Join the Oilgae Mailing List


Discuss Oil from Algae @ Oilgae Forums

Monday, May 5, 2008

Largest Laser Beam to Create Fusion for an Instant

Here's a video about the National Ignition Facility, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, employing the largest bank of laser beams in the world, to be used in an experiment designed to create fusion ignition.

Scientists are creating a system to replicate fusion by using lasers to create the high heat and pressure needed for fusion. At the center of the project is a gold cylinder the size of a dime. This gold cylinder, called the hohlraum, houses a capsule containing the hydrogen isotopes. NIF scientists will blast the hohlraum with 192 laser beams simultaneously for a few billionths of a second. The cylinder will produce x-rays that compress and heat the capsule resulting in a nuclear fusion reaction.

This experiment is not a continuous fusion reactor, it is an experimental device designed to determine whether scientists can create a fusion reaction for an instant of time, using this method.

More from here

Labels:


Comments: Post a Comment



Save to del.icio.us

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]