A thousand suns?

There is never a dearth of claims when it comes to some new, technology that will spin perpetual energy. Often they die within days after hitting the press. Many fail to make the leap from the lab to the field. What about fusion energy? Or ‘creating mini-suns’ in the labs?

The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 50 miles east of San Francisco works with 192 lasers and hydrogen pellets to create unlimited, clean energy.

The laser energy falling on a frozen hydrogen pellet which when heated and compressed, can produce massive energy that can help drive a turbine and create electricity for our homes. By providing very high temperatures, the conditions required for fusion of hydrogen atoms is created, which gives out energy in the process.

Last week the lab attempted and succeeded in the first step of firing all lasers at the same time, a feat. In 2-3 years they hope to aim the lasers at hydrogen pellets and get out more energy than expended by the lasers. That would be the test of the experiment.

If it succeeds, the next question is: how would the hydrogen pellets be prepared? Is this an energy intensive process? What about the cost? Will we be able to create laboratory amounts of laser-powered energy?