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Can World's Largest Laser Zap Earth's Energy Woes?
newviewmedia.com writes "Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory plan on using a laser the size of three football fields to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth. If they're successful, the scientists hope to solve the global energy crisis by harnessing the energy generated by the mini-star."
Okay, no, nothing will likely go wrong (at least, nothing dangerous to anyone more than a few hundred yards from the event in the worst case scenario). But damn if this doesn't sound like the opening to the plot of a disaster movie.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
The National Ignition Facility is not doing research into energy production. The research they're doing will not have applications in energy production. The hope is that by understanding ignition other nuclear fusion projects will be able to make better progress.. it is completely pure research, as you would expect from a national laboratory.
How we know is more important than what we know.
...these laser are small enough to be mounted on a shark.....
My Spidey sense is tingling.
On the subject of fusion power, the researchers at Focus Fusion seem to be doing a great job as well.
Quote: We have a very high confidence that we will be able to ignite the target within the next two years...
So basically it'll never happen. Haven't they been saying this for the last 20 years?
Maybe it's just my Los Angeles upbringing, but I don't see any way even a future (more efficient) fusion plant is going to generate enough energy to compensate for using up three football fields worth of urban real estate, and that's just for the ignition laser. I can only assume the plan is to build these out in the desert and transmit the electricity in...then of course tear it down and rebuild further out when urban sprawl makes more demands of the now-not-so-remote land.
Nerd Rock In Progress
What?! No-one has said: "Pewpew, lasers!" yet. How disappointing of you all ;-).
I wouldn't be surprised if its a death star type laser.
"It will take at least another 20 years, with adequate funding, to develop a continuous fusion reaction that could heat water, create steam and turn generators at a commercial fusion power plant, she said."
I think we head this one 40 years ago. Guess good ol' fusion will be 20 years in future infinitelly.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
The big problems concern engineering -- how to turn a piece of very expensive scientific equipment into a cost-effective and reliable power station. The challenges are huge, and not just for inertially-confined fusion, but magnetically confined fusion as well.
I'm 30 and I'm not even sure I'll be alive to see a working fusion power plant.
One frickin' huge shark.
Thought thinks itself.
... did they super-clone the sharks to go with the fikin laser?
We should be safe unless the director of the facility has a white cat, is surrounded by beautiful girls, has a tank of sharks for visitors, ....
Won't we be for at least a short time a binary system?
FTA: And, in those recent years, the project has fallen a year off schedule, the GAO says, with the expected completion date for the research now at the end of 2012
The Mayans might be right after all!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8485669.stm
Slashdot has gone down in my estimations, if the best source they can find is CNN :-(
to these scientist... from the G-man...
"Prepare for unforeseen consequences..."
better wear 2000 sunblock.
Right.. and I'm sure creating a star will be just as harmless as the LHC proved to be...
The most technical power plants in the world still use steam powered turbines. When and who is going to get us a way to convert directly to power?
So this will make so we don't need ZPM's any more?
But where can we find a big shark to put this laser on?
Just use it on the San Jose Sharks now to stop them from wining!
The cap's are done.
GO blackhawks!
The star being cooked up in Livermore this summer is expected to die 200 trillionths of a second after it's ignited, Van Wonterghem said.
And if it doesn't?
And don't stars when the collapse create black holes?
That tells us nothing without a measurement of density. How many Libraries of Congress worth of energy can those three football fields produce?
UTF-8: There and Back Again
The March 2010 edition of Scientific American has an article that raises some significant doubt that we will ever be able to use fusion as a commercial source of power. The problems aren't about ignition, they are more fundamental engineering problems...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
I feel like I may have missed the memo about who can destroy the Earth in the most spectacular way. Someone wanna forward that one to me again?
If the laser is the size of 3 football fields how big does the shark have to be?
Hope is the currency of fools
Obligatory link to Edward Teller's article "Can We Harness Nuclear Fusion in the '70s?" in Popular Science magazine, May 1972 edition.
http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=VvyLShXydNgC&pg=88
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
By "mini-star" they just mean a brief fusion reaction that is expected to last for a fraction of a second --- if for no other reason then there is only a limited amount of fuel available to it.
