[HN Gopher] Three papers highlight results of record yield nucle...
___________________________________________________________________
Three papers highlight results of record yield nuclear fusion shot
Author : signa11
Score : 231 points
Date : 2022-08-14 13:45 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.llnl.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.llnl.gov)
| leephillips wrote:
| The failure to replicate the alleged ignition of a fusion target
| one year ago suggests that the event was an accident, in the
| sense that we still don't understand how to create the conditions
| leading to ignition in an indirect-drive laser experiment. Even
| if we could predictably ignite such a target, that would be
| almost completely irrelevant for commercial power generation. The
| total system gain is still << 10%. Fusion is not an attractive or
| desirable approach: https://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-
| losses-on-fusion-...
| awinter-py wrote:
| how many teakettles
| mkl95 wrote:
| > While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of
| fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them
| demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the
| 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest
| yield of 170 kJ from February 2021.
|
| That looks like some steady progress. How long should it take to
| consistently yield one more order of magnitude? Are they
| expecting to hit a plateau at some point?
| teknopaul wrote:
| While the repeat attempts have not reached the same level of
| "fusion yield as the August 2021 experiment, all of them
| demonstrated capsule gain greater than unity with yields in the
| 430-700 kJ range, significantly higher than the previous highest
| yield of 170 kJ from February 2021. "
|
| Does this mean they are producing energy? 10,000 kilo watt hours
| is not to be sniffed at
| iso1631 wrote:
| 10,000 kWh is 36 million kilojoules
|
| 170kJ is 1/20th of a kilowatt hour - on the order of 1 cents
| worth of electricity. 700kJ would be 1/5th of a kWh
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _430-700 kJ range_
|
| That's approximately as much energy as you'd get from burning
| one fast food hamburger.
| nyokodo wrote:
| This is an article regarding the scientific papers published
| about the ignition reported on in 2021.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Which seemingly they can't reproduce.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02022-1
| pinewurst wrote:
| I'm reminded of the so-called Zeta fiasco.
|
| https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/2905
| Jaruzel wrote:
| That's unfair, they may not have reproduced the 1.3Mj result,
| but they are consistantly hitting the 100s of Kj range, which
| the article addresses.
|
| This is still an important step forward, and shouldn't be
| dismissed frivously.
| dghughes wrote:
| >That's unfair, they may not have reproduced the 1.3Mj
| result
|
| Fair or not isn't that the very definition of science? To
| reproduce a result. No matter who tries.
| switchbak wrote:
| Exactly. The fervor around reproducibility seems more to
| do with managerial level politics.
|
| They've proven they can do something impressive, that's a
| huge leap. Understanding the underpinnings better so you
| can do it reliably: that's a matter of research effort
| and engineering. But they've already done the hard part,
| let them do their work.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It has to do with the crisis of quality, and indeed
| outright fraud, that seems to be affecting science these
| days.
|
| https://retractionwatch.com/
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _They 've proven they can do something impressive_
|
| If what they claim can't be reproduced, then what's the
| basis for asserting anything was proven?
| [deleted]
| mannykannot wrote:
| They have achieved ignition multiple times.
|
| If reproducibility demanded getting the exact same
| numbers, a lot of good results would be thrown out for no
| good reason.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If they claim they achieved 1.3MJ and can only reproduce
| some hundreds of KJ, that's not exactly close the exact
| same numbers.
| [deleted]
| Nevermark wrote:
| That is a remarkably pedantic take on the situation, no?
|
| Difficult tasks are difficult. Difficult tasks take time.
|
| A credible indicator that they have achieved something
| significant is the widespread acclaim they have received
| from the global physics and fusion communities.
|
| Repeatability isn't the only tool in science and nobody
| is claiming reproducibility isn't a goal.
|
| If five years from now nobody can reproduce the results,
| people will take notice. But the evidence is they did
| what they think they did.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| They've analyzed the data from the experiment to prove
| that they achieved it (i.e. ruling out all possible other
| explanations). Assuming there's been no fraud, then it's
| likely they did achieve it. They're trying to figure out
| what the problems are that make reproducibility difficult
| & I think there's a new reactor being built that
| addresses the challenges with reproducing in the current
| design.
|
| It's an early signal indicating that we may have line of
| sight to someone demonstrating working fusion within the
| next 5 years. Is that not impressive?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That do you mean by "working fusion"? This is a weapons
| research program wearing a very thin figleaf as a kinda
| sorta maybe possible power generation option. And fusion
| weapons have existed for decades - so nothing that nivel
| here.
