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Laser Fusion Passes Major Hurdle
chill writes "The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has performed their first controlled fusion experiments using all 192 lasers. While still not ramped up to full power, the first experiments proved very fruitful. The lasers create a lot of plasma in the target container and researchers worried that the plasma would interfere with the ability of the target to absorb enough energy to ignite. These experiments show that not only does enough energy make it through, the plasma can be manipulated to increase the uniformity of compression. Ramping up of power is due to start in May." The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'"
Clean, safe, American-made, no foreign oil, low level of pollutants, and a reasonable amount of entropy (heat) released. Sounds like a winner to me.
However, just as with fission, it's likely nothing will be built without massive amounts of subsidy, and it will pay off only in a span of decades. Unless the public and officials are willing to think longterm, fusion is going to be delayed regardless of whether the technical hurdles are overcome.
What is wrong with a pay off in decades. This "profit now" attitude is going to kill America. You think the interstate system paid off sooner than decades? You think the interstate system was a failure?
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Don't worry, as soon as anything explodes, someone dies, or they find a "scientist" who can worry and fret, Foxnews will point out how Obama's DOE is funding crazy apocalypse engines.