National Ignition Facility
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NIF_target_chamber.jpg
The National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is an ultra-high power laser research device currently under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, in Livermore, California.
The NIF will be used for multiple exercises, however, the devices main roles will be nuclear weapons testing for the United States [1] (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/super.laser.ap/index.html), and fusion power experiments.
The device will use inertial confinement to enable scientists to study nuclear fusion and other processes involving extremely dense plasmas. The NIF's implementation of the concept uses 192 high-powered lasers, each traveling 1,000 feet (305 meters), to compress a beryllium covered deuterium-tritium (D+T) fuel pellet the size of a BB to densities of up to 1000 grams per cubic centimeter, over 6 times the density of the centre of the Sun. The lasers will fire beams totaling 500 terawatts of power (1,000 times the electric generating power of the United States in 2004) for a few billionths of a second, in order to achieve the desired effect. As of March 2004, four of the lasers have been completed.
The process is predicted to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion reactions, or ignition. Construction of the NIF is expected to be completed in 2008 with the first fusion ignition tests planned for 2010. When first proposed in the early 1990s, the cost for a "super laser" was estimated at less then $700 million. Current estimates put the ultimate cost between $3.5 and $6 billion dollars.
External links
- National Ignition Facility homepage (http://www.llnl.gov/nif/)
References
- "Building the world's most powerful laser". CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/super.laser.ap/index.html). Retrieved Jun. 17, 2005.de:National Ignition Facility