Giant laser reaches key milestone for fusion

Another "revolution" is about to start...
Giant laser reaches key milestone for fusion
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18446-giant-laser-reaches-key-milestone-for-fusion.html
20:59 28 January 2010 by Jeff Hecht, Livermore


Fusion experiments at the National Ignition Facilty use a two-stage process called inertial confinement. First, clusters of laser beams are fired into opposite ends of a metal cylinder called a hohlraum (pictured), which contains a fusion fuel pellet. In about 15 nanoseconds, the hohlraum reaches about 3.3 million °C, yielding an intense burst of X rays. This burst implodes the target, compressing its core to the density needed for fusion (Illustration: Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Department of Energy)

The world's largest laser is approaching the long-sought goal of igniting a fusion reaction that produces more energy than the laser delivers.

Lasers are intended to do this by super-heating a fusion fuel pellet until it implodes, heating and compressing its central core to the temperatures and pressures needed for nuclear fusion.

Past experiments have been plagued by irregular implosions that wasted most of the input energy. But now, researchers led by Brian MacGowan of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California have managed to squeeze targets of material into spheres rather than pancakes or more lopsided shapes, paving the way for future attempts at fusion.

The work was performed at Livermore's 192-laser beam National Ignition Facility (NIF), which began operating in 2009.

The team used targets that did not contain the key ingredients for fusion – two isotopes of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium. But the symmetrical implosion of the targets suggests that NIF should be able to ignite fusion with laser pulses of 1.2 to 1.3 megajoules – well below its full 1.8-megajoule capacity.

"From everything we can see, we're on the right path here," Jeff Wisoff, a top NIF manager told New Scientist.

Researchers spent last year slowly cranking up the output of the laser, ultimately reaching a total energy of more than 1 megajoules. Now they're pausing to mount new instruments on the 10-centimetre-thick aluminium target chamber and to install giant concrete doors to contain neutrons they expect to produce in future fusion experiments.

In a few months, they will begin testing a series of new targets designed to assess beam interactions and compression. If all goes well, they could try for fusion ignition by the end of the year.

We are almost there...unlimited power !!
February 21, 2010
UK Proposes Plan for Commercial Scale Laser Nuclear Fusion System for 2030
http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/02/uk-proposes-plan-for-commercial-scale.html

HiPER's layout from a preliminary design study. The ignition lasers are on the left, the drivers on the right (just visible in the cutaway). The main amplifiers (in darker blue) are at the upper left end of the building, driven by the capacitor banks in the smaller buildings on either side. Spatial filters are shown in green. The large silver boxes contain diffraction gratings that compress the passage of the light into a very short pulse of about 10 ps. The ignition system is focused onto a single spot entering on the left side of the chamber, whereas the compression beams are reflected to shine into the chamber from all directions.

Timesonline UK reports Research Councils UK (RCUK), which oversees the British government’s spending on science and technology, has said it believes that many of the obstacles to commercial nuclear fusion are close to being overcome.

Hiper
[Wikipedia] The High Power laser Energy Research facility (HiPER), is an experimental laser-driven inertial confinement fusion (ICF) device undergoing preliminary design for possible construction in the European Union starting around 2010.

Completion dates ??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiPER

interesting..free power isnt allowed you know?

Successful Cold Fusion/LENR is an Engineering Problem
http://coldfusion3.com/blog/successful-cold-fusionlenr-is-an-engineering-problem

Achieving successful cold fusion or low energy nuclear reaction is no longer a scientific challenge. Instead as Robert Godes of Brillouin has noted it is basically an engineering problem.

Despite the denials from some in the scientific establishment successful cold fusion reactions have been achieved hundreds perhaps thousands of times by dozens of different people since Pons and Fleischman. Creating a low energy nuclear reaction in a laboratory environment is the easy part even high school students can do it.

Cool..