Lasers
have usually represented weapons of mass destruction in movies such as
"Star Wars," but a newly completed facility has begun harnessing
lasers to create a fusion reaction rivaling the power of a miniature sun.
The
National Ignition Facility has already test-fired all 192 giant lasers at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California as part of this effort.
The lasers will eventually focus the power on compressing and heating a single, pea-sized fuel capsule to
more than 180 million degrees Fahrenheit in order to trigger thermonuclear
fusion.
"One
of the major activities of the NIF is to explore the basics of fusion energy, building a minature sun on Earth that could supply limitless, safe and carbon-free
energy," said Ed Moses, National Ignition Facility (NIF) program director.
Unlike
nuclear fission reactions that split apart atoms inside existing power plants,
fusion reactions create energy from atoms fusing together
to form heavier atoms. The reaction normally only takes place within intensely
hot environments, such as the heart of a star, but researchers have attempted
to recreate fusion in a way that would produce more energy than it takes to
start the reaction.
Just
150 micrograms of deuterium and tritium, or less than one-millionth of a pound,
can serve as the fuel for the NIF experiment. But containing the high temperature plasma from a fusion reaction represents a special challenge —
temperatures of 180 million degrees F and up would melt any known substance,
apparently including the metallic arms of Spiderman villain 'Doc Ock' in his
fictional fusion experiment from "Spiderman 2."
The
NIF's laser-based approach uses an approach known as inertial confinement
fusion (ICF), which takes advantage of Newton's Third Law about every reaction
having an equal and opposite reaction.
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An Interesting Approach to Fusion
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