The National Ignition Facility may help find a new clean-energy source.

The completion the world’s highest-energy laser system and its largest opti¬cal instrument has put Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at the center of the search for a promising clean-energy option that was once the stuff of science fiction.

In coming years, the laboratory’s new National Ignition Facility (NIF) will focus its stadium-size laser system on a minute capsule of frozen hydrogen, aiming to com¬press and heat it to the levels found at the center of the sun. If the experiment triggers the anticipated reaction, it would be a mile¬stone in the decades-long search for fusion energy.

"This ignition process will produce more energy than the amount of laser energy required to start it," says Edward Moses, NIF director. "That’s the long-sought goal of energy gain that fusion researchers are looking for. It would be a scientific breakthrough of historic significance to duplicate for the first time on Earth the processes that power the stars," says Moses.

Unlike nuclear fission, fusion works by heat and pressure, not chain reactions, so there’s no danger of a runaway explosion, Moses points out.