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I attended a lecture by a bitter ex-LLL scientist who said they had made great progress with the magnet mirror approach but it was scuttled right before it star
by pstuart 5y ago
I attended a lecture by a bitter ex-LLL scientist who said they had made great progress with the magnet mirror approach but it was scuttled right before it starting it up. This was so they could do the laser project(s) which was really about learning how to build weapons.
Any thoughts on the real focus of the lab?
- omgJustTest 5y agoIt is an open-secret that NIF is not as much a simulator for fusion as for devices. They have admitted as much on their public site[1]. [1] https://wci.llnl.gov/facilities/nif https://wci.llnl.gov/facilities/nif Edit: However it is good to note that in comparison with other fusion methods, laser based methods relax materials constraints I listed above simply by spreading the energy/particle fluxes over larger surface areas. If you built a giant fusion reactor based on NIF you could reduce DPA and temperature requirements, but it would fundamentally be a "shot" based reactor.
- willis936 5y agoYep. MFTF. Really frustrating stuff. There is a statue of it in front of UW-Madison's Engineering Hall. It's a water display that, funnily, has not worked in many years.