Powerful Laser to Create Fusion Reaction in 2010

A 10-story tall laser set up at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory  will soon be completed in the hopes it will be a key step toward free energy for the entire planet.  The new facility will fire a laser that will hopefully create a chain reaction that will allow scientists to study fusion and release massive amounts of electrical energy to draw enough energy to power billions of homes across the planet.

The laser beam fires 1.8 megajoules, splitting the laser into 192 separate beams and combining them at a point, which is actually a capsule of beryllium filled with deuterium and tritium which will hopefully create pressures and temperatures in excess of those that are at the center of the sun.  Under these conditions a fusion reaction will hopefully take place, and the resulting energy burst will be powerful enough to power more than twice Earth’s entire requirements.  Successive bursts will allegedly give out more energy than all currently running nuclear power, gas, nuclear, coal, and solar plants in operation.

So if the current crisis the world sees today is indeed one of energy, then what would a world look like that was quite the opposite?  What if we indeed had too much electrical power rather than too little?  Very quickly automated infrastructure would replace the current human run one, driven by the successive pulse of a hundred trillion fusion reactions.  The next step in solving Earth’s problems in quality of living, transportation, and space travel would rely not on power, but rather on materials and imagination.  Electricity can be easily converted into kinetic energy and work, therefore a world of infinite electricity has essentially infinite work.

Infinite work means infinite crops.  With automated crop systems that took meticulous special care of multi-tiered UV lit interior crops, every meal could easily become a bounty.  And with even the most inefficient electric vehicles running on infinite electricity, hunger too would become a thing of the past as robotic food escorts would be distributed throughout the world at the speed bureaucracy would allow.

Perhaps this is where the most problems would arise.  It’s only a matter of time after Fusion is created, that the power inherent is used in a way that results in massive weaponry.  To keep the power from falling into the wrong hands, there would no doubt be a strict control placed on the facility and any resulting electricity.  It is perhaps this that would keep the Earth from becoming a paradise quickly.  But if the project succeeds there are few doubts that a number of our energy problems will be solved.  Essentially every problem regarding energy is expected to be solved if the project succeeds.

Let’s hope no one uses the electricity to create a laser powerful enough to make us all regret it.  After all, this is considered to be one of the many reasons conspiracies exist regarding Nikola Tesla’s devices which were kept under wraps.