New Powerful Laser System Could Create Fusion Energy from Waste?
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Lab are putting the finishing touches on the world's most powerful laser system known as NIF (National Ignition Facility). In about 18 months, physicists will conduct a highly-publicized test to create fusion energy from water. It is part of a project designed to take the world beyond nuclear energy. But if it succeeds, the system could do more than create energy in a new way. It might actually rid the world of leftover nuclear waste in the process.
The NIF team will fire nearly 200 individual laser beams generated by an accelerator the size of a football field. The beams converge on a single target chamber containing a capsule of hydrogen. The hope is to compress it, and creating a subatomic reaction called fusion, ultimately igniting a controlled version of the same thermo-nuclear combustion that takes place on the sun.
As hydrogen is compressed, it releases particles called neutrons, which can penetrate the nucleus of another atom. So now we could take nuclear waste and use those neutrons to bust it up, get energy and remove the waste.
full article here
The NIF team will fire nearly 200 individual laser beams generated by an accelerator the size of a football field. The beams converge on a single target chamber containing a capsule of hydrogen. The hope is to compress it, and creating a subatomic reaction called fusion, ultimately igniting a controlled version of the same thermo-nuclear combustion that takes place on the sun.
As hydrogen is compressed, it releases particles called neutrons, which can penetrate the nucleus of another atom. So now we could take nuclear waste and use those neutrons to bust it up, get energy and remove the waste.
full article here
Labels: energy, hydrogen, inventions, nuclear, waste
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