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Jon_Beveryman t1_j0ta3ku wrote

Reply to comment by vegiimite in How do X-rays “compress” a nuclear fusion pellet? by i_owe_them13

I do think it's fairly telling that, despite the explosion in commercial fusion start-up companies in the last decade, I can only think of one doing ICF, and none that are doing NIF-type ICF. First Light is doing an admittedly kind of far-out projectile based ICF.

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[deleted] t1_j0tfy7a wrote

In my layman interpretation (I mean, I did do the majority of classes needed to do NMM work for the Navy, but that doesn't equate to the understanding of the fine process that actual particle physics degress/doctorates would grant someone, ofc) wouldn't that just be wise anyway, to have a lab essentially volunteer to do the crazy, one-off experiments that nobody really puts a lot of stock in that have a vanishingly small chance of actually working, just to check to see if that is actually on the wrong track?

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Jon_Beveryman t1_j0th4sk wrote

So...yes, there is a big role for government labs and government-funded academic groups to do that kind of work. and the Department of Energy supports a lot of that work! But there's a wrinkle here, which is that NIF is "owned" by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. LLNL is one of the Department of Energy's 3 "weapons" labs. See, for historical reasons [which you probably know already] the DOE owns the nuclear weapons design mission instead of Defense being in charge. 3 of the DOE national labs [Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia] are considered the weapons labs. Livermore and Los Alamos are each responsible for nuclear weapons science and design, while Sandia is responsible for the engineering side. The US also does not test live nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War, so the weapons labs acquired a new mission - "stockpile stewardship and management". Essentially, "go do a bunch of science to make sure that the nuclear arsenal will still work every time we need it to". A big part of this was figuring out how to experimentally replicate the conditions of a thermonuclear explosion, aka fusion. NIF is first and foremost in support of that effort, and not the energy job.

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[deleted] t1_j0thvg7 wrote

Outstanding, thanks for the reply, at least I was right in a way! Just not what I initially expected, but good, least I learned something neat.

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