…and for finding another way to waste billions on a ridiculous fusion scheme.
The headline for this article actually says these blokes are going to "recreate the sun:"
A NUCLEAR fusion laboratory designed to recreate the temperatures and pressures inside the sun could be built in Oxfordshire under plans being drawn up by British scientists The aim is to build the world’s most powerful lasers and use them to blast tiny pellets of hydrogen fuel to create energy.
Of course, that’s EXACTLY how the sun works: giant laser beams from somewhere at the edge of the solar system converge on a pellet of hydrogen at the center…
No, wait… that’s NOT how the sun works at all.
Next guess?
Actually that is how the sun works. Not with giant lasers, but the lasers could create the conditions of the core of the sun, extreme heat and pressure, which leads to the fusion of hydrogen and lots more energy.
Well, since the sun achieves fusion by converting massive amounts of gravitational potential energy, I’m a little stumped as to how to do that here on Earth. Hmmm…
It’s NOT how the Sun does fusion. Firstly the Sun fuses protons not the D/T mix in a typical inertial confinement fuel pellet. Secondly the Sun’s energy density is much, much lower – it’s output is huge because there’s so much of it. And third, the Sun’s core is very dense and stays that way, thus providing lots of opportunities for slow weak-force fusion to happen between protons. Shockwave compression is very momentary and so far unsuccessful at producing suitable fusion confinement.