The Guardian runs a story today about nuclear fusion laser tech, that should be the safe, clean way to produce nuclear energy in the future.

The British-led project, which has been earmarked by the EU as a priority, is designed to leapfrog an American-funded project called the National Ignition Facility (Nif) in Livermore, California. When that is built in 2010, physicists are confident that the Nif laser will be powerful enough to start a fusion reaction. Experiments in the Nevada desert in the 1980s with underground explosions of nuclear weapons have already shown how much energy they will need to deliver with the laser. Mike Dunne, director of the Central Laser Facility at a publicly funded research site in Oxfordshire that houses Vulcan, the most powerful laser in the world, said: “The trick now is, can we get it to work without throwing a nuclear bomb at the thing?”

That is what Nif is designed to do.

Click the page to read the entire story.