The awesomeness of laser fusion
Posted on 26. Feb, 2010 by Jake in Vids
Laser fusion is going to be awesome!!! Science lovers take note, as this clip from New Scientist shows, researchers are one step closer to triggering a self-sustained fusion reaction.
As a post on Slashdot puts it:
“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.”
2 Responses to “The awesomeness of laser fusion”
Leave a Reply
-
iPhone Application - Spinning Vinyl (Virtual DJ)
-
Einstein's neighbours and the Hats
-
Thought piece: Too much tech?
-
Patrick Catanzariti: I was just visiting on a current quest to find the...
-
Autumn23Payne: When you're in not good state and have got no mone...
-
James Makepeace
28. Feb, 2010
The work on laser fusion now starting at NIF in Lawrence Livermore is really very important and probably some of the most promising energy research being done anywhere right now.
Experiments are moving forward from late Spring 2010, but let’s not make the mistake of expecting instant results, as the press so often encourage us to do !
The NIF fusion shots are scheduled over the period 2010 to 2012, and if they achieve exactly the “fusion burn” they are looking for (with a good energy gain) that will be a world-changing piece of news (…to those who understand) !
From there we still have a long way to go before we can stop worrying about the crazy rate at which mankind is burning fossil fuels and ruining our atmosphere.
The next stage will be the European science collaboration known as the HiPER Project, which will take the scientific Proof of Principle for laser fusion and start developing the technologies which will make a prototype laser fusion power plant a possibility. If the politicians have the vision to finance this work, our grandchildren will see the benefit, not just in having an adequate and reliable electrical power supply, but perhaps too in a more stable world, where nations have little reason to go to war over dwindling energy resources. Once fusion energy is a reality, we have enough fuel to last far beyond the time when our planet will be swallowed by an expanding sun… four billion years from now ! The fuel is found in sea water. One cubic kilometre of sea water contains roughly the fusion energy equivalent of the entire world’s current oil reserves.
Let’s all hope that short-term politicians can be big and brave enough to have seriously long-term vision on this. We need fusion, and we need to develop it as soon as we possibly can !
admin
01. Mar, 2010
Hey there James.
This does seem like the first truly viable alternative to fossil fuels. And, yes, unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.
Thanks for an informative and insightful comment! It’s better than the post itself. You must write for us sometime!
Later,
Jake