Scientists achieve nuclear fusion with giant laser

Computerworld – Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Wednesday said they’ve achieved a first: A nuclear fusion system has produced more energy than it initially absorbed…

The research, published in the peer reviewed journal Nature, involved a petawatt power laser used to try to ignite fusion plasma fuel in a confined space. Each pulse of the laser, which delivered peak power of 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts, lasted less than 30 femtoseconds, or 0.00000000000003 seconds.

The laser squeezes hydrogen atoms together producing helium atoms, and in the process a massive amount of energy is released.  http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9246307/Scientists_achieve_nuclear_fusion_with_giant_laser

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has awarded two subcontracts for the High Repetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser System (HAPLS), being built for the European Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines science facility in the Czech Republic. The contracts were awarded to Femtolasers Produktions (Vienna, Austria) and Lasertel (Tuscon, AZ)…

The ELI Beamlines facility represents an investment of approximately $350 million from the European Union and Czech Republic. It forms part of the pan-European ELI project, and is being designed to advance the state-of-the-art for high power lasers, allowing international scientific research in medical imaging, particle acceleration, biophysics, chemistry, and quantum physics.  http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2014/02/llnl-awards-contracts-for-the-petawatt-laser-system-for-the-eli-beamlines-facility.html