Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Lab are putting the finishing touches on the world's most powerful laser system known as NIF (National Ignition Facility). In about 18 months, physicists will conduct a highly-publicized test to create fusion energy from water. It is part of a project designed to take the world beyond nuclear energy. But if it succeeds, the system could do more than create energy in a new way. It might actually rid the world of leftover nuclear waste in the process.

The NIF team will fire nearly 200 individual laser beams generated by an accelerator the size of a football field. The beams converge on a single target chamber containing a capsule of hydrogen. The hope is to compress it, and creating a subatomic reaction called fusion, ultimately igniting a controlled version of the same thermo-nuclear combustion that takes place on the sun.

As hydrogen is compressed, it releases particles called neutrons, which can penetrate the nucleus of another atom. So now we could take nuclear waste and use those neutrons to bust it up, get energy and remove the waste.

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Researchers at a US Navy laboratory have unveiled what they say is "significant" evidence of cold fusion, a potential energy source that has many skeptics in the scientific community.The scientists on Monday described what they called the first clear visual evidence that low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), or cold fusion devices can produce neutrons, subatomic particles that scientists say are indicative of nuclear reactions.Scientists have been working for years to produce cold fusion reactions, a potentially cheap, limitless and environmentally-clean source of energy.

Western countries are currently involved in an experiment called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor or ITER.&summed up, the purpose of Project ITER is a future in which if the previously stated power sources are not available or not enough, a common American household can fulfill their annual power needs with a pitcher of salt water and a two pounds of rocks. How is this done? Nuclear fusion. Not the white light black rain kind, but rather the kind that takes place inside a tokamak reactor.

A tokamak is a Russian invention, a kind of fusion reactor using a toroidal magnetic field to confine and accelerate a plasma. The power is generated via the same means as that of the sun. Deuterium and tritium, two radioactive isotopes of hydrogen are fused into helium. Deuterium is abundant in our oceans but tritium is extremely rare on Earth, but can be synthesized from lithium which is readily found in many of Earth's minerals. The result is a fuel source that with research, can be extracted with minimum impact on the environment and while it is not renewable, is abundant enough for at least several hundred million years of power.

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Perhaps the uranium industry’s fear of peak uranium is unfounded. Intellectual Ventures is preparing to spin off a company called TerraPower to develop nuclear reactors that run primarily on depleted uranium. While most nuclear reactors use enriched uranium, the depleted variety has many advantages— most importantly, a smaller amount of uranium is required to create the same amount of power.Since less uranium is necessary, the risk of nuclear proliferation is reduced, as is the amount of toxic waste created. According to TerraPower, available supplies of depleted uranium could be used for centuries— maybe even thousands of years.

Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use fusion to eliminate most of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants.The invention could help combat global warming by making nuclear power cleaner and thus a more viable replacement of carbon-heavy energy sources, such as coal.

The scientists propose destroying the waste using a fusion-fission hybrid reactor, the centerpiece of which is a high power Compact Fusion Neutron Source (CFNS) made possible by a crucial invention.The CFNS would provide abundant neutrons through fusion to a surrounding fission blanket that uses transuranic waste as nuclear fuel. The fusion-produced neutrons augment the fission reaction, imparting efficiency and stability to the waste incineration process.

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A Burnaby, B.C. company says it's only a few years away from producing electricity in a way that has eluded scientists for years -- nuclear fusion.If they succeed, cheap and nearly limitless energy could be on the horizon, said General Fusion's Michel Laberge, the scientist behind the project.

Nuclear fusion power isn't the kind of power that's created in traditional nuclear power plants. There, large atoms are split into smaller atoms to create energy -- and there is the risk of a nuclear meltdown. With nuclear fusion, small atoms are fused together to create power, a much less dangerous and much cleaner process.

What distinguishes General Fusion from billion-dollar fusion megaprojects is that they have produced the telltale reaction at a fraction of the cost.They have produced a small device at only $800,000, and have their sights set on the next stage of the project at $50 million, said Laberge's partner, Doug Richardson.B.C. believes they can generate net gain (of electricity) in three to five years, and get power on the grid in ten years.

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After decades of discouraging setbacks, plasma physics has made jaw-dropping recent progress.To show that fusion has practical value, a consortium in Europe will build the world's largest fusion reactor in France. In a few months' time, construction of a new power plant will begin in Cadarache, near Marseille, as part of a project known as ITER (originally "International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor"). The 500-megawatt experimental reactor should produce ten times more energy than necessary to heat its plasma.

What fusion power plants can do, in theory, sounds a bit like witchcraft. Nuclear fusion converts matter to energy, so a 1000-megawatt fusion reactor would require an amazingly small amount of fuel. It would burn the weight equivalent of around ten cubes of sugar per hour. A kilogram of hydrogen could generate as much electricity as 11,000 metric tons of coal.

For half a century physicists around the world have struggled with the problem of bringing nuclear fusion under control. Fusion -- as opposed to fission, which drives all commercial nuclear power plants now -- could solve a number of problems related to energy generation. The general public has given up hope in fusion, after all this time, but scientists working in the field of plasma physics appear to be making significant progress.

Fusion takes place by itself within stars. Under conditions of extreme heat and pressure, hydrogen nuclei combine to form helium atoms, releasing enormous amounts of energy. This process of fusion, lasting for billions of years, has provided a constant supply of light and warmth on earth. But a process comes naturally to the sun is not so easy to reproduce in a lab.Plasma, to physicists, is the fourth physical state after solid, liquid and gas and high-temperature plasma has a density of about one millionth that of air at sea level. As soon as the plasma comes into contact with the walls of the reaction chamber, the impurities it picks up cause it to lose temperature. Then the fusion process then breaks down. New reactors, using huge microwave components, heat the hydrogen plasma within seconds to temperatures several times those of the sun.