Senate Votes to Shut Down Laser Meant for Fusion Study - New York Times
Senate Votes to Shut Down Laser Meant for Fusion Study - New York Times: "Senate Votes to Shut Down Laser Meant for Fusion Study
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: July 2, 2005
The Senate voted early yesterday morning to stop construction of the nation's costliest science project, a laser roughly the size of a football stadium that is meant to harness fusion, the process that powers the Sun.
The project, the National Ignition Facility, or NIF (pronounced niff), is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and has cost $2.8 billion. About 80 percent complete, NIF is scheduled to be finished in 2009 at a cost of $3.5 billion and operate for three decades at an annual cost of $150 million, for a total of $8 billion.
The Senate's action, part of the $31 billion energy and water appropriations bill, prompted warnings from the project's leaders that its demise could damage the nation's leadership in a field important to confronting energy shortages. This week, an international consortium picked France as the site of the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, a project with an estimated cost of $10 billion.
"What's at stake here is the opportunity to meet one of the grand challenges of science," Michael R. Anastasio, director of the Livermore laboratory, said in an interview. "It's essential for investigating fusion, which will help sustain confidence in our nuclear stockpile and inform our future thinking about fusion energy."
Other Livermore officials warned of a parallel to the Superconducting Supercollider, a proposed 54-mile particle accelerator that Congress killed in 1993 after spending $2 billion. Some physicists regard its fate as a symbol of the erosion of the nation's scientific standing.
The Bush administration backs the National Ignition Facility, and the Senate action could be reversed or modified later this summer in conference with the House.
"There's going to be some meeting of the minds," said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a private organization in Albuquerque that monitors the nation's nuclear laboratories. "I think NIF will be hurt, but I doubt that it will come to a complete standstill."
In nuclear fusion, atoms merge and release bursts of energy, as in the sun or in hydrogen bombs.
The facility's powerful laser beams are intended to produce blistering hot conditions similar to those in exploding nuclear arms, helping scientists ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile without the need for underground tests. Less directly, scientists want to use the beams to explore laser fusion as a way of producing commercial power.
But last month, Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who heads the Subcommittee on Energy and Water, proposed to delete all construction money, $146 million, from the administration's request for the coming year.
The bill does provide $314 million for limited research. Livermore scientists have built 4 of NIF's planned 192 laser beams and are firing them at targets the size of a BB, producing the first scientific insights.
Mr. Domenici, whose state includes both the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, in recent statements has accused the administration of "single-mindedly" supporting the California project at the expense of other worthy efforts. The ignition facility "is just one of many tools that must be supported," he said.
"The Senate bill will correct this imbalance," he said."
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: July 2, 2005
The Senate voted early yesterday morning to stop construction of the nation's costliest science project, a laser roughly the size of a football stadium that is meant to harness fusion, the process that powers the Sun.
The project, the National Ignition Facility, or NIF (pronounced niff), is at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and has cost $2.8 billion. About 80 percent complete, NIF is scheduled to be finished in 2009 at a cost of $3.5 billion and operate for three decades at an annual cost of $150 million, for a total of $8 billion.
The Senate's action, part of the $31 billion energy and water appropriations bill, prompted warnings from the project's leaders that its demise could damage the nation's leadership in a field important to confronting energy shortages. This week, an international consortium picked France as the site of the world's first large-scale, sustainable nuclear fusion reactor, a project with an estimated cost of $10 billion.
"What's at stake here is the opportunity to meet one of the grand challenges of science," Michael R. Anastasio, director of the Livermore laboratory, said in an interview. "It's essential for investigating fusion, which will help sustain confidence in our nuclear stockpile and inform our future thinking about fusion energy."
Other Livermore officials warned of a parallel to the Superconducting Supercollider, a proposed 54-mile particle accelerator that Congress killed in 1993 after spending $2 billion. Some physicists regard its fate as a symbol of the erosion of the nation's scientific standing.
The Bush administration backs the National Ignition Facility, and the Senate action could be reversed or modified later this summer in conference with the House.
"There's going to be some meeting of the minds," said Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a private organization in Albuquerque that monitors the nation's nuclear laboratories. "I think NIF will be hurt, but I doubt that it will come to a complete standstill."
In nuclear fusion, atoms merge and release bursts of energy, as in the sun or in hydrogen bombs.
The facility's powerful laser beams are intended to produce blistering hot conditions similar to those in exploding nuclear arms, helping scientists ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile without the need for underground tests. Less directly, scientists want to use the beams to explore laser fusion as a way of producing commercial power.
But last month, Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who heads the Subcommittee on Energy and Water, proposed to delete all construction money, $146 million, from the administration's request for the coming year.
The bill does provide $314 million for limited research. Livermore scientists have built 4 of NIF's planned 192 laser beams and are firing them at targets the size of a BB, producing the first scientific insights.
Mr. Domenici, whose state includes both the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, in recent statements has accused the administration of "single-mindedly" supporting the California project at the expense of other worthy efforts. The ignition facility "is just one of many tools that must be supported," he said.
"The Senate bill will correct this imbalance," he said."
posted by Greta Jane at Saturday, July 02, 2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home