A LONE protester has derailed the UK’s nuclear weapons research programme. Faced with the threat of legal action, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has withdrawn an application to construct one of the world’s most powerful lasers.
The MoD wants to build the laser, known as Orion, at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, UK, by 2007. It is designed to reproduce the great temperatures and pressures at the heart of nuclear explosions.
Aldermaston says Orion will be a thousand times as powerful as its existing laser, Helen, which can generate temperatures of over 1 million °C for a nanosecond. According…
