Professor Mike Dunne Director of the Rutherford Labs HiPER Project will introduce us to their approach to Fusion research which addresses some of the issues, like containment inherent in the Tokomak approach. He will explain how they plan to fire lasers at pellets of fuel to cause “rapid fire” fusion reactions one after another.

The laser and the pellets need to fire around 5 times a second and the laser compresses the hydrogen pellet with a pressure like that which an aircraft carrier would exert if resting on your thumb. Sounds tricky but it does largely address the fusion confinement problem i.e. what do you put your star in when you’ve made it?