National. Ignition. Facility.

Fusion tests set at new Livermore facility

The celebration in a heavily guarded section of the Lawrence Livermore lab marked the fact that research and tests are about to start at the new $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility, or NIF. It will be an unprecedented, years-long physics experiment, and the outcome is by no means certain.

It's purpose is to focus the immense energy in an array of 120 laser beams onto a tiny glass target the size of a BB shot, which is filled with hydrogen. This is all done under immensely high pressure to make the target heat like the fiery interior of a star at a 180 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Bruno Vanwonterghem, operations manager
for the National Ignition Facility, stands in front of the target chamber.

Okay, count me in on this crazy "energy independence" thing

Achieving energy independence

There is no doubt that our resistance to the global jihad is severely hampered by our continued purchase of oil from the Saudis, who have done so much to finance the same jihad. And now six and a half years after 9/11, the President of the United States cannot cajole the Saudi King into agreeing to lower oil prices, as gasoline approaches the four-dollar-a-gallon mark, and yet he has done nothing to initiate any coherent plan to free us from this energy dependence.

It doesn't have to be this way. The Alaskan oil reserves could have been opened up years ago, over environmentalist objections, as a matter of national security. The U.S. could have pursued other oil options much more aggressively than it did, while undertaking a full-scale Manhattan Project to find viable new energy sources. And now in Energy Victory: Winning the War On Terror By Breaking Free of Oil, Robert Zubrin outlines what we can and should do now to keep from continuing to pay at the gas pump for our own destruction.

Zubrin, who holds a doctorate in nuclear engineering and was for many years a senior engineer at Lockheed Martin, here outlines a clear and practical program for achieving American energy independence within ten years. He explains in detail that even a non-specialist like me can understand (at least partially!) that a rapid transition to high-alcohol fuels -- methanol and ethanol -- is both practically feasible and desirable.

Read it all at Jihad Watch.

(In case you don't recognize the name, Robert Zubrin is a founder of a society I joined.)