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I thought one of the statements in the article was especially interesting: "NIF isn't truly about energy," Seife writes in his book. "It is not about keeping o
by NathanKP 17y ago
I thought one of the statements in the article was especially interesting:
"NIF isn't truly about energy," Seife writes in his book. "It is not about keeping our stockpile safe, at least not directly. It is about keeping the United States' weapons community going in the absence of nuclear tests."
That's obviously a pretty pessimistic point of view, but when I consider the details of the test, including the immense amount of energy required to fire the lasers ten times a second, as would be required to start it according to the article, I don't see how it would be possible to get that much power back out, at least not using the traditional water to steam technique.
- electromagnetic 17y agoEssentially if they can make the equipment small enough, there could be serious potential for a pure-fusion bomb, which could skirt the test ban treaty as it doesn't fall under the terminology of a nuclear weapon (fissile or fissile and fusion; pure fusion isn't in the CTBT terminology, IIRC). Although the Ares 1 under development is currently capable of putting 25,000KG into LEO, and the Ares V is expected to be capable of up to 188,000KG. So it's not like the equipment has to be exceptionally small if it's capable of producing pure-fusion, it just has to be slightly smaller than the ISS!