Slashdot Mirror
Building the World's Most Powerful Laser
Bill writes "Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories is attempting to create the world's largest laser. The NIF's goal is to focus the laser on a pea-sized hydrogen pellet and result in fusion ignition."
To produce Extremely Large Shark?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
There is something for me to see here.
The "Alan Parsons Project"
It may be powerful, but is it readily mountable on a shark's head?
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
They finally put in my order! I was about to go someplace else for my "Death Star".
From TFA
The NIF laser "is essential to assessing the potential performance of nuclear weapons," says Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.
Naturally I'm depressed that "civilian" research does not get the money which it needs to help solve many pressing problems, but on the other hand if this facility removes the need for live nuclear tests that would be a good thing.
How long this self-imposed testband will last if China or India decide they need to start testing weapons using live tests ?
Absolute statements are never true
then the pea-sized hydrogen pellets have already won.
Just when you get it finished, some rabbit comes and steals the Q36 Explosive Space Modulator, and there is no kaboom.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Funding, and vital tritium pellets, will be provided by a grant from OsCorp?
When all you have is an axe, everything looks like a grindstone.
NASA has begun work on a replacement for the International Space Station. It is roughly spherical in shape, and resembles the AT&T logo...
#define QUESTION ((bb) || !(bb))
"This is predicted to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion reactions, or ignition."
Self-sustaining? Can they turn it off if it starts to get out of control? Amazing stuff, but to some degree a little scary.
is making so much popcorn the victorian house falls apart
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Do not stare directly at beam. Spontaneous fusion reactions of eyes may result. May also cause temporary blindness.
If NIF achieves fusion ignition, it will for the first time in a laboratory simulate the pressures and heat of a nuclear explosion, allowing nuclear weapons scientists to study the performance and readiness of the country's aging nuclear arsenal without actually detonating a nuclear device.
...and his opinion matters why? Sounds like he's got a giant basis for bias. He continues...
Sounds good to me.
"If Congress knew it would cost $5 billion up front, would they ever have funded it? No way," maintains Christopher Paine, who has monitored NIF's development for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environment advocacy group, and has been one of its sharpest critics.
Paine, who in a critique once dubbed NIF "The Unlovable Laser," maintains that NIF should follow the same path. He says it isn't needed and poses a nuclear proliferation risk because it might make it easier in decades ahead to develop new nuclear weapons, not just maintain existing ones.
Since, every American knows the only use of anything nuclear is to kill people. So now, we take a "reliable" newsource like CNN.com - and not only shred any chance of getting "unbiased" information and toss it in the can.
Also, to contrast that idiots opinion, we get:
The JASONs, a group of scientists frequently called upon to review complex defense or national security issues,
that sounds a LITTLE more relevant, no?
has concluded that NIF "does not represent a significant proliferation risk" and is "fully compatible" with U.S.
I guess this is why I can't appreciate the news for telling me anything new now adays. Someone go develop a computer to report things without bias, then I'll be interested in reading the news.
Didn't we just hear news that the US wants to move forward with space based weapons?
Oh.My.God. Once the filibuster is abolished, Darth Bush will finally be able to finish his Death Star!!!
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
"Or in war: melting holes in enemy tanks. A lot more uses for that super-strong laser than fusion."
Laser typically aren't feasible for use in combat, how would you power such a thing?
Building a mobile unit that could sustain enough power output to burn a hole in 16 inches of Tank armor would be analogous to the pencil and pen story of NASA... just use a bazooka.
It might classify as the world's most intense laser target, but that's entirely different language.
Fusion ignition is also not the goal (or, for that matter, even the primary goal) of the laser cluster.. The intent is apparently nuclear weapons testing and design. Civilian fusion research is simply a pleasand side effect.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Are you fucking retarded? "Hey, lets not use this to solve Earth's upcoming power crisis, lets use it to blow shit up!"
FUCK YEAH!
Dipshit.
We're not really talking about a loss of efficiency in these things. The current stockpiles are based on high efficiency cores. We just don't make the "big hunk of uranium" bombs anymore. I would suggest a fascinating site for anyone looking for some good education. http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/index.html (Be sure to check out the Castle Bravo test.)
The cores on these things break down rather fast, and they aren't sure-fire to work correctly (or even behave themselves) after sitting on a shelf for decades. If we are going to keep them around, fine, but let's make sure we know what the things will do. Otherwise, get rid of them. There is no better way to cut yourself than working with a dull knife.
Building a mobile unit that could sustain enough power output to burn a hole in 16 inches of Tank armor...
Easy , just put it on low orbit. Then use maps.google.com for aiming. Muahahahahah!
The term "ignition" refers to the point of intensity of a fusion reaction whereby the high (kinetic) energy He nuclei fusion product is sufficient in power to heat any remaining fuel to the point of fusing itself. ie. when the reaction is capable of sustaining itself provided you continue to feed it with fuel. It is called Q=1. The NIF should achieve >Q=10 on a full system DT shot and this is called thermonuclear ignition and burn with "high gain". NOTE! the NIF will almost certainly NOT achieve breakeven (total power in Nd:glass lasers are disgustingly inefficient (~1%). Diode pumped Nd:glass is another story however and if a power plant is ever to be constructed using laser fusion then that is likely what will be used. They are still too fantastically expensive today though.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
And let that be a lesson to any other pea-sized hydrogen capsules that plan to screw with us.
yes its just another definition of ignition. spectrum of energy emitted by the H? I'm not sure I understand what you're after. If it is the energy of the products of the DT reaction you're interested in then its H-3 + H-2--> He-4 (with a kinetic energy of 3.5 MeV) and a hot neutron with a KE of 14.1 MeV. If it is the actual electromagnetic radiation from the hot plasma you are talking about then it just radiates like a blackbody at ohhh say 100 million degrees :o) which happens to be mostly in hard X-rays.
