Re: If they can pull this off ...

[Dave Farber <dfarber () me com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jonathan Thornburg <jthorn () astro indiana edu>
> Date: June 13, 2010 10:53:54 AM EDT
> To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
> Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re: If they can pull this off ...

> > stream, zero meltdown capability, zero weaponization.  But visit the 
> > National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, and you see 
> > massive lasers poised to focus 500 terawatts of energy for a 
> > billionth of a second on a BB-sized target of hydrogen isotopes. 
> > Impressive early tests suggest that successful ignition could occur 
> > in the next few months.  Sequence such ignitions rapidly, and you 
> > have a one-gigawatt clean power reactor.  Laser physicist Ed Moses is 
> > director of the National Ignition Facility...  
>
> The NIF's original design rationale and funding weren't as a prototype
> of a power-generating system, but rather to perform subminature-scale
> tests of the physics involved in hydrogen bomb explosions.  Most of the
> R&D on the target pellets is in fact classified, precisely because it
> overlaps so heavily with hydrogen-bomb design.
>
> There are thus serious nuclear-nonproliferation issues in trying to
> use such systems for electrical power generation.  Is this really a
> technology that we'd like to see widespread around the world, including
> its spread to assorted unfriendly and mutually-hostile nations?
>
> -- 
> -- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jthorn () astro indiana-zebra edu>
>   Dept of Astronomy, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
>   "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
>    powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
>                                      -- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com