Also, the way in which many of those involved ultimately intend to use this is not to create a reactor drawing power purely from fusion but rather to create fusion/fission hybrid reactor in which neutrons from the fusion reaction drive fission reactions in nuclear fuel that would not become critical by itself --- i.e., so we can burn things like nuclear waste and thorium. Such a reactor would be intrinsically fail-safe because when fuel pellets stop being dropped into the reactor and ignited by lasers into "mini-stars" (which, again, is something that needs to be done continuously --- several times a second --- since the "mini-stars" burn up all their hydrogen fuel so quickly) then eventually the whole thing shuts down on its own.
In other words, this is completely unlike the ridiculous and highly implausible fusion reactor featured in Spider-Man 2 which had the magic power to sustain itself by eating everything around it --- which, incidentally, is a power that even our own *actual* sun doesn’t come close to having, since it can only burn its limited supply of hydrogen fuel.
Snarkiness is inversely proportional to wisdom because it emphasizes feeling right rather than being right.
Just curious.
This very thing didn't work out well in Spiderman II ... let’s hope there is a mutated spider bite victim nearby to where they are testing this thing or we are screwed.
Solar thermal power plants. Cheap as hell, nearly exclusively out of abundant and renewable materials, can be placed in any desert, and 300 km^2 of them would provide all the energy all of humanity would need. Any 3rd world country could do with them.
Of course they won’t work in the night, and be weaker where there is less sun. But we have enough energy storage solutions. The best of those are hydroelectric dams in colder regions, where you use the excess energy to pump water upwards, and can release it with very little loss later. And generating hydrogen and oxygen, that can later be used by fuel cells in mobile vehicles. Normal batteries of course work too, but they are not as clean.
The wiring should be high-voltage DC to minimize losses.
And finally, if all that doesn’t suffice, you can still shoot lasers that pass the atmosphere with little loss into space, onto satellite mirrors, and back to earth again. (Use multiple mirrors, so you always pass the atmosphere using the shortest path.)
Also it would look fuckin’ cool and futuristic, to have such a circle of mirrors, with a “tower of light” in the middle, shooting a huge laser out of its top. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
It has not been conclusively proven impossible.
And there was much rejoicing....among evil scientists world wide.
Picture a wine review: Small, pretty specialized, and nerdy. But you will enjoy its bouquet and presumption.
What sensationalist blather. Fusion has been "just around the corner" for 50 years now. Anyway, even if it really is true this time, some environmentalist group would put a stop to it - funny how they think electricity just magically comes out of the plug without having to actually be generated anywhere.
Nothing to see here, move along...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If you've ever visited LLNL you would know that its over the hills from Oakland/Hayward, effectively in the Imperial Valley -- where there is lots of land to build things on (which is why it takes up football fields). Now on the other hand if you one was building it in Manhattan you would go down and not out (think of the foundations for the World Trade Center buildings. The arrangement of the lasers is fairly arbitrary -- one can go down or up nearly as easily as spreading out.
In reality it comes down to a cost trade-off between normal conducting transmission lines, superconducting transmission lines (which have been and are being built today) and land costs at a distance vs. construction costs of digging a large hole or a moderately sized skyscraper. We could significantly decrease our long term energy costs by using wind/solar into a superconducting grid augmented by pumped water storage (or batteries/capacitors if those end up being cheaper). There is no reason that electricity should not be relatively "free" if we accept the early lifetime investment costs and build the required infrastructure.
... a bazillion /. comments about a mini-star on the surface of Earth and not a single Spidey 2 joke?
Super idea. Lets build a second sun on earth so we can use the energy to drive some turbine technology we already have. This is a great idea. OK it is not working right now and other promising projects like ITER will not show any benefits before 2060, but I think we should wait for their development. Why waste money on a heterogeneous and distributed energy system, which have so many component that can fail.