Incidentally, as long as I'm posting here I'd like to say that (no surprise really, its a science article) the AP article gets it a bit wrong. The NIF will never achieve the status of "most powerful" laser on earth. Highest energy laser on earth? At 2 MEGAjoules yes it will be the most energetic. But not the most powerful. The maximum power of the NIF is estimated at 500-750 Terawatts (trillion watts) (I'm approximating). However, the OMEGA EP laser which will be finished in 2007 (before NIF) will achieve a power of over 2 PETAwatts or 2 million billion watts. Several times that of the NIF.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
what if the sharks eat the pea?
Why can't they just heat their peas in the microwave like the rest of us.. :(
Which approach is better?
I can remember first reading about this fusion concept in the "the two faces of tomorrow" from Dark Horse comics. At the time I thought this was just some ancient sci-fi writer's relic idea on how to achieve fusion, we had tokamak (donut) magnetic fusion reactors now. However, after I read about the real life version of it, I first thought WOW and after that I realized that it might be much simpler to ignite a fusion reaction and then back off to let it run wild than to try to contain a fusion reaction in a magnetic bubble. The concept sounds simpler. They're having trouble with manufacturing the hydrogen pellet however, so the tokamak reactor might have a steadier flow of energy coming out of it if they get the concept to work smoothly.
old-energy corporations
Oil, gas and coal companies might not want this to work. I remember the piece in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" about the corporate spy who told his own story. I think he came clean out of guilt over what he'd done in the past. Point I'm trying to make is, there might be a lot of opposition to this project and I hope that they have a lot of security on site. They probably have because this is mostly a military project.
The need for fusion
I do think earth will eventually need fusion reactors, at least the USA needs it. Earth can source it's current level of energy consumption from wind, wave and solar plants if we clad most of the planet with these kind of renewables but it would not be as efficient as a lot of fusion plants. The giant solar tower in Australia and the Sterling motor solar plants look promising but fusion reactors would need less room. A lot of countries just don't have the living space to fill with low producing plants like solar and wind farms. That's what I understand from reading a lot of articles. Fusion would also work on a windless cloudy day and a world filled with fusion reactors would give us a lot more energy to play with than a world filled with other kinds of plants. With oil supplies running out, there will be more wars. To think that politicians ares still fighting over where the ITER tokamak fusion reactor prototype is going to be built (Japan or France) is unbelievable. Every hour they waste could mean a human life they could have saved by preventing an energy war. The bastards responsible should be jailed.
Ridicule of sci-fi
The "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" comic made me realize that we need more science-fiction in our lives. It's weird that sci-fi isn't more popular because it can help us think up solutions to problems that absolutely need to be solved. Humankind would be dead meat if science stopped completely this second. Most people would die without even an animal skin or a house to protect themselves from weather. Fusion is just the continuation of the process that gave us bear skins.
I think it can be explained psychologically. If you don't have knowledge of something like science, it's a good tactic for you personally to ridicule it. That way you can still keep some of your social status because the thing you don't know about is "not important anyway". I hear there are a lot of attacks on science in the USA, are these attackers also renouncing clothes? Ofcourse this phenomenon is everywhere but why is it so big in the US? Not as smart? More fundamentalist? Both? I want every smart person on earth to realize that they are more in the right than fundamentalists who oppose science or stupid people with more determination to make themselves heard. Don't cower, ridicule THEM instead.
- -- Truth addict for life.
And I hear the Fermi labs are working on a mirror to aim this laser.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
Well, the easiest fusion reaction to do is the Deuterium Tritium reaction (DT). That is, it is the reaction which requires the "lowest" temperature to ignite. Thing is, most of the energy released in this reaction is in the form of hot neutrons. The percentage of the fustion energy released in the reaction as neutrons is called the reaction's "neutronicity" and is something like 80% for DT. This really sucks because neutrons, as you may be aware, are absorbed into the nuclei of the surrounding structure material, transmuting its constituent atoms into radioactive isotopes (albeit with relatively short half-lives). Soooo, the best idea around these days is to create a vacuum target chamber with ...wait for it.... undulating "waterfalls" of hot liquid lithium or "filbe" (Lithium Fluoride Beryllium Fluoride mix). The Li absorbs the neutrons and is heated in the process, the heat is then sent to boil water/run turbines, and the usual. There is a bonus in this scheme though, the Li after absorbing a neutron is transmuted into more Tritium! More Fuel! This is called the HYLIFE II reactor design.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
_Real Genius_ was a landmark movie, that made geeks look cool. Not just Val Kilmer (later playing Jim Morrison), but even the really geeky geeks were heroic, and even got laid. It was totally sympathetic to geek passions, and funny enough to get normals to like the movie geeks. It was the geek _Blackboard Jungle_.
--
make install -not war
Some of the people who are working on this have told me that eventually, if it works, it will be converted to a power plant. However, no funding exists for research for such use at this point. A few of the biggest tasks include cooling the environment around the laser (lasers tend to heat things up), as well as focusing the laser on the pea-sized target. From what they're saying, "we're at least twenty years away from having this working..."
-Palal
this looks much the LMJ (laser megajoule) we are going to get here in France. We also claim it will world's most powerful. I don't know which one is better, but we'll have 240 beams versus 192 beams on the US facility :D
http://www-lmj.cea.fr/html/cea.htm
... can't wait until someone shines this thing at an airplane. Damn terrorists!
Yes I would!
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?