The way most people think about nuclear energy today is they think about
fission, where you take large atoms and you break them into smaller atoms and
you get energy released as part of that process. What we're going to do is
actually a simpler process in one respect - we're going to take small atoms,
like hydrogen and combine them together to make helium and that is what goes on
in the stars and powers the universe right now.
The basic idea is to take the same processes that power the universe, which is
fusion and to recreate that in a laboratory setting here on Earth. The control
room here at the NIF looks an awful lot like a NASA control room on purpose
because it was actually modeled after the same concept of a NASA control room. The
difference is, instead of sending people into space, we're going to bring the
stars here to earth. We're going to bring the power of the stars, we're going
to make it in this target chamber behind us and then we're going to harness
that energy and use it for the benefit of our national security, for enabling
clean energy here on earth and for advancing frontier science.
The way the National Ignition Facility is going to create a star is we're going
to take all of the energy that we have, which is five hundred terawatts, that's
more than is on the entire world's electric grid during the twentieth
billionths of a second that we actually have the laser pulse, and we're going
to focus that into a very tiny volume and what that does is it creates x-rays
that will bathe a fuel capsule.
The outer part of that fuel capsule will blow off and like the exhaust of a
rocket pushes a rocket forward, it will push the fuel in at a million miles per
hour, it will create temperatures of a hundred million degrees centigrade and
pressures of a hundred billion atmospheres, which is what you need in order to
get hydrogen atoms to fuse together to form helium and that releases
energy.
It's essentially what Einstein told us - E=MC2 and when these hydrogen atoms
become helium atoms, there's a small mass change and that small mass change,
when converted to energy, results in a significant amount of energy. And that
fusion energy is clean because it produces very little nuclear waste, it's
almost inexhaustible supplied because the basic materials for the fuel come out
of sea water and when you imagine having a limitless supply of energy, imagine
how our economy could change...how we could change the world in terms of the
resources available not only to ourselves, but to developing countries as well.
The success of this laser is really owed to the entire laboratory they were all
part of building it. And in fact, the University of California
has been a big part of our history through many big laser programs to reach
this culmination of NIF...and so I think we are on the cusp of achieving a
search that's been going on for fifty years. I think that this facility, when
it gets ignition, will be looked at in the future as the turning point in the
discussion about fusion energy and clean power on the earth. I think it will be
looked at the Wright Brothers plane ushering in the era of flight. This will be
ushering in the era of fusion energy, which really will enable limitless supply
of energy here on Earth.
