National Ignition Facility Fails To Ignite Support Within Congress

Hugh Pickens writes writes "For more than 50 years, physicists have been eager to achieve controlled union, an ambiguous goal that could potentially offer a limitless and affordable source of energy. Present Bill Sweet writes in IEEE Array that the National Ignition Facility (NIF), now five billion dollars over its inspired budget and years behind schedule, deserves to be recognized as perhaps the biggest and fattest white elephant of all time. With the total account for NIF now running to an rough $7 billion, the laboratory has been pulling out all the cards to claim success is just around the corner. 'We didn't achieve the purpose,' said Donald L. Cook, an formal at the National Nuclear Security Administration who oversees the laser project but rather than predicting when it might succeed, he added in AN interview, 'we're going to settle into a important investigation' of what caused the unexpected snags. On one mitt, the laser's defenders point out, hard subject is by definition risky, and no serious progress is possible without occasional failures. On the other, federal science initiatives rarely disappoint next to such a gargantuan scale, and the let-down comes in an era of tough fiscal choices and skepticism about science among some lawmakers. 'If the main goal is to achieve a rule source that could replace fossil fuels, we suspect the money would be better spent on renewable sources of energy that are apt to be cheaper and quicker to put into wide use' editorializes the NY Nowadays. 'Congress will need to look hard at whether these "stockpile stewardship" and long-term energy goals can be go on a smaller budget.'"

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