Posted for Laura Starr

Europe’s potential billion pound laser fusion project HiPER was officially launched today, with a host of luminaries meeting at London’s Science Museum.

This new phase of the High Power laser Energy Research project is still a preparatory one, which will see 26 institutes from 10 nations develop a design for a laser that could produce the intense conditions needed to fuse deuterium and tritium and provide the ultimate environmentally friendly energy supply. (Project leader Mike Dunne calls it “The Holy Grail of energy sources”.)

The idea is to focus super-powerful lasers onto fuel pellet containing deuterium and tritium, forcing the isotopes together and resulting in a huge release of energy. At the moment though there are a host of hurdles to overcome. Not least the need for significantly more powerful lasers and the problem of actually capturing and extracting the energy generated. An initial ‘proof of principle’ demonstration isn’t on the cards until 2010 at the earliest.

Dunne told the Daily Telegraph:

HiPER is aiming to bridge the step between proving nuclear fusion is possible and a commercial power station. It should prove that a big enough laser can be built, with a high enough repetition rate and efficiency, which are the critical building blocks on the route towards fusion energy.

The Telegraph also notes the differences between HiPER and the more famous fusion project ITER. Where HiPER plans to use lasers to compress its fuel and achieve fusion ITER is hoping to do the compression with magnetic fields.