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Lasers that could one day solve the globe’s energy problems

The National Ignition Facility is home to lasers that could one day solve our energy problems or recreate the Big Bang. Sanchayan Bhattacharjee reports

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Imagine 192 laser beams in an area as large as three football fields converging on a target the size of a pen drive. That’s what happens at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), USA where 40,000 optics guide the beams before they combine to meet the target. All this happens in about five microseconds. NIF is the world’s largest and most energetic laser facility that is capable of creating extreme conditions like temperatures of up to 100 million degrees and pressures more than 1000 billion times of what the earth’s atmosphere exerts. 

“While LLNL is an acronym for the lab, for us it is ‘Lasers, Lasers and Nothing but Lasers’,” said Chris Barty, chief technology officer, NIF as he addressed like-minded faculty members and students at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in an hour-long session that focused on the construction, working and wide range of activities at the laser facility. He was part of a delegation which participated in the International Conference on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers in Goa last week.

One of the main objectives of the elaborate laser activity at NIF is to produce fusion energy (by combining hydrogen isotopes) on a scale which helps the needs of the world. The target which is bombarded with lasers releases huge amounts of energy which the scientists look to harness. “Almost all the nuclear energy produced today uses fission technology that produces dangerous nuclear waste. Fusion nuclear energy is clean and does not require any of our conventional fuels,” says Barty. 

So if it is so convenient, why isn’t it used to produce electricity on a large scale? “The first obstacle is getting reliable ignition from a target. To use an analogy, we often try to strike a match unsuccessfully. When it does catch fire, it burns till the wood runs out. We’re at the threshold of almost lighting the match when it comes to fusion energy,” explains Barty. Another major hurdle is that of cost. Just producing fusion energy is not enough; it has to be produced economically. “The price of the targets which are bombarded with lasers should be as low as 25 cents for this kind of energy production to be feasible. Right now, each target costs around 10,000 dollars,” says Barty. 

The extreme conditions created as a result of laser activity can also be used to emulate the core of stars and supernovae millions of light years away from the earth. “We can mimic temperature and pressure conditions inside a star in our laboratory. This helps astronomers and astrophysicists in their endeavours since most of their data come from images,” says Barty. 

In addition to the path breaking scientific work, NIF is popular among students for other reasons too. “Star Trek was shot here,” quips a student of TIFR, while listening to Barty’s lecture with rapt attention. 

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