With the breakneck speed of innovation at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the laboratory’s High-Flux Solar Furnace (HFSF) is all the more remarkable for continuously facilitating envelope-pushing research since 1989.   Like some superhero-comic contraption, the furnace can deliver the heat of 2,500 suns to melt a hole through solid steel in less than a minute. It has been used to destroy toxic waste, create hydrogen fuel from water, and develop nuclear defense applicat...