| DennisP wrote:
| It's a bit odd how people think nuclear weapons research
| needs a fig leaf in the US, where overt nuclear weapons
| funding is about a hundred times more than the
| government's fusion energy funding.
|
| It seems more likely that scientists used the weapons
| angle to dip into that massive flow of military money for
| their energy program.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That may be more likely a priori (after all, much
| "military" funding is in fact a convenient way for the
| government to fund R&D without huge budget fights in
| Congress).
|
| But, ICF is simply not a viable way to produce fusion
| power, it is far far far too expensive to operate such a
| device. So, we can only conclude that they are either
| deluding themselves, or they are in fact doing fusion
| weapons research (or, at best, simply fundamental
| theoretical research into how fusion works) - since the
| same kinds of conditions or forces are what happens
| inside a fusion bomb.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Isn't this at the NIF? The goal was weapons all along.
| DennisP wrote:
| So, you have a source proving the motivations of the
| people who founded it and run it now? Because I argued
| above that it makes little sense to simply assume that
| weapons are the only goal, or even necessarily the
| primary goal.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > I argued above that it makes little sense to simply
| assume that weapons are the only goal, or even
| necessarily the primary goal.
|
| You can argue all you want. Lawrence Livermore National
| Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated
| facility managed through a contract between the LLNS
| Board of Governors and the DOE's National Nuclear
| Security Administration (NNSA). The NNSA in turn works to
| ensure that the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons is
| safe and secure.
| DennisP wrote:
| None of that contradicts what I said, or explains why
| they bother doing energy research at all.
| pxhb wrote:
| https://wci.llnl.gov/
|
| Note that in the US nuclear weapons are controlled by the
| DOE, and not the DOD.
| Retric wrote:
| Without reproducing the result it can be extremely
| difficult to prove something wasn't a measurement error
| of some kind.
| D-Coder wrote:
| "They've analyzed the data from the experiment to prove
| that they achieved it (i.e. ruling out all possible other
| explanations)."
|
| All possible other explanations _that they have thought
| of_.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| That's not the line taken with Fleischmann and Pons.
|
| To be clear I'm not supporting/rejecting either F&P or
| this article's writers at all as I'm not knowledgable in
| the field, merely pointing out that the need for
| reproducibility was reinforced by their reported results
| and the inability of others to duplicate it. It's a good
| lesson - nothing is proven until it is repeated.
| IncRnd wrote:
| If results are not reproducible, how does one know that
| the results are correct?
| teamonkey wrote:
| You can measure something accurately without needing to
| reproduce the thing you're measuring.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| And your measurement devices can error or be configured
| improperly.
|
| Seriously some large % of "breakthrough" results are just
| errors in methodology/measurement. It's why no one
| serious gives a damn about results until they're
| replicated(or at least they shouldn't). And that's before
| you get into outright fraud where they just claim they
| measured something.
|
| Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If
| you claim you've gotten that kind of fusion reaction, and
| can't reproduce it, then it casts doubt on if you ever
| really got that reaction at all.
| [deleted]
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It kills me that more people don't know about General Fusion.
| They have a practical design for a fusion reactor and are
| currently building a test reactor in the UK.
| deepspace wrote:
| I believe that General Fusion has been in business for over 10
| years and that they have yet to actually demonstrate fusion.
| Definitely not fusion with net energy gain. It's all smoke and
| mirrors. Their press releases read like they were written by
| business majors, not scientists. What is the "test reactor"
| going to test?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| They're building a small scale reactor to test the design.
| And are you really criticizing a private company for taking
| just 10 years to get to working reactor? Their approach to
| fusion can't work in small scale tests.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It has worked perfectly thus far, at separating investors'
| money from the investors. Most private fusion projects
| operate on similar principles.
|
| We are starting to see similar projects in the renewables
| space, most notably Energy Vault (NRGV). Their stuff does
| not work, and cannot work, but it does not matter because
| the customer is the investors, not the utilities, and what
| the investors buy is pipe dreams.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Investors make a speculative bet that the people involved
| will make things work. They also generally understand the
| risks associated with it and are willing to do it despite
| that because they think there's a meaningful non-0 chance
| of success.
|
| I think with fusion investors would be thinking about
| generational ROI (20-40 years) instead of 5-10 years.
