UK joins laser nuclear fusion project

[TemperateSeaIsland]

The UK has formally joined forces with a US laser lab in a bid to develop clean energy from nuclear fusion.
Unlike fission plants, the process uses lasers to compress atomic nuclei until they join, releasing energy.
The National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US is drawing closer to producing a surplus of energy from the idea.
The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now joined with Nif to help make laser fusion a viable commercial energy source.

BBC News - UK joins laser nuclear fusion project

Hopefully some progress can be made in this field of research. A commercially viable fusion reactor would be a major breakthrough.

 

[bigbadwilf]

I'm still not sure which is more likely to produce a commercial reactor, inertial containment (like NIF and Vulcan) or magnetic containment (like TFTR and JET). It'll be interesting to find out...

 

[Mr Dave]

Ooh, interesting.

 

[bigbadwilf]

My one hope is that when a prototype commercial reactor is made they give it a sensible name rather than some ghastly, meaningless TLA or ETLA.

 

[SpiritualAntiseptic]

How about wickedawesome?

 

[KerrMetric]

I believe the UK public spend more on downloading extra phone ringtones than the UK government spends on fusion research.

 

[bigbadwilf]

Difficult to say, but I wouldn't have thought so. The UK is the host nation for the JET project - the largest magnetic containment plasma physics experiment in the world.
It's been offline for the last 18 months as it is being upgraded (while the EU squabbles over the funding of the yet to be built ITER (its replacement)).
Not to mention MAST - the sister project of NSTX at Princeton (which is also just finishing an upgrade) and the Vulcan laser setup, it would take an awful lot of ringtones to cover the running costs.

Then again, some people in the UK do buy an awful lot of ringtones...