The National Ignition Facility (NIF) missed a fiscal year-end target of achieving ignition a few months ago, and policymakers are asking hard questions about the NIF’s future. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is the parent agency of the NIF, released a report this week that details its intentions to scale back fusion energy research in favor of weapons research. An article in DVICE touches on why fusion energy is worth the investment, even if it takes many years and lots of money. From the article:

But this is what science is.

You make a best guess, you try a bunch of different techniques, and sometimes, nothing works quite the way you want it to and everything ends up costing more money and taking longer. What you have to do, though, is look at what you’re trying to accomplish, and what the risks and benefits are. NIF is expensive, that’s for certain, but what’s the potential return? Fusion power. Totally clean, virtually limitless energy. Global warming? Solved. Fossil fuel dependency? Solved. Environmental damage? Solved. Yes, that right there was a huge amount of hyperbole, but you get the idea: fusion power would put our entire species, our entire planet, in a much better place.

To read the full article, click here.

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