Of course todays solar and wind technology works and it is available and when something goes wrong well it is not that a big deal, as you have a lot of redundancy. And only one accident or one terror attack on a transformer at a power plant can result in a loss of x00 MWh while a failing wind turbine wouldn't hurt that much. And yes that technology is already available even the big energy companies battled that technology now for decades. But hey lets wait. Lets build our own sun instead of using the one which is already their, which has shown a incredible service availability (several (us) billion years without a a serious breakdown).
And yes we do have an energy problem. But it is a usage problem not a production problem. We use inefficient transportation technology, inefficient heating and cooling systems for our houses, inefficient production concepts etc.
And BTW: last I read that Germany uses nuclear plants to produce 22.6% of its electric energy, but this is only 11.6% of the used energy in Germany. 81% are fossil fuels (gas, oil, coal). And they use 17 nuclear plants. So to replace the fuel based primary energy Germany must build 95 nuclear plants. Or in short they need 5.6 times more reactors. So this is not an real option (who shall pay for it and where is all the uranium coming from and who is paying for accidents. One accident like in Chernobyl and you have to resettle 80 mio people.)
While I think it is "cool" to be able to build nuclear fission reactors, it is not necessary. As we already have on hanging above our heads. And when you think "but then we would be dependent on strange countries" Yes we do. But we all depend on each other on this globe. So it is better to get used to it, that we have to accept our different cultures and do not try to impose our believes on others. As western countries do and other countries would like to do.
...does it blend ??
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
A real fusion powerplant is the size of a trashcan and accepts any old garbage you have around as fuel. Puts out gigawatts of power.
Yeah, they might eventually fry a few teensy pellets at the NIF, but I mean really - huge impractical lasers perfectly synchronized onto tiny hard-to-make fuel pellets fed at precisely the right rate and positioned in precisely the right place at precisely the right instant to be imploded? Operating perfectly over months and years in industrial powerplant conditions? Maintained on a daily basis by a crew that goes home and watches American Idol and The Simpsons? All securely automated and monitored using the latest Windows OS? Not even in our grandkids lifetime.
What they *should* be concentrating on is designing a room-sized fission powerplant that can power a neighborhood using a replaceable fuel cartridge that a service weenie replaces for you once a year. Minimal moving parts, easy to replace if service is needed, and the entire grid isn't nuked when Rocky the squirrel suicides on a transformer.
C'mon Mr. Kamen, quit screwing around with third-world water filters and build this puppy.
for the past 50 years usable fusion power has only been a few, 10, or 20 years off.
I've given up on it. I'd rather have wind, solar, or fuels such as switch grass or bio diesel.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
These people with their science talk...
Ok, if nuclear fusion can ONLY fuse hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei, then where did all the heavy elements come from??
Of course fusion can work on larger atoms! That is why we have such a huge periodic table!
Hydrogen isotopes are not the only fuel source.
for 2012?
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
They're pushing back or bring forward all the cool stuff so that they do it in 2012.
Just to mess with end-of-the-word-crazies I suspect.
Mississippi, GOD DAMN!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAYVaHEMK0I
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Wow, that's prose that's fourth-grader friendly. I always thought the standard for popular writing was sixth grade.
They've started working on it more than 12 years ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ignition_facility
and it has made frequent appearances in all kinds of media ever since (see references in wikipedia article).
What if the star is a "Death Star"?
I thought Keanu solved the worlds energy crisis with his synthesizer, and his lathe?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
Way cooler than "scientists plan another large scale experiment to find out how laser induced fusion coud be contained and sustained"
But besides it being catchy, the excuse for this way of reporting is that it will make science more accessible and understandable to the "general public".
Except, it doesn't.
"The world needs to employ existing fixes for climate change rather than looking for a technological silver bullet that will prove to be too expensive for commercial energy production anyway"
Actually, the world really ought to be doing both. I'm not implying the existence of a "silver bullet" but any renewable energy source (especially one as fundamental as solar fusion) is probably a worthwhile endeavor. Just because it isn't immediately commercially viable doesn't mean we can't still benefit from it.
