Super Laser at the National Ignition Facility

[Tone]

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Is this the 'Alternative CERN'?
Whats Your thoughts on this?
(its from 2008, dont know any news on this just found this video the other day)

Super Laser at the National Ignition Facility
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmIHD6P3rdo

It's the largest laser beam in the world and it's being built in the Bay Area.
The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
will shoot tremendous bursts of energy at an area the size of a pencil eraser. The goal?
To recreate fusion -- which powers the sun and some nuclear bombs
-- perhaps harnessing a new source of clean energy for the 21st century.

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[solrey]

There are two approaches to fusion being worked on right now. The NIF, and Eric Lerner's Focus Fusion, using a Dense Plasma Focus with Hydrogen-Boron fuel.

http://www.focusfusion.org/

May 28, 2002. A team of researchers has announced the achievement for the first time of temperatures above one billion degrees in a dense plasma. The breakthrough, achieved with a compact and inexpensive device called the plasma focus, is a step toward controlled fusion energy using advanced fuels that release little or no radioactivity. "We have achieved a key condition needed to burn hydrogen-boron fuel," said Eric J. Lerner of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, one of the researchers. "This fuel produces virtually no radioactivity and can potentially generate electric energy without expensive steam generators and turbines."

I'm thinking that the NIF will fail, while 'Focus Fusion' seems to have already proven success, at least on a limited scale so far. I see a parallel to the debate between GR and EU. Will pressure and temperature alone produce a micro-'star', or will a dense plasma focus/plasmoid rule the day?

Excellent description of the Dense Plasma Focus here:
http://focusfusion.org/index.php/gallery/image_med/5/

The above could even be helpful in certain discussions on cosmology.

[Tone]

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Thank you kindly Solrey, I glanced through the homepage, it was nice.

I wonder, how is the cross-national collaboration in this search for alternative energy (on the official level ; )
It seems as if these two are American based? Your link said something about cooperating with representative from Mexico University.

Scientific Collaborators:
Eric Lerner, John Guillory (George Mason University),
Robert E. Terry, (Naval Research Laboratory),
Juilio Herrera (National Autonomous University of Mexico).

http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/category/C32/

And that they wanted to get a researcher in from China

XinPei Lu delayed in China
by Admin on Apr 24, 2009 at 02:47 PM

Unfortunately there have been further delays in getting XinPei Lu into the Untied States.

We have been informed by the US consulate in Beijing that a background check, which is now routine for scientists from China,
may take as long as 12 weeks, which would postpone Dr. Lu’s arrival to late June.

This has left us short-handed, but we are managing with continued help from John Thompson.

Dr. XinPei Lu is currently Professor of Physics at HuaZhong Univ. of Sci. & Tech., Wuhan, China, where he received his PhD in 2001.
He has been working in the field of pulsed plasmas for over 14 years and is the inventor of an atmospheric-pressure cold plasma jet.

http://focusfusion.org/index.php/site/a ... _in_china/

Im very curious what is done in Russia (and worldwide)
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