The Power of Light

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(This video won awards in the spring 2009 Digital Video Awards international competition in eight different categories: corporate communications, cinematography/videography, 2D animation, 3D animation, visual effects, art direction, education and scriptwriting.)

Light. Light is energy. Stars release tremendous amounts of light and energy. Each star has an internal nuclear fusion engine at its core, which ignites the billions and trillions of stars throughout the universe. A single star, like our sun, from all of its nuclear fusion processes, produces light and heat that warms and sustains life on Earth. The creation of a star can take billions of years. Creating a star on Earth, at the National Ignition Facility, will take just a few billionths of a second.

This scientific research facility, the size of three football fields, houses NIF's 192 laser beams. Experiments are being conducted in the ten-meter-diameter target chamber, where sophisticated diagnostics precisely measure important scientific data. NIF's lasers converge on a tiny target contained in a small gold cylinder the size of a pencil eraser, generating the extraordinary temperatures and pressures that only exist in the cores of stars and giant planets, and inside exploding nuclear weapons.

The National Ignition Facility will allow scientists to study basic physics and the high energy density regimes that will yield new insights into the origins of our universe. It will also maintain the safety, reliability and effectiveness of our nation's nuclear weapons stockpile—without the need for underground testing— and explore harnessing the clean, limitless potential of fusion energy. The ultimate mission of the National Ignition Facility will be to conduct fusion experiments for the benefit of mankind.

Fusion Visionary John Nuckolls: "I call this science in the supreme national interest—the supreme national interest being providing for the common defense and promoting the general welfare. The fusion energy source, as has been said many times, is sufficient to power all future civilizations for a million years."

The National Ignition Facility will do what has never before been accomplished: to create a self-sustained nuclear fusion reaction in a safe, controlled setting. Creating a star on Earth at the National Ignition Facility will usher in a new age for science.