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Fusion research, if properly funded, holds huge promise
Editorial
Oakland Tribune

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

For more than half a century, scientists have dreamed about using fusion - the source of the sun's energy - to produce electricity. Now, thanks in large part to research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, that dream could be realized in the next couple of decades.

The latest and most promising means of economically producing safe, carbon emission-free electricity is Laser Inertial-Confinement Fusion-Fisssion Energy, or LIFE.

It is a combination of fusion and fission, the process used in today's atomic power plants. Fusion energy would be used to set off fission reactions in spent nuclear fuel and old nuclear weapons.

Not only would LIFE produce clean electricity, it would burn up nuclear waste, greatly reducing the need for a waste storage facility such as the controversial one planned at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The key to fusion-fission energy is producing a sustainable fusion reaction. That is what is being developed at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

The NIF uses 192 high-powered lasers focused on a tiny target of hydrogen isotopes to create the astronomically high temperature and pressure necessary to achieve a fusion reaction.

The facility is scheduled to officially open next spring and begin fusion ignition experiments in 2010. If, as scientists at the lab expect, the fusion experiments are successful, it would be a watershed event that would make fusion-fission energy feasible in the near future.

Currently, fission power plants extract about 1 percent of the potential energy found in uranium, plutonium and other fissible materials. A fusion-fission hybrid would get 99 percent of the energy from the fissible materials.

LIFE also is safer than current nuclear power plants because, unlike those facilities, the fission fuel remains deeply subcritical - incapable of spontaneously starting or sustaining a chain reaction - at all times.

If the United States can develop power plants using LIFE, the benefits would be transforming. Our reliance on imported oil would sharply decline. There also would be a significant reduction in greenhouse gases.

This new source of energy might also be used to produce hydrogen as a fuel for cars and planes from seawater instead of hydrocarbons as is currently the case. If so, fossil fuels would become a thing of the past.

But before any of these energy visions can become real, the Livermore lab, which is the world's leading LIFE research facility, must be fully funded to continue its work.

We trust that an Obama administration will recognize the enormous potential of the lab and its NIF, and will be willing to make the investment necessary for its success.

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