California fires up laser fusion machine

[steven johnson]

Minimal carbon footprint and ndarly unlimited power. The tritium in one cubic kilometer of sea water has the fusion energy equivalent of whole world's oil reserves.

guardian.co.uk News Thu 28 May 2009 18:18 BST
Success at National Ignition Facility could pave the way for commercial laser fusion power stations and provide a solution to world energy crisis
A tentative first step towards an era of clean, almost limitless energy will take place today with the opening of a giant facility designed to recreate the power of the stars in an oversized warehouse in California.
The $3.5bn National Ignition Facility (NIF) sits in a 10-storey building covering three football fields and will harness the power of lasers to turn tiny pellets of hydrogen into thermonuclear energy.
If the machine works as planned, it will become the first to generate more energy than it consumes, a feat that could pave the way for commercial laser fusion power stations and an end to the world's energy security problems.



http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/sSEzNUkR4Cf39CuuCukyCgg/view.m?id=92466&tid=34&cat=Environment

[tridim]

1. Fusion power can save the World

I hope it works.

[Orsino]

2. Yeah, I think that the world is saved anew...

...every time a story like this runs. Always with the same glowing optimism about the energy it's gonna replace Someday.

[comrade snarky]

4. It's never worked before so stop trying and give up

That's the spirit that got the Wright brothers to give up on powered flight and kept Edison from trying new filaments in his light bulbs.

So here we sit, on the ground and in the dark.

[sofa king]

6. No, Orsino has a point there.

The classic joke, that fusion power is thirty years away and always will be, is a classic because the joke itself is well over thirty years old.

Obviously, it ain't something simple like putting a man on the moon or digging a tunnel from England to France.

Edit: One example of the joke's telling comes from David Brin's 1990 novel Earth. In more recent years, Brin has advocated an old-fashioned approach: offer a huge prize--$100 million--for reaching the fusion break-even point. Prizes weren't necessarily what drove Edison and the Wrights, but they are the impetus behind the discovery of a practicable method of determining longitude at sea, and the Orteig Prize was what induced Lindbergh to fly across the Atlantic.

[comrade snarky]

7. He has a point.... but it's not sofa king good :-)

The point he's making reminds me of the arguments against spending any money to track near earth asteroids. Sure, it may not be a likely occurrence in the next 30 years but if it does happen it has world shaking potential.

The assumption that it's never going to happen based on the predictions (often by unreliable science reporters the media) from the past 30 years is just doom and gloom. Hell, it may never pay off but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try when the benefit is so huge. There are several potential designs now that are being actively tested. Jokes aside all we need is one that works.

I like the idea of a fusion contest. Me, I'd call it the FuX prize but that probably wouldn't go over too well. :evilgrin:

[sofa king]

8. And you, too, live up to your name, my friend.

Yeah, despite the joke and my comments above, I'm all about going for it, too. If you can make a magnetic field that can contain and control forces that strong, it's got to be able to blow the bikini off a beachgoer at forty feet.

Edit: Oh, I guess I'm talking about the donut-shaped ones. Hey, I'm a science fiction guy, not a science guy.

[comrade snarky]

9. This one?

The Bussard design



It's cool looking. I'd love to have one softly glowing in the kitchen, powering my neighborhood, but for pure spectacle I have to go with the z-machine.



Look at that sucker spit lightning! Woo! That's James Bond villain technology there!

[comrade snarky]

10. Consarn it!

That'll teach me to cross post an image.

The Bussard design:

[krispos42]

3. Update:

The State of California sells the facility to a consortium of oil companies to balance budget. ExxonMobile spokemen are quoted as saying "It's a good investment... one-third of a year's profit now for fifty years of future profits".

However, tragedy occured soon afterwards when a mysterious explosion completely destroyed the site and the scientiests, engineers, and technicians working there.

"Oh, well, we have insurance!" said one executive flippantly as he neatly stacked $100 bills into his briefcase.

[Johonny]

5. Since it's designed to test warheads

I see no reason why anyone would believe it has a future as an energy source. It's no going to create more energy than you put in it.

[caraher]

11. What?

Yes, there's plenty of warhead-related research at the national lab, but I'm not aware of any weapons focus to this project. And your statement that it's not going to exceed break-even has no physics justification unless you are simply making a prediction about this particular machine. Look into the sky any cloudless day or night and tell me fusion is not a good energy source!

We *may* not be able to use it for power, but there's no in-principle reason we can't. The devil is in the details, and the only way to find out is to push the technology and see what happens.