|
| What I don't understand is why there isn't a similar push
| to really shake things up with fission. Our current power
| mix will take a century or so to replace. Fission should
| be a MUCH faster path.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Fission would be faster if the path to deployment was
| realistic, but it isn't. A recently approved small
| modular reactor design was the first one to be approved
| in the US in several decades and it still has another 10
| years and several more regulatory bodies to go through to
| build it, let alone start deploying it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I suggest that the regulatory bodies are acting (likely
| intentionally) more of a hindrance than a help. It's
| highly likely there's been regulatory capture by the
| fossil fuels industry given their political clout and
| significant lobbying experience. It's not an accident
| that the recent "climate bill" just has a bunch of
| concessions for the oil industry [1]:
|
| > it requires the U.S. Department of the Interior to
| lease 2 million acres in federal lands onshore and 60
| million acres offshore each year for oil and gas
| development (or whatever acreage the industry requests,
| whichever is smaller). These quotas must be met to allow
| federal leasing for onshore and offshore renewables
| development, respectively.
|
| > In an online statement, a senior scientist at 350.org
| called the bill a "sham" and said that it "contained so
| many giveaways to the fossil fuel industry" that it
| "turns all of the gains in addressing the climate crisis
| into a moot point."
|
| Nuclear power plants with today's technology are already
| safe. Small modular designs are nice but it's not an
| either or. We should be building reactors with the best
| technology available at the time, not waiting for a
| hypothetical future. In fact, building with today's
| technology helps because a) provides clarity that allows
| for greater private investment b) Wright's law tells us
| it'll have compound benefits where nuclear technology
| gets cheaper and safer.
|
| Look at China. They've already build 47 power plants with
| another 11 approved [2]. They know what kind of problem
| oil is and they're making significant effort to fix it
| while the rest of the world is sitting on their hands. It
| plans to build another 150 reactors, 30 of which are
| outside of China [3]. They're spending 440B (almost 0.5T)
| in building out nuclear fission [4].
|
| Fission has a realistic path to displacing all fossil
| fuels. We should have been doing this for the past 60
| years - it would have been even cheaper in the past. Even
| with all the accidents, nuclear technology has fewer
| deaths per KWh produced than almost any other technology
| [5] (on par with solar and wind).
|
| [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/planetpolicy/2022/08/0
| 4/the-c...
|
| [2] https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/China/China.htm
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China
|
| [4]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-02/china-
| cli...
|
| [5] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
| tinco wrote:
| There's a company in the UK that has already built multiple
| test reactors: https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk/ The more the
| better of course, but I'm not sure why more people would need
| to know of them, it's not like we could buy shares. I like TE
| because they post regular updates on the construction of their
| reactors, though it's been a while since they've posted
| anything concrete.
| dabber21 wrote:
| Lots of things happening in this area, Wendelstein 7-X was
| recently completed in Germany to research nuclear fusion
| the8472 wrote:
| W7X is a bit like the LHC. It already was operational in 2015
| and got incremental updates since then.
| dabber21 wrote:
| yes, but the recent changes have been significant, they will
| now be able to run it for 30 minutes instead of just 100
| seconds.
|
| I guess within the next 3 years we will have more results
| tarr11 wrote:
| Can someone explain to a lay person what they accomplished and
| what it means for nuclear fusion as an energy source?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Nuclear engineer here, I can try.
|
| Before you get cosmic energy out of nuclear fusion fuel
| (usually isotopes of hydrogen), you have to put a bunch of
| energy into the fuel to get it into fusion conditions. Namely,
| you have to heat it up and compress it so the nuclei get close
| enough to fuse (after which they'll release energy).
|
| There are a few milestones along the way to commercial fusion
| energy:
|
| * Get more energy out of a fusion fuel than you put into it
|
| * Get more energy out of fusion fuel that it took you to make
| the energy you put into it
|
| * Build a way to capture the net gain energy and convert it
| into electricity
|
| * Demonstrate the integrated power plant as a prototype system
|
| * Build and operate the first commercial power plant
|
| * Assuming good economic and technical performance, start
| building a fleet
|
| * Deal with fleet scaling issues
|
| * Profit!
|
| This is a celebration of the first bullet.
| the8472 wrote:
| Is commercial ICF realistic though? Each shot needs a
| carefully prepared fuel pellet. To get commercial power
| they'd have to fire a shot per second or so. That seems like
| a really expensive manufacturing operation to keep it going.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| There is an incredible dichotomy that I learned about from
| David Deustch, which is that things are either:
|
| a) ruled out by the laws of physics, or
|
| b) possible.
|
| Commercial ICF is in the latter category as far as I can
| tell.
|
| In other words, maybe?
| ajnin wrote:
| I think a condition needs to be inserted between a) and
| b) :
|
| x) require preexisting conditions not present in the
| Universe, or
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Flying cars are also into category b for what it's worth.
