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Vicariously Tour the National Ignition Facility
Dave Bullock writes "The National Ignition Facility (NIF) has been discussed several times over the years on Slashdot and just recently fired all of its 192 lasers. LLNL scientists predict NIF will attain ignition (controlled nuclear explosion) in 2010. For now, take a look at the photos I shot of NIF for Wired.com when I toured it earlier this year."
"Nuclear Explosion" is a rather stupid way of phrasing what is going to happen, theoretically, inside the reactor.
You mad
Here's a link to a wikipedia section explaining what the summary means by "controlled nuclear explosion".
A short video brought to you from those caring folks at Wired http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/video-podcast-6/
I used to work at LLNL on another project, but I'll give it my best shot from what I understood of NIF. I toured it once myself, if that means anything...
In a nuclear bomb, say, they would have several kilograms of nuclear fuel, and the catalyst for the reaction is usually another bomb of some kind. Very uncontrolled, just trying to make a big "boom". In this experiment, they are using very very tiny amounts of deuterium and tritium, and the catalyst is 192 lasers firing simultaneously. The energy output will have a very real ceiling that is theoretically well below what is needed to blow up the whole lab. (Still, it's probably bad to be in the room when it goes off...)
Their goal is actually to get as much energy out of this explosion as is possible, so if the lab did blow up, it would probably ironically be something of a success... Their real goal is to simply get more energy out than they inject via lasers in a controlled fashion. That would be a proof of concept for workable fusion powered reactors.
Note, this is NOT a power plant, and my comments should not be misconstrued to say "Hey, them there's a fusion power plant". We're still a long long way from that. Kay, thanks.
Those Wired pictures are nice and all but if you want wallpaper, why don't you just go to the source, LLNL's Flickr page? As an aside, as someone who works at the US's other major laser fusion facility (there aren't many, I'll leave it to you to figure out), I can tell you that all the scaled implosions we've been doing for the past 10 years here validate the expectation that NIF will achieve fusion ignition, burn, and high gain when they go to 2MJ cryogenic DT ice implosions next year. We are extremely excited. This will be the first time nuclear fusion breakeven and ignition will have been achieved in a laboratory. I want you to think for a little while about what the long term implications of fusion energy on technologically advanced human civilization will be. I still don't think very many people realize that this experiment is a MAJOR step in that ultimate goal.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
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Right, much like the nuclear program never resulted in anything useful. Or the rocket program. Or the jet engine. Or ARPANET.
The reason Yucca shut down is due to the populace whining about how unsafe reactors are, beyond all reason. Nothing to do with the government; they were trying to BUILD it.
But wait, if you order before midnight, you'll get even more stupid: Hydrogen bombs are already fusion devices!
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
The jet engine? As invented by a British scientist and close to perfected by German scientists during the Second World War? The German version of the jet engine was limited by material science, as they used a layout almost similar to what we have today, but didn't have the materials to make it handle the temperatures involved.
Rockets are almost as iffy, as the V2 Rocket was the first "real" rocket and a German invention.
Well you probably should be unimpressed by the project from the point of view of power generation, since it was never designed with the objective of generating power in mind. And in the very long term I DO think this is going to be cheaper than fission since its fuel source is water an pinch of lithium. Additionally, it will burn radioactive waste from fission plants.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"