$2 Billion Energy experiment with no future?

[ewizard]

CNN had an article today about a device being built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory that is going to try nuclear fusion with a laser the size of 3 football fields. They are saying it will be a miniature star. And what they will produce if all goes well will be only 5 microns diameter and last only 200 trillionths of a second after it's ignited. I can't believe we as taxpayers are having to fund such nonsense. Even the article says there are a lot of skeptics on this and even if it works that it would not be viable or an affordable way to produce energy. This has been under construction since 1997 and is still not expected to be ready until late 2012! Article here:
Can world's largest laser zap Earth's energy woes? - CNN.com

If even a tiny fraction of this money was given to some of the researchers I know of I think we would have a much better alternate energy source by now. But of course it would not be a centralized power source and so no control of the people.

[ashtweth]

$2 Billion your spot on, we are working on a fuel saving and vehicle modification video and document ATM to show all the neglected technologies which can improve public health TODAY, people seem to be missing what we can do TODAY to save energy, i guess till we build consumer awareness and demand of OVER UNITY, (replications) then they will consistently be looking for contracted projects to suck money into useless avenues in comparison to us.

good find man, ill be able to use this to help

Ash

[theremart]

No different than this..

Laser the size of 3 football fields to create a star like energy source.

Can world's largest laser zap Earth's energy woes? - CNN.com

Now, lets get this straight, they are going to create an energy source for which, they never have done before, and.... they are telling us this is safe.

Sounds like the early nuclear bomb tests where everyone in test range had no protective shielding.

[Matthew Jones]

They had a documentary on the Discovery Channel about that thing. It took them 4 months to gear up and run it for 35 seconds. LOL
It is almost comical the routes at which consumption based engineering will take us for a glimpse of the near future and its small potential of energy.

I would rather the lights go out.

Pray for the gulf of Mexico and its Residents...

Matt

[phi1.62]

Why do we continue feeding the white elephant that is heavy hydrogen fusion when Lawrenceville Plasma Physics had a successful test of their hydrogen-boron Focus Fusion device back in October 2009? They claim that a 20MW Focus Fusion device could be built for around $300,000 but even if the total costs of plant and distribution construction resulted in that cost being 10 times that amount for the same cost of this experiment, which is the same cost as about one 1000 MW coal power plant, you could build about 667 Focus Fusion Plants generating a total of about 13,000 MW, which is about the total energy needs of Sydney and Melbourne combined. In reality, the cost should be lower because you could reduce the need of long distance distribution networks since one of these plants is about the size of a petrol station and can be built to meet the energy demands of a town or a suburb rather than an entire city or state.

Focus Fusion would also make electric vehicles the recharge their batteries in a few minutes more practical. Under the current distribution system you couldn't have a large number of electric vehicles that recharged their batteries in a few minutes since you'd need to build a mid sized distribution bank at every recharging facility, not to mention the need of additional power plants.

Directory:Focus Fusion - PESWiki