Livermore Laboratory shows off world's biggest laser gun [PIC]

Today, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory dedicated the world's largest laser system. The National Ignition Facility, with its 192 giant laser beams, fills up an entire 10-story building in Livermore, Calif., about 45 miles east of San Francisco. 

No, all that laser power is not to shoot down UFOs or melt ice on Mars -- the goal is even more elusive: sustained nuclear fusion. 

When the system goes online in two to three years, the nearly 200 lasers will focus all their power inward at a tiny 2-millimeter ball of frozen hydrogen gas, zapping it with 60 times more energy than any laser system that's come before. How much juice is that? Try 2 million joules.

How much juice is that?

"It's never been done before under controlled conditions," wrote the lab's Bob Hirschfeld in an e-mail.  "Just in nuclear weapons and in stars."

If things go well, lighting a mini-sunfire inside that hydrogen ball would release far more energy than the already gigantic amount of energy the laser is putting in. The main goal of fusion science is, of course, to create a nearly endless supply of safe and carbon-free electricity without the need to create nuclear byproducts. But scientists hope it could also be beneficial for astrophysics, as well as inspection and explosion-free testing of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

Here's a picture of the laser; click to see at full resolution:

Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory .

-- David Sarno

Comments

[Erin Marie Hall]

I'm no scientist, but isn't this the basic premise of Spiderman 2?

[Quarup Barreirinhas]

Taking conservation of energy into account: where would the "endless supply of electricity" come from? Is the power coming from surrounding atoms somehow?

[Pcamp]

It isn't technically endless - but the power is from the fusion of two hydrogen nuclei together to produce an enormous amount of energy. Hydrogen is so cheap and readily available that the supply would be close to limitless.

[Simon]

In response to Erin Hall - sortof, but spider man was fiction, whereas this is reality. Plus I think that those were supposed to be some kind of magnetic containment thingies on Doc Oc, whereas the lasers here start the fusion, and don't sustain it. In response to Quarup - conservation of energy has no problems with fusion - you convert potential energy from binding the hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei into kinetic energy - it's the same way the sun and hydrogen bombs work.

And yes, I _am_ a scientist :)

[Jorg Beufer]

While filled with exaggerated language that is at times cheeky and entertaining, I thought I'd make a few points about the content of this article.

First, the laser is "online" right now. Ignition shots are some time off but the system is functional. Second, I thought I'd clarify just how much energy it delivers to target. Two million joules (or 2 megajoules or 2 MJ) is about the energy contained in the food calories of two jelly donuts. What's impressive is that the NIF can deliver that much energy in a few billionths of a second. During that brief moment, the amount of power produces is something like 200 trillion watts (or 200 terawatts or 200 TW). This is about 100 times the electricity generating capacity of the world.

With that kind of power deliverable to such a small target you can get some interesting things to happen. Deuterium-tritium fusion is the most noteworthy.

[Slock]

Did someone just say Spiderman 2? "The power of the sun in my hands", then Doc Oc goes a little loopy and then he commits suicide!

[jim]

e=mc2, energy=matter. a small amount of matter holds a lot of energy. so instead of using that energy all at once, it comes out slower and more controlled...or something like that.

[Scientist]

The idea of fusion, Quarup, is that you can use atoms (specifically hydrogen, mainly because of its abundance) and fuse them together to create helium and larger elements. Creation of helium happens because the atoms literally combine, and the nucleus now has 2 protons. Doing this releases incredibly amounts of energy, its how stars work.

In any case, its not endless amounts of energy as much as its "free" energy because of the abundance of hydrogen and the fact that the byproducts are either completely inert (in helium's case) or non-toxic/deadly in the case of the creation of larger atoms.

[Tomasz]

The energy comes from nuclear fusion.

[David Tupper]

@Quarup Barreirinhas: No, not really. It's significantly more complex than that. Read up on Wikipedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Fusion

[Josh Blair]

I'd like a little deeper explanation. What exactly is this going to accomplish? Is the reaction of the lasers with the hydrogen going to make a mini-sun? A little floating sun of our own, with its own mini-gravitational field, etc.? If so, how would we tap that energy? Or does the reaction just produce a one-time burst of superfluous energy that we are going to collect? That sounds monotonous, having to recharge the lasers over and over. But profitable overall. Cool stuff. Technology freaking rocks.

