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It's one of the most expensive high-tech project the United States has ever attempted, and some say it will never work. QUEST visits the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, where scientists will soon aim the world's largest laser at a target the size of a pencil eraser. The goal? Nuclear fusion -- and, they say, the answer to the world's clean energy needs.
Sorry, but this one justifies the hyperbole: A hugely expensive, controversial, and massively high-tech national science experiment that's received little recent press coverage.
BONUS: A terrific Flickr site, if we may say so ourselves.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqedquest/sets/72157603687811897/
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Piece Description
It's one of the most expensive high-tech project the United States has ever attempted, and some say it will never work. QUEST visits the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, where scientists will soon aim the world's largest laser at a target the size of a pencil eraser. The goal? Nuclear fusion -- and, they say, the answer to the world's clean energy needs. Sorry, but this one justifies the hyperbole: A hugely expensive, controversial, and massively high-tech national science experiment that's received little recent press coverage. BONUS: A terrific Flickr site, if we may say so ourselves. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kqedquest/sets/72157603687811897/
Broadcast History
Aired twice morning of 1/11/08 on KQED and KQEI, Bay Area, during Morning Edition B segment
Transcript
MOSES So We?re walking up to the National Ignition Facility here at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the east bay?
Ed Moses directs the massive, $4 billion dollar science experiment known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. He?s also one of its most enthusiastic tour guides.
MOSES And this facility houses what will be, in a very short time, less than a year, the world?s most energetic laser. (Ambi: card swipe, door slams (keep up during next track)
If this project inspires superlatives, that?s because its goal is something never before done on Earth: To aim those powerful lasers at a hydrogen-filled capsule, creating, they hope, nuclear fusion, the same kind of reaction that powers our sun and other stars.
Ambi: loud Ring, then elevator fx (
It will happen inside here.
MOSES This is the target chamber!
It looks like something out of an Austin Po...
Read the full transcript
Timing and Cues
suggested intro: It's one of the most expensive high-tech projects the United States has ever attempted, and some say it will never work. QUEST visits the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, where scientists will soon aim the world's largest laser at a target the size of a pencil eraser. The goal? Nuclear fusion -- and, they say, the answer to the world's clean energy needs.
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