Fusion

'The National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, has been called a modern-day moon-shot, a project of "revolutionary science," and "the mother of all boondoggles."

 

NIF, as it's known, is a five-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded super laser project whose goal is to create nuclear fusion – a tiny star – inside a laboratory. But so far, that hasn't happened.

 

The facility, which began operating in 2009 after a decade of construction at a cost of almost $4 billion, points 192 football-field-sized lasers at one tiny capsule the size of a peppercorn and filled with hydrogen. It creates degrees of heat and pressure never before achieved in a lab.

 

Standing outside NIF's target chamber in 2008, about a year before NIF's dedication, Director Ed Moses called NIF "more far-out, and far cooler than anything in science fiction or fantasy."'

http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/in-livermore-still-waiting-on-nuclear-fusion/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-livermore-still-waiting-on-nuclear-fusion