[Brian]

Quarup Barreirinhas, it is not that energy is being created from nowhere. As you probably know, you get nothing for free. The energy is being released from the atomic nucleii of atoms as they are "fused" (hence the name fusion). When you force two hydrogen nucleii together you create a helium atom. The helium nucleas can store less energy than the two separate hydrogen atoms combined can. Hence when you force two hydrogen nucleii together a helium nucleas is formed and the excess energy is expelled. This is the same reaction that is happening in the sun. Nuclear fission is a similar process but where fusion works by combining light nucleii, fission works by splitting heavy nucleii ... i.e. Uranium. So, fusing light elements releases energy, and splitting heavy elements also does. Between the light and heavy element sits Iron, and neither fusing or fissioning iron will give you a net release of energy.

[Ted Williams]

I'm not an expert, but as I understand it most fusion reactors are designed to work with deuterium and/or tritium, both of which are isotopes of hydrogen. Tritium would produce higher-yield reactions, but is more rare and much less stable than deuterium, which is (relatively) easily extracted from seawater.

This relative abundance of deuterium, along with the extraordinarily high amounts of energy that could potentially be extracted from a small amount, is why fusion energy could be a *nearly* limitless supply of energy. Granted, nothing lasts forever, but at our current rates of energy expenditure, we've got at least a million years' worth of deuterium in the ocean.

Here's where my numbers come from:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c24/page_173.shtml

And, yes, the plot of Spiderman 2 revolved heavily around attempts to use lasers to fuse tritium.

[Fusion is fun]

Quarup - fusion releases energy. It's the same way the sun works. Check out wikipedia for details.

[Pete Mjoen]

In response to david tupper.
The reaction produces heat, and that heat can be used to boil water and spin a turbine which spins a generator to produce electricity. This is how coal and nuclear power plants also work; they just use different sources of heat.

[Milan Jovovic]

Very encouraging news on the technology front ! Let me take this opportunity to give some credits to the many of those who did “cranking of the numbers”, envisioning it all possible. There is a short presentation on my website: www.linkedin.com/in/milanjovovic , showing the work performed at the INRIA, France.

[PeteC]

I know a lot about this stuff, and wish I could learn you guys a thing or two. But unfortunately I'm only 12 1/2 so not allowed to comment here. That sucks.

[chris]

Fusion will give a lot of energy, but what happens when we deplete the earth of hydrogen while creating more helium? We have a problem now with CO2, which is a lot easier to get rid of. Changing helium back into hydrogen needs fission. In a hundred years there may be a lot less water and everyone's voice will be a little higher-pitched.

[Bill]

This is not the first try, have a read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak_Fusion_Test_Reactor

[claudio]

All right, We understand nuclear fusion to a certain extent and the large amont of energy released.
However NOBODY herein seems to ask "what will contain the enormous amount of superheated ionized fluid (gas??) " ....????

This is infact the very problem of the actual fusion energy power plants :
' Tomawak ' is the best known attemp to contain these ionized gas resulting from the H fusion.....
UNSUCCESSFUL as far as I know as the magnetic field to contain such ionized gas is so intense that needs 'superconductors technology' to be realized and that is NOT an easy matter.

Therefore it is good that other sources such as the powerfull 'Pulsed laser array' can create a ' hot H fusion' and that the heat could be used to transform into electricity...but the problem of containing such results of the fusion is still there and it is still an issue ...AM I WRONG Mr. SIMON the scientist ???

What will contain the superheated ionized gases ???

Thnks ...Regards

[rashid]

they are working on this for about 12 years while spiderman 2 came out after the conception of livermore

[Snick]

Ok...there is the video description of the facility. This describes all of the basics. Check and see if this answers the questions...

http://www.2100science.com/Videos/Nuclear_Fusion_using_LASERS.aspx

Thanks. This is exciting stuff!

[Scott]

Ummm... Isn't there the possiblity of this going too far? Sorry I'm not a physicist so I can't help but be a bit skeptic here, seems like were dealing with a lot of energy and matter here and I'm just wondering if there is anyway this can potentially backfire or cause a huge explosion or something?

[Evan]

What I'm curious about is how they plan to harness the energy released. In what form is the energy released? How do they plan to capture it and turn it into a usable energy source?