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Although construction started in 1997 on the $3.5 billion facility, Bechtel became involved with the groundbreaking endeavor in 2007, when the U.S. Department of Energy named a team led by Bechtel and the University of California to manage and operate Lawrence Livermore. The team oversees NIF along with many other facilities at the laboratory’s site near San Francisco.
It’s hard to overstate the potential significance of NIF’s success, Moses says. Many physicists are confident that a controlled fusion reaction is possible and well worth the cost of finding out. At current growth rates, for example, the world could require as many as 10,000 new power plants by 2030 to keep up with demand.
Many of those plants would burn nonrenew¬able fossil fuels and release greenhouse gases into the environment. The savings in cost and environmental damage from a fusion-based energy platform are incalculable.
"If fusion energy works, the world could have a limitless supply of carbon-free energy that’s not susceptible to geopolitical changes," Moses says. "It would be a game changer."
