NIF Aims For the Ultimate Green Energy Source

theodp writes "Edward Moses and his team of 500 scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility are betting $3.5B in taxpayer money on a tiny pellet they hope could produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. By the fall of 2010, the team aims to start blasting capsules containing deuterium-tritium fuel with 1.4 megajoules of laser power, a first step towards the holy grail of controlled nuclear fusion. Not all are convinced that Moses will lead us to the promised land. 'They're snake-oil salesmen,' says Thomas Cochran, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Moses, for his part, seems unfazed by the skepticism, saying he's confident that his team will succeed."

Comments

A better alternative

[amightywind]

$3.5 billion? This is a better alternative than giving the money to the UAW.

Re:A better alternative

[Comatose51]

Yeah you know what's funny? When you look at the price tags for the bail out for banks, GM, etc., and the cost of the wars and then compared to the price tags for these possibly world changing scientific research, you start to wonder why we're not pouring even more money into research. The Large Hadron Collider is puny compared to the Supercollider we were building and then shut down because of cost. Seems pretty silly now because we ended up giving even more money so some execs can keep their yachts.

Re:A better alternative

[v1]

cheaper power has several positive side effects

- lowers pollution and environmental damage by displacing formerly cheapest-power sources such as coal and oil
- encourages recycling which can sometimes not be worth it due to energy requirements
- raises quality of life pretty much across the board

Basically when power becomes cheaper, "the way things are done" changes in a lot of places because things that used to be more economical to do one way, become more economical to do another way. This almost always works to society's advantage. And as a result the prices on a lot of things gets cheaper because goods and services are cheaper to produce. When products (cost of living) goes down without average wage going down, quality of life goes up.

Re:A better alternative

[hedwards]

Not really, the UAW is probably the only reason why we have an auto industry in the US at this point. It never ceases to amaze me, the amount of ignorance and union bashing that goes on. Perhaps you'd like to give up your 40 hours work weeks, week ends, OSHA regulations, retirement and disability insurance.

You're not going to get far with energy sources if you're not replacing the older gas guzzlers with newer fewer efficient cars. Despite all the ignorance, the UAW workers don't actually make that much more than their non-union counterparts in the South, but you get the same blind rage from people because ZOMG UNIONS~!!1!!11ONEONEELEVEN

Re:A better alternative

[DJRumpy]

I don't think anyone doubts that unions did great things for the American workforce. What they tend to bash is tipping the balance too far to the side of the union workers. When their demands become too unreasonable that they threaten the very company they serve, then there is a problem.

Had they been more accommodating, they probably wouldn't be in bankruptcy. The cost of the insurance packages, retirement packages, 3 people to do one job, union rules that prevent simple jobs from being done, even when they could be done safely, etc.

Not all that is union is golden...

Re:A better alternative

[CastrTroy]

The UAW is the reason that most of the car manufacturing industry has moved to other countries. People who are doing jobs that require not more education or skill than a Walmart worker are being paid 3 times as much. Worked nice for a while, but it isn't sustainable. It's not like auto workers have any special skills. In fact, with the advent of robots, I would have to say that their skills became less and less important. So, while I think it's important for people to have good working conditions, I really dont' understand why the average factory worker would get paid so much more than somebody who works in a retail store, or fast food joint. They really providing anything extra to any company.

Re:A better alternative

[EllisDees]

Sure, nuclear fusion isn't unlimited in the sense of comparing it to infinity. For us puny humans though, it is for all practical purposes unlimited. We know from daily experience that fusion power is attainable. We also know that once we attain it, all other power sources will be obsolete. How this does not deserve a much larger portion of our resources boggles my mind.

Re:A better alternative

[tftp]

It isn't easy to repeatedly attach the same three bolts to part after part all day long or to operate a machine doing more or less the same.

Many years ago I had a temporary job at a factory that made tools (drill bits, mills, etc.) It was tedious, just as you say - for about 3 days. And then it was smooth. You have whole day to think, for example. You load the blank part into the machine, press the button - and you have, say, 30 seconds of no action; the machine is doing what it's programmed to do. Then it stops, you remove the part and repeat. You don't need to think about it - your mind is free. Other workers, who were there for years, didn't see the repetitive labor as anything special; most labor is like that, whether you mop floors or sail ships or nail boards or solder parts onto a PCB. It is only surprising to a very narrow layer (class) of people who do mostly inventive, original work. But even an SQL coder who is asked to put together another boring VB form for another boring query is not that far apart from a machine operator at a factory.

In my opinion the hardships of repetitive work fade compared to stresses at people-facing positions (I worked that one too, for a month.) I won't even mention agricultural jobs where you literally are standing in a mile-long field and need to work it all, rain or shine, usually in a very non-ergonomic posture :-( Auto workers have cushy jobs, compared to farm workers.

Proof of Concept

[Ironsides]

Cochran says the NIF laser is still not powerful enough. Even if it were, he says, "these machines are just going to be too big, and too costly, and they'll never be competitive."

Proof of concept devices area always oversized and more costly than the production versions. Once you know it works and how it works, you can start shrinking it down and since the development is done, the cost per unit goes down further.

NIF not the only or even best technology

[Eravnrekaree]

It would be great if NIF could produce a working fusion system within the next century, but i find it a bit doubtful. There are two other fusion technologies which have aimed to reduce the size and complexity of fusion systems, instead of building massive billion dollar generators to instead build smaller technologies. These inlcude Polywell and Focus Fusion. Both are developed by engineers and appear to be honest attempts to develop fusion power and to do it with a reasonable amount of money, under 20 years, rather than centuries. While the government has given NIF billions of dollars, the polywell has received about 8 million in funding, despite the fact that if it is possible it could save the planet. Some scientists seem so enamored by the size and complexity, and unfeasibly of such machines as ITER they seem unwilling to consider smaller, cheaper and more practical alternatives, thus fusion always remains something far off in the centuries away future, when it is desperately needed now.

Id like to see polywell, focus fusion and the NIF fully funded however, since it is possible that one may be right and the others not workable, it increases the chance of finding a solution.