"Before criticizing someone, first walk a mile in his shoes. Then, you'll be a mile away... and you'll have his shoes."
Don't worry. If the reaction gets out of control, you can just throw the whole thing into the Hudson...
If we're talking about harnessing the energy of a small star, couldn't we first experiment using Lightning?
You wanna solve the world's energy woes? :)
Then, start skimming the Gulf of Mexico!! Plenty of energy there
As if a million oil execs cried out and were suddenly silenced.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Won't this contribute to Global Warming ?
And too cheap to meter, using deuterium extracted from seawater, no doubt.
The real question is if they can adapt it to be Shark-Mountable...
on average US taxpayers pay $10/month for everything that NASA does.
Number of US tax payers is about 138 Million... NASA Budget is 18.7 $B(2010). So mathematically the average is closer to $130 per taxpayer...
But the way the system is set up you might be close, e.g. the average Joe paying $10 and a few rich guys paying a heck of a lot more (and then there is the issue that the government simply spends more money than they have, just to complicate things.)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Ah yes, proton-Boron, aneutronic indeed. But the problem is that that's typically not the only reaction going on. Even if another reaction is down in the 0.001% range, when you're running commercial power production, that's still a heap o' neutrons causing trouble.
It was genetically engineered, the radioactive spider was in the comics, not the movies.
Even if it's decades away from being a viable power source, I wonder how much development would be needed to make it into a fusion drive?
LLNL has been working with ever increasingly large lasers for decades in the pursuit of fusion research. So this isn't really big news to me. E.g. don't hold your breath thinking that this is going to put us on the doorstep of fusion power plants. There is probably a very long way to go in getting to that point. But I don't mean to sound pessimistic. They learn alot with each step they take and I wish them all the luck.
I don't really know for sure, but there's this popular idea that oil exec's are 'threatened' by development of alternative energy (whether fusion, solar, wind, etc). The thing is:
A) None of these alternative energy sources really threaten oil in the near-term, because it will take decades of constant building of windmills, solar panels, fusion plants, fission plants, etc to come close to displacing oil.
B) Alternative electricity sources are more of a threat to coal than to oil. Coal is generally used to generate electricity, oil is generally used for fuel for things like planes, trains, automobiles, boats and ships (I hope I'm not saying anything here that everyone doesn't already know - just stating the obvious). While some progress is being made in creating small passenger vehicles powered by electricity, there's no real movement (as far as I know) on R&D for planes, trains, semi-trucks, boats, and ships which are electric. I think trains would be the easiest, because there have been electric trains for years - at least, for light rail; I lived in Chicago for a couple years, and they have a train/subway system which has an electrified 'third-rail' which powers the trains, so it seems that you could also do that for cargo trains). For ships, if someone could create a fusion plant small enough, you could maybe mount one inside the ship (if the ship is large enough - this probably wouldn't work for small private boats, but could work for cruise ships, cargo ships, naval ships, etc).
Bottom line, electricity and oil generally don't compete, and nuclear energy sources are generally more useful for creating electricity than fuel.
C) Fusion power plants, if possible, are going to be expensive to build. Oil and coal companies with deep pockets are, really, ideal candidates to become sources of funding for the development of fusion power plants.
D) Oil will be most likely a declining resource over the coming decades.
Given C & D, If oil exec's were smart, they'd be using a relatively small chunk of their current enourmous profits to help with fusion R&D, so that they can become the largest producers of electricity as oil declines, so that they can supplement their declining oil revenue with fusion energy revenue.
much larger than Mega Shark...
Short answer, no..
Bussard's Polywell, for the win.
We've been on the "verge of unlimited laser fusion energy" for several decades now. This has turned into something a-kin to the bad side-effect of Viagra.
