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by ChuckMcM 5079 days ago
Not exactly. Or to put it more precisely, the goal is to better understand fusion, which by the way, helps us better understand bombs that use it and perhaps more importantly the old bombs we have laying around that we knew would work in 1974 but now we aren't so sure.

That said, one application of the NIF is as the ultimate incinerator. Using it to literally rip apart hazardous waste (either the nuclear or more mundane variety) into lower atomic number atoms which are not a problem.

And of course if they can get out more than they put in, then an energy neutral (and fast) disposal system.

That said, the physics of the place are astounding, I got to tour the place about 10 years ago when it was still being built and man, it is right up there with the LHC in terms of extremely large and at the same time precise physics machines.
1 comments
uvdiv 5079 days ago
That said, one application of the NIF is as the ultimate incinerator. Using it to literally rip apart hazardous waste (either the nuclear or more mundane variety) into lower atomic number atoms which are not a problem.

How?

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ChuckMcM 5079 days ago
In the tour video they show a stream of plasma directed at the 'waste' of interest. This has two effects, one it disassembles any molecular bond reducing complex (and perhaps toxic) substances into their base atomic components, and two it accelerates the decay of unstable nucleotides into stable ones. I suspect that video is up on the NIF web site somewhere.
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uvdiv 5079 days ago
In the tour video they show a stream of plasma directed at the 'waste' of interest. This has two effects, one it disassembles any molecular bond reducing complex (and perhaps toxic) substances into their base atomic components,

That's real but that's not NIF or anything resembling it. The temperatures to tear apart molecular bonds are less than 10,000 degrees. NIF operates at nuclear fusion temperature s -- 100,000,000 degrees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification

http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/gasification/...

https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/science_at_the_extremes/

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