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.'"

Comments

'It's going to happen this year.'"

[ibsteve2u]

OK...let's see...then going by current trends, its manufacture should be offshored in 2012.

So when, when?

[hesaigo999ca]

When will I be able to walk into Walmart and buy my very own light-saber, is what I want to know!

Homemade fusion

[Kazymyr]

In the meantime, amateurs build fusion devices in their basements and achieve real measurable D-D fusion:

http://www.fusor.net/

Yeah !

[vegiVamp]

Sounds NIFty.