All these amazing star wars type of plots to supposedly produce energy while we sit on a clean, untapped and basically endless source of energy. This is obviously about something else. Even solar, wind, tidal and wave power could give us all the juice we need with the technology we have today. It's our wonderful economic system that's keeping the development from happening.
The Livermore laser fusion work has very little to do with power production. Laser fusion has been talked up for 40 years. It turned out that it was really a cover for nuclear weapons R&D. If the physicists can't set off H-bombs, the big laser projects let them do pulsed fusion and gather data. It's now considered part of the "stockpile stewardship" program, or what's sometimes called the Livermore Senior Activity Center for Physicists.
This is a pulsed system. It's not an attempt to produce a sustained thermonuclear reaction, which is what's needed for power production. It's purely a research device which pumps a large amount of power into a small space to achieve a moment of fusion. That's purely an experimental tool.
Scientist: "So..."
...
"we're going to start a nuclear reaction..."
"on purpose..."
"and it's going to be so powerful..."
"that it's going to create a star."
"Questions?..."
Reporter: "um, don't stars supernova?"
Scientist: "..."
"So, if there's no more questions...HEY LOOK! THERE GOES TIGER WOODS!"
NIF's mission:
NIF, a program of the U.S. Department of Energys National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), will focus the intense energy of 192 giant laser beams on a BB-sized target filled with hydrogen fuel, fusing the hydrogen atoms' nuclei and releasing many times more energy than it took to initiate the fusion reaction.Achieving nuclear fusion in the laboratory is at the heart of the directorates three complementary missions:
* Helping ensure the nations security without nuclear weapons testing (see National Security)
* Blazing the path to a safe, virtually unlimited, carbon-free energy future (see Energy for the Future)
* Achieving breakthroughs in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including astrophysics, materials science, the use of lasers in medicine, radioactive and hazardous waste treatment, particle physics and X-ray and neutron science
NIF is primarily a NNSA mission. The 'fusion power' is a toss in to buy support from the liberals in congress and is not the primary focus and frankly the way NIF is set up it doesn't lend itself well to commercial fusion power. Bullet #1 and #3 are the real missions.
isn't that the plot to spiderman 2?
BSD is for people who love Unix, Linux is for people who hate Microsoft.
But how many units of Planck time would it take to burn the wings off a fly?
It will take at least another 20 years
We've been saying that fusion has been 20 years away for the past couple of decades. Is it ACTUALLY going to be 20 years away THIS TIME, or are we going to say "20 more years" ten years from now?
The original plans to achieve Earthly fusion is to use magnetic fields to trap very hot plasmas (i.e. Sun on Earth), which was said to be about as easy as "holding water with rubberbands." Given the amount of theoretical and experimental resources thrown in to this effort, containment type fusion was said to be "about 20 years away" for the past half century. Makes you wonder how some of these lines that made into the news were optimistically penned by scientists to get funding. And yes, the same thought processes still goes on now.
Now with laser the scientists are (probably) hoping to achieve localized fusion within otherwise cooler plasma, so the rubberband would be holding ice slush instead of water, and hopefully see some neutron bursts as evidence of fusion to justify this round of funding. While I'm sure the people who provide the money knows what they're doing, but they also have the job to promote energy studies and at some point you wonder if they're not just rubber-stamping the thing so they look like they're doing something (people upstairs wants some fusion studies, have money set aside, and they need to go somewhere). But for the general public the news conveniently ignores two well established facts.
a) lasers are know to be incredibly inefficient, especially as they become more powerful.
b) the whole point of energy study is to somehow get more out of what you put in. And even if sustainable and meaningful (like hot enough to boil water industrially) fusion is achieved, [breakeven] is still "twenty years away." ... and so
c) lots of green energy money's on the table, and everyone will say anything to get some of that.
d) (my personal fav. is algae petro, it's only 10 years away)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And tubs of Degree Men Absolute Protection antiperspirant.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
What? Nobody's mentioned the Farnsworth Fusor yet?
