Something I’ve been puzzling over, for a movie review, hampered by the fact that I’m a sub-rank amateur when it comes to laser physics—could you use a 6MW chemical laser (or more than one) for Inertial Confinement Fusion, possibly even to achieve “ignition”?
I know that, for example, the National Ignition Facility uses a laser of comparable energy, but much higher power—500 Terawatts, in picosecond pulses. Unlike the lower-powered continuous wave fictional chemical laser above.
Like, I’m a sub-novice on the subject, with just a crash course in casual study on the subject…all I can dig up was that a Hydrogen-Fluoride Laser fusion project has been proposed by at least one physicist—one convicted of attempted nuclear espionage, who’s been described as “a nut.” Joy—and pick out a few technical “nits” in the laser depicted in the film. (The laser’s “fuel” is probably impossible; the quoted wavelength is wrong for what we actually see onscreen; the laser somehow miraculously didn’t require any sort of cooling system to keep from incinerating itself, the places where it was installed, or it’s operators; the quoted range might be a tad optimistic…etc.)
So, I ask you, those of you with finer minds than I…could you use reasonably the fictional laser as described—or something that could be logically developed from it—for nuclear fusion research, or even fusion power generation? Aside from just building a hundred million of them to match the power of the NIF laser?
Or, failing that, are there any other “peaceful” applications that immediately come to mind for such a device? There are more than a few proposals for laser spacecraft propulsion, but I’m certainly curious about anything else, even outside the traditional “flambéing people at a comfortable distance” tack.