John Anderson Building – Lecture Theatre 3.25 (level 3)
Wednesday 17 August 2011, 6pm-7pm (followed by a reception)
Laser Inertial Fusion Energy : Fusion energy soon enough to make a difference
by Chris Edwards
HiPER Fusion Project Director, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
and Mordecai D. (“Mordy”) Rosen
Chief Scientist, AX Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA
Energy production from laser driven fusion (Laser Energy) has the potential to solve mankind’s energy needs for ever provided that answers can be found to some profound technological and commercial challenges.
The landscape of fusion is about to make a transformational change, with the first demonstration of laser driven ignition of a DT target anticipated within the next 18 months at the National Ignition Facility in the USA.
The HiPER (Europe) and LIFE (U.S.) projects have been established to build upon the achievement of first ignition, leading to demonstration of commercially viable power production within the next 15 to 20 years.
This session will discuss the advantages of Laser Energy, explain some of the basic physics principles of the process and explore the key requirements for the technology programme which leads to commercial energy production.