The World's Most Powerful Laser Is Still Working to Produce a Fusion Reaction

IEEE Spectrum published an expansive, well-researched article on the National Ignition Facility's (NIF's) building and use of the world's most powerful laser. The piece clocks in at over four thousand words, which may be a bit daunting for casual laser enthusiasts, but it's worth the read.

Author Rachel Courtland gets into the hyper-specific details of the project, including other scholars' and researchers' fairly widespread criticisms of NIF's work. She also notes several of the NIF's goals. Most broadly, the lab wants to demonstrate actual creation of a fusion reaction–which she describes as a "self-sustaining 'burn' capable of producing more energy than is needed to get the process started in the first place." This process is called ignition, and reaching it is the main goal of many researchers working with lasers and fusion.

Ignition has only been accomplished during the testing of nuclear bombs via explosion, and if NIF can reach ignition by laser, then it could reduce our testing of dangerous weapons and yield "the long-held dream of nearly limitless and clean commercial fusion power," Courtland writes.

It's clear, though, that NIF's raison d'etre is not power generation, but actually national defense -- yet the specifics of what type of national defense are vague at best right now.

NIF officials say that their project will help examine and preserve aging weapons, but again, it is unclear why exactly they want to examine weapons. Courtland interviews Robert Hirsch, an energy consultant and top researcher at the Atomic Energy Commission, notes that the NIF's defense justification "seem a little bit fluffy…it's not clear how well those argumetns would stand up to serious scrutiny."

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor lab (ITER), a $20 billion dollar project expected to be finished in 2020 by French scientists, is the other big laboratory in the laser game. Courtland notes that this lab is much clearer in its intentions, and that these scientists are dedicated to study fusion in hopes of creating a perfect replacement for fossil fuels.

The NIF has made several accomplishments thus far, including the engineers' achieving their design specifications, such as releasing 1.8 megajoules of energy in a 500 terawatt laser blast. NIF is able to release a shot about twice a day at its current rate, though the engineers have much higher expectations.

Achieving ignition has taken longer than expected, with NIF already passing the September deadline given by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA funds this laser research, and they've extended the deadline by three years before they'll re-examine the lab.

Another flaw of the lab is that critics believe that even if ignition is reached, it will be very weak and plans for a power plant might be grim. Critics, identified by Courtland as "those in the know," also say that the NIF downplays the consequences of not reaching ignition, and argue that the $10 billion dollar project (which was originally supposed to cost $3.5 billion) is a waste of government money.

While the future of laser weaponry, or laser-based energy is uncertain, we at least know that lasers can be used for other means. Still, fusion has long been the holy grail of energy. The only problem is, even its biggest successes have still been failures, and while it appears we're getting closer, the NIF still has a long way to go.