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Star Power

Bill M
sunclouds200.jpg

 

At the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, scientists are using nearly 200 extremely high-powered lasers to build a device that would achieve controlled nuclear fusion.  Essentially, they are attempting to create the equivalent of a tiny star, releasing more energy than required to produce the reaction.  If successful, this could be a game-changing, desperately needed, clean energy breakthrough.

How NIF Works (YouTube)

Story via Jason Kottke

Copyleft Image: Evening Cloud by Stephan Uhlmann

 

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After more than fifty years of development,

Submitted by Anteros on Fri, 06/25/2010 - 03:51.
will fusion power finally work this time, generating more energy than it takes to produce? I suspect it's a long shot. If it doesn't succeed, our planet can breathe a sigh of relief, for without large quantities of energy industrial civilization will eventually collapse, sparing the biosphere. But humans' problems will have just begun. If it does succeed... Well, first let's see if that happens.