Just stumbled upon this: Laser driven thermonuclear reaction! OMG This is it fellas, the real deal. http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-01-29/news/17840875_1_laser-beams-national-ignition-facility-deuterium-and-tritium

The fusion in theory doesn't seem so complicated.

You have to heat and press the gas. Today's lasers can do it.
You have to absorb the energy. I think it can be done with (very) special solar cells.
And you have to keep the material in the laser beams' intersections. (you can't put it on a table of course)
That seems the hardest part. You push the material with tremendous forces from opposite directions, that will keep the material in balance (floating), that's okay, but the slightest difference between the opposing forces could cause the material to shoot out of the focus point.

The supporting stuff doesn't seem to complicated either, you have to put the gas into the focus, before you shoot it with lasers. I guess that's why it is embedded in a crystal initially.
And of course you have to deal with the ionized/vaporized crystal, but I guess it simply stays in the focus point. But if it explodes, that could cause some problems, would damage the equipment or something.

Yup, and maybe material/anti-material pairs arise because of the opposing lasers. Maybe that can cause some problems too. At least you have to deal with it.

So the fusion is much more an engineering problem, that obviously takes decades to solve.

Fusion problem was solved several years after first fission bomb exploded. It's simple really, put a fission bomb into a tank of hydrogen/deuterium. Detonate fission bomb, the burst will start the fusion. Add more hydrogen to increase size of explosion as needed.

But as far as generating power using fusion goes, the problem is something like trying to BBQ a steak using nothing but kegs of dynamite instead of coal or wood.

There is definitely enough energy, but it's not packaged in a convenient form.

The direct approach as used with fission power would be to put dynamite into a sturdy container, and detonate it. Due to pressure increase, the exterior would heat up, and one could BBQ on that. Add some insulation for even heat distribution, and you're done. Except that this approach doesn't work with fusion, and this is the part that has been taking 50 years.

All non-renewable energy sources today are Carnot's engines. In case of fusion, the problem is building the heat exchanger. Fission is simple, take a steam engine, put two pieces of Uranium instead of coal in the tank, and you're done. Literally. Trying to do the same with fusion would require getting a tank that is capable of fully containing a megaton blast, or creating a way to trigger small scale fusion, one after another. Both approaches are tricky or impractical to execute, or they currently consume more power than they could ever generate.

I'm not sure (was long ago) but I think the energy is carried by photons, that's why I think some photo-electric device (= solar cell) would do (but maybe it is in the wrong frequency range, so there aren't any materials, that cold be used to benefit from the photo-electric reaction).
But maybe we could use explosions: we explode a tiny HE-bomb before some solar-cells (shoot me off, if I'm totally OFF with the cell-thing). We can store energy nowadays quite effectively, so the overall output would be constant.
And I guess building tons of tiny HE-bombs would still worth it.
Or the shock-wave could shoot some liquid through a turbine.
Okay, I guess it's not that easy (these would probably require unobtainium).

I have not read the article but I would not be too excited about this. Using lasers to cause fusion has been an idea for a pretty long time.

The general idea is you use magnetic/electric fields to hold the deuterium in place while you bombard it with photons. If the material gets hot enough it will begin to fuse.

This is great in practice and has given rise to fusion. The problem is that the likely hood of fusion is extremely small, even in the intense temperatures and pressures of the sun.

Fusion actually requires that one nucleus quantum mechanically tunnels into another nucleus. The probability of this tunneling increases with energy, but it is still extremely small.

This is why using fusion as an energy source is so difficult. The energy required to keep enough deuterium plasma in one spot is extremely high, and out weighs the energy released from the reaction. We still have a long way to making fusion reactors efficient enough to use. As a matter of fact I know a few nuclear physicist who think it is practically impossible.

I think this is a better article: BBC News - Laser fusion test result raise energy hopes

Here are more articles about the NIF.

Miracle light: Can lasers solve the energy crisis? (December 9, 2009)

Will fusion fade ... or finally flare up? (Dec. 3, 2009)

Inside Livermore Lab's Race to Invent Clean Energy (Nov 23, 2009)

At NIF, a Quest for Fusion Energy (or Maybe Folly) (May 25, 2009)

World’s Largest Laser Ready to Fire Up (March 31, 2009)

Here are a two critical examinations of the NIF.

Nuclear Bombs or Sunshine? - To Power a Nation (May 6, 2009)

Why Thomas Friedman is wrong about the National Ignition Facility (27 April 2009)

Quote: Original post by jpmcmu
Fusion actually requires that one nucleus quantum mechanically tunnels into another nucleus. The probability of this tunneling increases with energy, but it is still extremely small.

Ummm I do believe this statement to be false! Correct me if I'm wrong but fusion will take place in the absence of tunneling at a temperature of ~50million kelvin... 95% of all fusion in the sun takes place in something like under 50% of the radius thereof.. I don't know the temperature gradient on that but the core is ~13million kelvin which is far less than the required 50.. Quantum tunneling allows for the process to take place at lower temperatures and this laser was still much lower at 3million kelvin.. That temperature is still high enough for an amount of fusion to take place over time. The articles suggest this but none actually say that this happened??? What does "vanished in a little explosion" constitute?

This BBC Article talks more about the scientists having ironed out some issues with the creation of a plasma... I assume this would be a quark-gluon plasma but these are not technical pieces... AAAS isn't showing anything, lasers last month pulled up a pic of a fruit flies spiky member.... <= this ones entitled 'The Spiky Penis Gets the Girl' now there's science for ya!

Laser fusion is exciting physics but why would anyone think there's an energy angle here? 50 years of failing to produce a single kilowatt hour of electricity should be a hint when that Kwh finally comes 30 years from now it won't be cheap.

">The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor: What Fusion Wanted To Be (

">tl;dw).