Take a Ride on a Beamline

I'm a nuclear engineer and have some buddies who work(ed) at this facility (the National Ignition Facility, NIF) and they showed me this video. I now use it when I go speak at middle schools and stuff about science. It's so cool. Allow me to explain a bit about what's happening.

00:18 - stuff charges up

00:25 - timing pulses come out of the control room

00:31 - the pulses get split and passed into the two BIG laser bays

00:45 - The laser pulses get passed back and forth passed some laser amplifiers (xenon flash lamps) which boost the heck out of the beam.

01:21 - amplified lasers get reflected around the giant spherical chamber you see in the background

01:30 - lasers enter the final optics, (each the size of a phone-booth) where they get converted from infrared to ultraviolet and focused

01:35 - UV lasers converge on a tiny little cylinder (hohlraum)

01:45 hohlraum starts kicking off x-rays which compress the fuel pellet in the middle

02:01 the fuel pellet gets so hot and compressed that the atoms overcome their electrostatic repulsion and fuse together, releasing astounding amounts of fusion nuclear energy

More info at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility