Yale e360: NIT, and fusion energy, and the big gamble in Livermore. What’s missing here?
The ambitious factory for long-form conservation and science writing that is the non-profit Yale environment360 has a good track record for turning out hard-headed, hard-hitting pieces that explore issues more deeply than do most media.
And right now it has a piece out that is most of that, with a big caveat. Freelance writer Alex Salkever visited the National Ignition Facility at the Livermore National Lab, and wrote a piece under the hed: The Promise of Fusion: Energy Miracle or Mirage?
Stick ‘Ignition Facility’ in ksjtracker’s search function and you will see there have been many stories on the general topic that we’ve read in recent years. You will also see a recurring complaint. Salkever makes the same error as do many previous writers, but perhaps worse. He implies that NIF is potentially a giant boondoggle, a multi-billion dollar lump thrown down the same frustrating hole as previous billions spent on harnessing the reactions that power our sun for peaceful, pretty clean, and really limitless electricity here on Earth.
Oh, don’t forget, we already do “use” those reactions for thermonuclear weapons. NIF may be a boondoggle, it may work fine, but it’s primary justification within the administration, the Department of Energy, and in Congress that votes the money is not, NOT, fusion energy. It is for stockpile stewardship. That is, its brief moments of fusion – that ought to occur when blistering gouts of laser radiation converge on tiny pellets of hydrogen fuel – are meant mainly for use by weapons studies. They provide ways to check the ability of aging US H-bombs to detonate should the horrible day arrive when our leaders want them to do so. One can create conditions that the components of such things will need to endure. One can simply learn the kind of physics, first-hand, needed to tend such weaponry.
It is also true that fusion energy is a big motivator for the physicists on the job. They are dead serious about using the machine for non-classified work that could dramatically change how humanity makes electricity. But to ignore the prime reason that this money is being spent, and saying outright that it’s all for fusion energy, is an error. Right in the lead, he calls the big place “a monument to science’s enduring obsession with fusion.” No. Not when he means fusion energy. It’s a monument to the Defense Department’s and many politicians’ enduring interest in maintaining a reliable arsenal of fusion weapons.
It’s a good story otherwise. All it would have taken to give it deep luster was a light rewrite – one graf – to get the facility’s priorities straight. Further, it’d be a better read if it noted the contrast between the practical, defense-related purposes for which NIF was built with the intoxicating dreams that keep many of its employees working so hard toward a clean, green energy future.
- Charlie Petit