No one yet has developed fusion on Earth that exceeds unity (i.e. more energy out than what you put in), but from the looks of it it seems that the Farnsworth Fusor has as much chance of exceeding unity as all the other huge projects. But the cool thing is the Farnsworth Fusor is very small compared to ITER and the National Ignition Facility or just about any other Tokomak reactor that's being experimented with currently.
Also note that fusion that generates heat which boils water that runs a steam turbine is a grossly inefficient way way to generate energy. Much better is the pB (proton + Boron 11) reaction that generates electrons that can be harvested directly as electricity.
And finally, from TFA, while it is true that the Deuterium-Tritium reaction does not produce neutrons, when you have those materials in a Confined Reaction Fusion, I think it's exceedingly difficult to prevent Deuterium-Deuterium reactions from taking place which DOES produce neutrons (contrary to what TFA states). And the problem with generating neutrons is they bugger up and transmute all your new and shiny pieces and parts into undesirable yucky materials.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Finally we will return to stardust, as stars need fuel too
3.) They are doing it to get babes.
What if you used a big piston in that chamber. You know like zit pow zit pow zipow zipow zpow zpow zpz zpz zpzpzpzpzpzpzp with the z being the laser and the p being the bang. I know this sounds silly but think about it if you read this. What I'm trying to say is there may yet be a way because 10 times per second seems achievable.
But...with that being said you could probably build 2 breeder reactors for less as you say. I really wish that was what were being done because reprocessing waste is much better than disposing all of it. It's well understood, available now, works, etc. Purer fuel would be better but then you get all of the proliferation arguments. Does anyone really think this will be a problem in the US?
Those of you who think that a laser annihilating a fuel pellet to make a "mini-star" is news should probably do a little reading about the National Ignition Facility.
They've been doing this for literally years... they produce a lot of good, difficult to gather scientific data because they can achieve higher energy levels than most fusion research projects.
This article disguises what would be a great article for an internal newsletter at the NIF by changing terms and neglecting the fact that this is a continuation of older, ongoing research, in an attempt to publicize the research and possibly publicize the "problems" with the government run facility. The hint of scandal and potential for "changing everything" are meant to attract attention to this old news article.
Included are the usual bright sunny statements about solving the energy issues of the world, plus the usual over the top implications about unknown scientific territory, to make people uneasy, which also encourages interest.
There's no chance of a catastrophe happening from this... if it was going to happen, it would have done so in the 1980s or earlier.
This article should have been titled "National Ignition Facility gets new laser to continue years long research project"... but then it's not worth posting here, right?
Erik
didn't they watch Spiderman 2?
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
How wrong can you get, bill? No. it really IS ~30km on a side. Last time you worked the numbers, you were wrong or talking out your arse. 1.2KW/m^2. 250 average over a day at a random spot on the earth (double this if you sit near the equator). 30km sq is ~10^12m^2. Power rate averaged over a day: 2.5x10^14Watts.
Total power use in 2008 averaged 1.5x10^13 W.
Efficiency needed: 6%
What figures were YOU using?
PS How many sq km are taken up by highways in the US? Highway length: 75000km x 0.03km (30m) ~ 75x530km. More than twice the size...
Twinkle twinkle little star now I know what you are....:-)
http://www.uoregon.edu/~linke/papers/Walker_leidenfrost_essay.pdf
just look at the graph
Sorry, I didnt specify I meant the graph on page 2, not the one when you open the pdf
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
Articles about lasers...all that's holy name no more! Can't take all the sharks and their lasers on their heads, or lasers with a sharks head on them, enough is enough! Think of something original people!
So we somehow figure out how to connect a fission reactor and a fusion reactor. Bam. Humanity's every problem solved.
Yousa people gonna die?
Fighting over religion is like seeing whose imaginary friend is best.
Step one: Build the largest laser in the world ... ...
Step two:
Step three:
Step four: SHHOOP da WOOOOOP!
Step five: Profit.
That allows indigent and sentient life forms from all corners of the universe to come spewing out, enslaving the human race in the process, and making us rely on a bearded MIT graduate with a crowbar to save us.