Most powerful laser ever built completed

[tornado33]

I think this laser might exceed the legal requirements of a laser pointer.

Gee science has come up with some amazing machines. First the LHC and now this.

SCIENTISTS have built the world's largest laser, designed to create a nuclear reaction like the one at the centre of the sun.

When it's fired up, 192 laser beams will be focused on a tiny target at the centre of an enormous spherical target chamber, creating temperatures of up to 100 million degrees.

What seems like something out of Star Wars is actually a vast scientific complex in California known as the National Ignition Facility, finished this week after 12 years of construction.

The facility – the size of three football fields – is aimed at unlocking the secrets of nuclear fusion.

"Depending on how you count it, it's between 60 and 100 times more energetic than any laser system that's ever been built," NIF associate director Edward Moses told the MIT Technology Review.

Nuclear fusion is the type of reaction that powers hydrogen bombs. Scientists have yet to control it for civilian purposes.


The facility says that if it can prove nuclear fusion can be controlled, it may be a safe solution to the world's energy needs.

"A fusion power plant would produce no greenhouse gas emissions, operate continuously to meet demand, and produce shorter-lived and less hazardous radioactive by-products than current fission power plants," it says.

"One gallon of seawater would provide the equivalent energy of 300 gallons of gasoline. Fuel from 50 cups of water contains the energy equivalent of two tons of coal."

To prove that it is a viable source of power, scientists will have to start a reaction that creates more energy than is needed to power the lasers. They are aiming for at least a 10 per cent return on energy.

The chamber that will hold the reaction weighs more than 450,000kg and is reinforced by concrete.

The NIF, a research facility, will not produce any civilian power itself but be used to prove or disprove that the concept is possible.

In some models of how a fusion reactor would work, the heat produced inside the target chamber would be directed to a more traditional system like a steam turbine.

The NIF will also house US military experiments designed to test the longevity and durability of the country's nuclear arsenal.

Construction began on the facility in 1997. Its first official test is scheduled for next month.

A similar facility with 240 lasers, called the Laser Mégajoule, is currently being built in France.

Check out these videos here including growing giant KDP crystals

[gary]

See this thread for the same story including, in turn, a link to a story that
appeared in IEEE Spectrum very recently entitled "What About the Nukes?"
which gives the background to the "Stockpile Stewardship" program.
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=43144

The timing of the announcement of this laser is unlikely to be a coincidence.

Behind this is a much larger political picture, some of which was taking place
this week when, on the eve of the G20 summit, where Obama and Medvedev pledged to
agree to cuts in their nuclear arsenals by December this year.
See Guardian article here -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...lear-relations