I wrote a paper on this plan (using lasers to squish a pellet of deuterium into ignition) for my physics undergrad course in 1973! In those years of gross naïveté I probably imagined ignition was about 36 weeks away, not 36 years. Let's hope that the bean counters of the current admistration don't pull the plug on yet another Big Physics project. And while we are more or less on the topic: whatever happened to breeder reactors? Weren't we going to be awash in free energy by now? I seem to have dodged another bullet (of a dead-end career) by not going into nuclear physics or nuclear engineering. (The other dodged bullet being the frustrating blind alley theoretical physics has become as it tangled itself in strings.)
UPDATE: Found the answer about the breeder reactors: apparently they solve the wrong problem--there is no shortage of cheap enough fuel, and fuel costs are a fraction of the power costs. Given the over-production of stuff that can be used for weapons, breeders have a large minus with no compelling pluses.
UPDATE: Found the answer about the breeder reactors: apparently they solve the wrong problem--there is no shortage of cheap enough fuel, and fuel costs are a fraction of the power costs. Given the over-production of stuff that can be used for weapons, breeders have a large minus with no compelling pluses.
Comments