http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... usion.html

Seems rather interesting, although, like I've said elsewhere, anyone concerned about how they're going to contain this miniature sun they'll create?

I reckon they could probably contain it in a miniature atmosphere, like the Wizards of the Unseen Universtiy did when they accidentally created a the Earth

Link is busted

Try http://tinyurl.com/yg85o83

Cheers, sorted it now.

About time.

Also, years ago, they were talking about setting up a small scale power station that was powered by spent nuclear fission waste and, in the process of creating energy, reduced the radioactive levels of the waste used. Wonder what happened there.

I would rather they perfect fusion with light elements before shooting frikkin lasers at heavy radioactive stuff.

Very interesting article - especially if they can get it to work.

Think of it - clean unlimited energy - no more coal fired power stations.

Now if they could then shrink it down in size perhaps 1 day cars will run on miniture fusion reactors?

Also what about using it in long distance space exploration?

That was the pipe dream when fission became popular in the 50's.
Google Ford Nucleon.

So they fire a 1.2MJ laser at a little gold pellet and (quoting numbers from Wikipedia regarding previous JET fusion energy outputs so I know they're not the same experiment/accurate in any way) could potentially sustain a 5MJ energy output.

What happens once the fusion has occured though? Is that it? Are these gold pellets a one use only thing or do they then create a sustainable fusion reaction?

If the former then what is the next level needed in order to create some sort of sustained reaction where the more energy you put into the reaction the more energy you get out?

Very interesting though

I think the gold halumi [sic] thing is just a container for now that wouldn't be used in any continuous reaction except save for being like a starter/ignition aid. What they are doing is proving a concept that can be developed upon, perhaps similar to how we had pulse jet engines before turbofans.

Unlikely. There are physical limits to some of the parts of the device to get the energy required to generate fusion. I would imagine it would be impossible to make it small enough to put in a car and not have the car weigh so much performance would be diabolical.
However that's kind of un-necessary anyway. If you have essentially unlimited electrical power, you can recharge a battery for next to nothing and you don't really care how much energy you lose in the wires between them. By the time this generator gets to the application stage, electric car technology will have progressed to be reasonably usable so you'll have electric cars being recharged from essentially free fusion generated power supplies.


Ah, you see, that's a whole different kettle of fish. For a start, in space everything weighs pretty much the same and there has been some research about using ionised gas jets as spacecraft motors, which a fusion power plant could be used to power.

Jon

Only thing is getting the bloody stuuf up thier it costs millions of dollars to per kilogramme to stuff into space.