Fusion Scientists See Progress as Obama Shows No Ardor
Bloomberg Markets magazine published a fascinating article on inertial fusion at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The author interviewed Ed Moses, the Principal Associate Director at the NIF, who described his confidence in achieving fusion “ignition.” Once ignition is achieved, Moses believes inertial fusion can lead to commercial power plants. However, the NIF is threatened with budget cuts from the President’s budget, which calls for a transition from fusion research to nuclear weapons research. From the article:
In a 2005 Livermore newsletter, Moses said he hoped to achieve ignition in 2010. Now, he says the NIF is about halfway through a three-year set of experiments that may accomplish that goal.
Obama wants to cut the NIF budget to $329 million in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 from the prior $409 million. The NIF may close the gap by charging outside researchers to run basic science experiments, such as how elements like iron behave under extreme pressure. Moses is allocating time slots with the facility and its laser into 2022.
….
For true believers, fusion is too tantalizing to abandon for a simple reason: Fusing hydrogen atoms releases eight times more energy than a fission reaction that splits a similar amount of uranium, says Stephen O. Dean, author of “Search for the Ultimate Energy Source: A History of the U.S. Fusion Energy Program.” Fusion is also more difficult, since such electrically charged particles as deuterium and tritium tend to repel each other.
“Fusion for electricity will work; the question is when and at what cost,” Dean says. “Hopefully, climate change won’t get completely out of hand before we find the answers.”
To read the full article, click here.
