Episode description

Over millennia, humanity has mastered fire, wind, steam and even the atom to fuel its progress. Now, we stand on the brink of the next monumental leap: fusion.

At the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a team of scientists and engineers has been working tirelessly to achieve Fusion Ignition, an achievement that could redefine energy as we know it. The road has been long and filled with challenges, but the promise of unlocking the energy that powers the stars is within reach.

As we revisit the groundbreaking efforts at NIF, the question remains: Can they overcome the final hurdles to create a fusion breakthrough, and what will that mean for the future of power on Earth?

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Big Ideas Lab is a Mission.org original series. 

Executive Produced and Written by Lacey Peace. 

Sound Design, Music Edit and Mix by Daniel Brunelle. 

Story Editing by Daniel Brunelle. 

Audio Engineering and Editing by Matthew Powell. 

Narrated by Matthew Powell. 

Video Production by Levi Hanusch. 

Guests featured in this episode (in order of appearance): 

• Kim Budil, Director of LLNL
• Michael Stadermann, Program Manager for Target Fabrication at LLNL
• Teresa Bailey, Associate Program Director for LLNL's Computational Physics in the Weapons Simulation and Computing Team
• Tayyab Suratwala, Program Director for LLNL’s Optics and Materials Science and Technology Team
• Richard Town, Associate Program Director for Inertial Confinement Fusion Science at LLNL
• Jean-Michel Di Nicola, Program Co-Director for Laser Science and System Engineering at LLNL
• Kelly Hahn, Experimental Physicist and Diagnostician at LLNL

Brought to you in partnership with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.