The National Ignition Facility: Making Star Power on Earth

Imagine a sphere much smaller than a pea releasing enough energy to supply all of the electricity needs of the United States for a brief moment in time. How could this be possible? At the National Ignition Facility, a huge laser in Livermore, California, scientists and engineers are nearly ready to make this a reality. Edward Moses, the Project Manager at National Ignition Facility, explains how energy can be compressed to extreme power levels to potentially provide for a future of clean energy for our world. Series: Science on Saturday [5/2008] [Science] [Show ID: 14491]

Category:

Education

Tags:

• lasers
• clean
• energy
• NIF

[franzsebas2009]

@obesehairydog Because of money my friend, if it was cheap and clean, oil and petrolleum companies would loose a lot of money, and if you had billions, unless you were a very good person, (wich is not the case of many billionaries) you would spend the money on oil or petrolleum ocmpanies because they would give you WAY more money.

Its just a sad fact my friend. The world moves according to money. Filthy, disgusting money.

[MrDanP1]

Further more...by your logic, there is no such thing as a "pollutant". All vapors are "natural gas". Arsenic can be found in nature; but that hardly means I should dump it in your water supply. If I did so, I would be polluting. Or would I? It is a natural element!

[MrDanP1]

If you don't think it is a pollutant...go breathe some of it in. What makes a "pollutant" a "pollutant"...is that it is poisonous to the organism which is releasing it. Breathing CO2 can be hazardous to your health...that is why you exhale it as a waste product...and why if you are unable to do so, you will die.

There are plenty of other reasons why increasing CO2 is polluting besides the global warming "hoax", as you put it...reasonable science as I and most educated people would put it

[MrDanP1]

@imnormalyournot

Of course CO2 is a pollutant. But, so is oxygen. Anything is a pollutant which dramatically changes the atmospheric composition and can alter earth's climate. In earth's early days, there was much less free-standing oxygen in the atmosphere. Bacteria colonies produced oxygen as a waste product...thereby filling the atmosphere with the oxygen that was poisonous and killed them. What makes both of these things "pollutants" in their respective time periods was the amount rel

[MrDanP1]

@obesehairydog

They would prefer to wait, all the while saying, "nuclear fusion will NEVER work. It is impossible." Then, when ignition is reached and proven to be viable...they will invest a few dollars in commercializing it and make more billions...all the while, criticizing government beuracrats and scientists and talking about how "government is always the problem, never the solution". They will steal all the credit for something they had nothing to do with...they always have........

[imnormalyournot]

I disagree with C02 as a pollutant. Its a natural gas we breath out plants need it to live. The hockety stick is fake and has been disproven. Dont go via the glabal warming scam to get this you dont need to. Just use the science of we need it.

[imnormalyournot]

This is quite renewable once up and running... all else is NON renewable - It takes lots of windmills to build a windmill... !

[TailsBit]

@obesehairydog nah im just a regular dude who lives on earth and creates miniature earth and space ecosystems.

[TailsBit]

@obesehairydog These guys arent that amazing at all, ive already created a star the size of a basket ball. And now a planet with miniature living human life. now soon i will have a solar system and soon a planet to save earth and these cartoon making losers will be ashamed of themselves.

[47f0]

Meh - we already have a perfectly good source of clean fusion energy, located smack in the middle of our solar system. A fraction of the solar energy that hits our planet can power us for the foreseeable future. Man-made fusion just means more expensive centralized power controlled by energy monopolies.