The National Ignition Facility has followed up on its March firing with yet-another record, flicking the switch on a pulse that topped 500 trillion watts and 1.85 megajoules of UV laser.
Back in March, the NIF at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had previously fired a 411 trillion watt pulse.
As noted by the lab, 500 Terawatts is more than 1,000 times as much power as is consumed in the United States at any instant, and the laser claims power output of around 100 times any other laser “regularly” produces today.
The NIF laser uses 192 beams to produce its extremely high power outputs, and has been designed to help act as an ignition source for hydrogen fusion (without the inconvenience of using, for example, nuclear weapons to trigger a fusion reaction).
The lasers fired within a few trillionths of a second of each other, onto a target 2mm in diameter. The scientists say in this media release that the energy release was accurate to better than 1 percent of predictions, and beam-to-beam uniformity had similar accuracy. This makes the NIF “the most precise and reproducible” high-energy laser around.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/16/nif_passes
The article doesn't come out and say it, but I'm sure the timing of the multiple lasers is meant to sequence the reaction to cause fusion ignition. Unlike a runaway fission chain reaction, a fusion reaction tries to extinguish itself. The heat from the fusion causes the atoms to disperse and make it nearly impossible for any further fusion to occur. Uranium WANTS to split. Hydrogen does not want to fuse.
And of course if we can create a sustainable over-unity fusion reaction we could leapfrog right past using thorium salt reactors or 4th gen traveling wave uranium reactors. We would have a nearly limitless amount of clean cheap energy. It would change our society within a few short years. Other countries would want to do the same, and with no nuclear proliferation worries. Forget oil. Forget coal. Forget wind and solar. This would be THE energy source.
Gojet-64 wrote:Yes! I'm not the only one here interested in science!
That's exciting. We're getting closer to fusion power. Behold the power of the Sun! Maybe the opponents to nuclear fission will be satisfied now. (I've always been a supporter for nuclear power.)
I doubt it. Some people are never satisfied. But if they oppose this they will only reveal their true intent.
TKearney9 wrote:
How am I supposed to pay for one when it puts out 500 trillion watts? That's 500 million kilowatts. I won't be able to pay my electric bill.
"Pay" for it?
By next week my team of monkey ninja flying robo death bots will have brought it back to my evil lair. My mech suit will be almost complete.
Bradley_Davis129 wrote:
How do they pay for that power bill?
It only lasts for a zillionth of a second. If done right, they would only do a few micropulses a second, and this power would come from the fusion reaction itself. The leftover power would be pumped into the power grid and used to power cities.
Assuming the goal of over-unity reaction, of course.
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