. However, nuclear weapons researchers have spent years looking for more controlled circumstances under which to study how fusion occurs in bombs. After the US signed the CTBT, this need became more urgent, thus we're seeing it get built.

  5. Yes yes.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Something you take for granted here is that people will realize why this kind of fusion research makes good bombs...

    For those who are missing it, a laser-ignited H-Bomb would be more or less clean. The conventional method of igniting an H-Bomb requires an A-Bomb, which spews fallout. A clean H-Bomb wouldd just take a city or installation out without ruining the land and water.

    Hawks in the government hope a clean fusion bomb would allow moving past the era of nuclear weapons as deterrents into the era of nuclear weapons as a real force.