There are already major laser projects underway, called NIF (in the USA) and LMJ (in France). Why build HiPER when NIF and LMJ exist?
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) and Laser Mégajoule (LMJ) are large facilities designed primarily for defence purposes. Only a small part of their mission is to investigate the science associated with energy generation. The method used in these facilities is not well suited to commercial power production. HiPER will be a civilian facility whose main mission is to demonstrate that inertial fusion could be used as a future energy source. To do this it will use an all-optical method of energy generation called “fast ignition”. This separates the process into 2 stages: fuel compression and fuel heating. This is analogous to a petrol engine (compression plus spark plug) approach. Fast ignition is predicted to require a much smaller laser to achieve high energy output, and so is far more compatible with a commercial power station’s requirements.
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