Resembling a palates ball with robotic spider legs, partially encased in concrete at the center of this huge facility, the reaction chamber is a rather intimidating looking blue sphere surrounded by portholes, and large long rectangular boxes all converging into a single point somewhere deep within the bowels of this megalithic construction. It’s hard to believe that all of this is needed to convert a 2 millimeter sphere of beryllium and deuterium into helium and a butt-load of energy.

Sleeping in the giant belly of the Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility, is the world’s first over unity nuclear fusion laser reactor (ignition scheduled for 2010). It’s expected that the overall energy output from this reactor will be anywhere between 100 to 1000 times the energy that was needed to start the initial fusion reaction. That would be equivalent to the entire electrical output of the United States power grid combined, for a billionth of a second.

A brief history of laser fusion:

This monumental effort represents the 4th attempt to achieve a fusion reaction at the facility over the past 35 years. The first was codenamed “Janus” in 1974. With an output of only 10 joules and built to study inertial confinement fusion it was considered to be a very high power laser. Utilizing almost 100 pounds of Neodymium² glass laser material, and filling a medium sized room, the dual infrared laser didn’t have enough power to create a fusion reaction.

Although fusion was not achieved in the Janus experiment, some serious number crunching led to the second attempt at laser fusion in 1977 codenamed “Shiva”. Named after the multi-armed Hindu goddess of destruction, this laser system, at the time, certainly lived up to it’s name. Utilizing 20 infrared lasers, this system was capable of generating 10.2 KiloJoules of energy (over 1000 times the energy of it’s predecessor). Fusion was not expected in this facility, it was built primarily as a proof of concept for a larger facility that was to follow.

In 1984 “Nova” came online with the expressed purpose of becoming the first fusion ignition system. With 20 beamlines and an output of 30 KiloJoules this system should have had the power to spark a fusion reaction. Ultimately it failed due to unforeseen magnetohydrodynamic instability, and minute inconsistencies in the laser outputs causing the fuel pellet to heat and implode unevenly. Although fusion was not achieved, the data collected during it’s operation between 1984 and 1999, proved to be both valuable and vital in the fields of high-density matter physics and nuclear weapons research.

After some major plans to upgrade the Nova systems, they were eventually rented to France and replaced by the “National Ignition Facility”. Now taking up the full space of both the Janus and Nova facilities, and incorporating 192 ultraviolet lasers and over 3,000 plates of Neodymium doped laser glass, this latest incarnation puts out an incredible 1.8 Million joules of energy making it almost 200, 000 times more powerful than the Janus experiment.

Now that’s one a-spicy meat-a-ball!

Footnotes:

¹In chemistry and manufacturing, electrolysis is a method of separating chemically bonded elements and compounds by passing an electric current through them. One important use of electrolysis of water is to produce hydrogen.

²Neodymium is also known as a “rare earth metal”, and has a wide array of uses from high power laser glass doping to super strong permanent magnets.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2009/05/gallery_nif

Sandia’ Z machine lab melts diamonds at 10 million atmospheres

Heavy super-dense deuterium atoms are the nuclear fuel of the future

The Cansolair Model RA 240 Solar Max.

Slammed with the sudden increase in oil during the winter of 2007, my spouse and I started looking at alternative energy sources for heating our home.

I noticed in a Canadian Tire flyer that they were selling solar panels for residential use. At almost $2000 they were pretty pricey and the wattage they put out might power a 60 watt light bulb and a small radio.

Geothermal sounded great to us as it was a way of “getting off the oil tit” entirely. Unfortunately we live in an eighty-year-old house and the retrofit would have doubled the already hefty price (around $20,000) for the unit. And because it runs on electricity, your light bill goes up drastically.

Then we thought “Hey wind power! Of course!” but with local zoning laws and a low buy-back rate from the regional electric company for surplus electricity, we had to nix that idea too.

Supplementing oil heat with wood heat is very popular in our area and we considered this option as well. But with both of us working full time we couldn’t see us chopping wood and starting fires for hours a day. There’s also the storage and mess when dealing with wood that really killed our interest in pursuing it as an option.

Enter James Meaney of Dildo, Newfoundland and his company Cansolair, that manufactures solar panels for heating your home. Unlike conventional solar panels that convert solar energy into electricity used to heat up water using an electric water heater, the Model RA 240 Solar Max is a forced convection solar heating unit.

Cold air is pumped by a small fan from the bottom of a room through a small duct into the solar panel where it is heated up and then pumped back into the room. According to Mr. Meaney, all you need is fifteen minutes of sun an hour for the unit to start saving you money on your heating bill. The price was a draw as well — only $2500 per unit.

Most forms of alternative energy available to the average homeowner cost a lot of money to set up and don’t “pay for themselves” for around 20 years. It can be a major investment and is usually best done when the house is built. With some testimonials stating a savings of a tank of oil per Cansolair panel, the unit would pay for itself in three to six years.

Cansolair is currently building its distribution but has already been sold in Australia, Europe and North America. They are currently working on adapting their solar panel design for other uses like water heating. Good luck to this Canadian inventor. He’ll be hearing from us soon!

Show Notes:

Links:

The Tenth Dimension Video

Neuro Cosmetics Article

Where does Lithium come from?

Corrections:

One windmill can power 200 households

Bolivia is a presidential representative democratic republic

Wikipedia says this about lithium:
Lithium is widely distributed on Earth,^[18] however, it does not naturally occur in elemental form due to its high reactivity. Estimates for crustal content range from 20 to 70 ppm by weight.^[12] In keeping with its name, lithium forms a minor part of igneous rocks, with the largest concentrations in granites. Granitic pegmatites also provide the greatest abundance of lithium-containing minerals, with spodumene and petalite being the most commercially viable mineral sources for the element.^[12] A newer source for lithium is hectorite clay, the only active development of which is through Western Lithium Corp in the USA. ^[19]