Laser Fusion's Brightest Hope

First time accepted submitter szotz writes "The National Ignition Facility has one foot in national defense and another in the future of commercial energy generation. That makes understanding the basic justification for the facility, which boasts the world's most powerful laser system, more than a little tricky. This article in IEEE Spectrum looks at NIF's recent missed deadline, what scientists think it will take for the facility to live up to its middle name, and all of the controversy and uncertainty that comes from a project that aspires to jumpstart commercial fusion energy but that also does a lot of classified work. NIF's national defense work is often glossed over in the press. This article pulls in some more detail and, in some cases, some very serious criticism. Physicist Richard Garwin, one of the designers of the hydrogen bomb, doesn't mince words. When it comes to nuclear weapons, he says in the article, '[NIF] has no relevance at all to primaries. It doesn't do a good job of mimicking secondaries...it validates the codes in regions that are not relevant to nuclear weapons.'"

Comments

Re:Money

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Richard Garwin is the most distinguished defense scientist in the U.S., and provides scientific advice to the government (like the advice quoted in TFA). At age 85 he is unlikely to be cooking up any billion dollar projects of his own.

Are you *absolutely* certain that in the course of performing top secret nuclear experiments for the government, he hasn't become a power-hungry immortal mutant?

Re:Actually, it's easy to understand

[ultranova]

We don't really understand how lots of things work that we have right here, but I thought that the sun's gravitational field was what kept it contained.

Gravity is just a theory. The combeting explanation, Theory of Intelligent Falling, provides an interesting alternative: simply dedicate the building your fusion reactor is housed in as a temple to your local solar deity, and re-title your electric bill as a sacrifice. I'm sure anthropologists can help recover the proper rituals to make it work; perhaps Egypt would be a good place to start, since they had to power their pyramid-building machines somehow.

Granted, there might be some problems in places like Middle America due to changing cultural mores, but if either the USA or local drug barons would dedicate their victims to the cause, I'm sure that even the most bloodthirsty Aztec god would be more than satisfied. Just imagine it: the entire continent receiving limitless free electricity and all it would take would be for bullet moulds to imprint the text "Victims dedicated to mighty Huitzilopochtli" on their products!

And this is why we must fight gun control: it's a communist plot to throw America into a Dark Age by stopping the human sacrifices that keep the Sun moving. The Founding Fathers knew this, having learned much wisdom from the natives, and did their best to ensure that the Chaos Gods would never hunger. That's the real reason why Bush so desperately wanted to go to war: the sacrifice reserves from World War II were finally running low, so more had to be made ASAP. Al-Qaida, a cover organization of CIA, was activated to manufacture the reason, and succeeded perfectly.

Also, Moon landing was a hoax; in reality, the Japanese got there first. They used the Vernian "cannon" method to send first supplies and then an expedition - the USA later covered these up by claiming the blasts to be atomic bombs dropped by them, which is clearly ridiculous since Hiroshima and Nagasaki are habitable today which would be impossible if they'd been nuked. The Imperial Japanese base on the dark side of the Moon has been collaborating with Saurian overlords for years to spread pacifism, so the world would be left defenseless against the coming communist revolution and alien takeover.

The only question is, what is Hitler's role in all this? Is he hiding in South American jungles, waiting for the coming war to rise once again, or has he already - for example, by receiving plastic surgery and a fake birth certificate and running for US president?

TL;DR Hydrogen pellets don't work, you have to aim your lasers on still beating human hearts to generate fusion power. Also, communist Saurian overlords, Adolf Hitler, and an Imperial Japanese moon base are about to fight over who'll take over the world, but that's details.