national ignition facility Archives – The Green Optimistic

Nuclear Fusion: NIF Scientists Getting Out More Energy Than They Put In

Danny Harper — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 08:38:21 +0000

The black sheep of the clean energy family, nuclear power, has dealt with a PR stigma for decades. Some of it deserved (potential destructiveness in a weaponized form) and much of it undeserved (panic over instances like Three-Mile Island, which resulted in zero deaths and no radiation problems). This has led to funding-related issues regarding research into harnessing nuclear power, with […]

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World’s Most Powerful Nuclear Fusion Laser Array Misses the Mark

Benji Jerew — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:59:38 +0000

The National Ignition Facility [NIF] in California, US, is the world’s leading nuclear fusion research lab. Fusion is the stuff stars are made of, literally. Heat energy in the billions of degrees, and pressure in the billions of atmospheres, forces hydrogen atoms to fuse, releasing energy and helium, as well as sustaining further reaction. Recreating […]

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NIF Reports Partial Achievement of Nuclear Fusion: The Real Thing Planned For 2013

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:15:58 +0000

The National Ignition Facility is a 3-stadiums-wide building, and a part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose main interest is to make nuclear fusion possible. On Sep. 29, the $3.5 billion laser machine inside the NIF has proved the theory was right by firing its 192 laser beams on a tiny frozen hydrogen pellet, producing the fusion of some tritium and deuterium atoms.

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Todd Ditmire’s Petawatt Laser: One Step Closer to Nuclear Fusion

Ovidiu Sandru — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:53:27 +0000

Todd Ditmire, from the University of Texas, has invented a laser device that can produce petawatt power through a process of chirping, that takes a short light pulse (150 femtoseconds) and stretches it out in time, amplifies it to higher energy and then recompresses it to about 100 femtoseconds in time, obtaining 190 joules of energy.

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NIF: Nuclear Fusion Research Facility Opened in California

Ovidiu Sandru — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:20:27 +0000

An attempt to recreate nuclear fusion, that takes place naturally inside stars' core, will be experimented at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), in California, that was inaugurated on Friday. The NIF is a 10-storey building with a surface as large as three football fields. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who cut the ribbon of the $3.5bn facility said it could "revolutionise our energy future".

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