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| The real world presents a trichotomy:
|
| b) is two things
|
| b1) possible and worth the cost
|
| b2) merely possible
| magila wrote:
| While obviously true, I think it's also useful to
| distinguish where items in category b fall on the
| spectrum from "this will be commercially viable with
| minor refinement" to "this is three orders of magnitude
| away from commercial viability and we don't even have a
| theoretical path to get there".
|
| AFAIK energy generation with ICF is much closer to the
| latter than the former.
| imglorp wrote:
| Not to mention a tritium shortage [1?] -- assuming this is
| D-T fusion -- which it seems is going to be hard to get in
| the first place let alone throw it into a generator.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31451902
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I don't know if it's all fusion reactors but General
| Fusion breeds tritium by surrounding the plasma with
| moving liquid lithium which breeds tritium and helium and
| they send the tritium back in. Seems sustainable.
|
| I don't know why their plan is to just vent helium given
| the shortage although I imagine that's a second order
| problem they can solve later.
| alok-g wrote:
| Thanks a lot!
|
| I vaguely recall reading a long time back that managing the
| emanating free neutrons was also a challenge. Has that been
| solved?
| ncmncm wrote:
| Very far from: no one is working on it. They know it would
| be a waste of time.
| tomp wrote:
| Has the first bullet ("ignition") been achieved before, or is
| this the first time?
| oofbey wrote:
| This is not the first time. But it's the biggest net gain
| so far by a good wide margin.
|
| Still a very long way to go before becoming similar to a
| fossil burning power plant. They got equivalent of 1
| megawatt for a single second. A typical coal plant is
| hundreds of megawatts continuously.
| _ph_ wrote:
| Yes it has. For example JET achived 16 MW of fusion power
| output in 1997.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus)
|
| Its successor, ITER is supposed to produce more energy than
| used in creating the fusion process. It is still under
| construction in France.
| ganzolo wrote:
| Excellent explanation. Thank you!
| zikero wrote:
| > * Get more energy out of fusion fuel that it took you to
| make the energy you put into it
|
| What does that mean if the cost of energy is 0 ? (e.g
| renewables)
| vlovich123 wrote:
| By renewables I'm assuming you mean wind & solar because
| fusion is 100% renewable. Even fission is basically close
| enough in that there's sufficient easily accessible
| resources to power human society for eons. Additionally,
| solar panels and batteries use rare earth metals, so
| they're technically not as renewable as fusion / fission
| (although to be fair I don't know what materials go into a
| fusion / fission reactor so those metals may be needed
| there).
|
| Anyway, the cost of energy with solar / wind is obviously
| not 0. You have to produce the panels / windmills, perform
| maintenance, for solar you need to clean, etc.
| Additionally, the energy isn't available always so you need
| energy reserves like batteries, pumped water, etc to store
| it for use which increases the cost further. Finally, there
| are energy demands that solar / windmills can't meet where
| you need *really* hot temperatures.
|
| That's why fission repeatedly is shown as the only solution
| to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Fusion is great but
| we should be building insane amounts of nuclear reactors
| right now to meaningfully decarbonize our energy
| generation.
|
| * EDIT: Here's a talk [1] by Michel Laverne CSO of General
| Fusion. He starts talking at the ~6 minute mark and
| explains why renewables will never see more than 10-20%
| market penetration.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zzwnt0cNXM
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Even fission is renewable (i.e. can power 100% of primary
| energy until the sun burns out) using breeder reactors,
| which can run with huge EROI on just the uranium and
| thorium traces in average crustal granite. Conveniently,
| breeder reactors were first demonstrated in 1952 in Idaho
| at the Experimental Breeder Reactor 1.
|
| The term "renewable" is such a poor word for 'long-term
| sustainable'. I wish we had something that didn't make
| everyone think we were violating the laws of energy
| conservation.
| pmyteh wrote:
| > He starts talking at the ~6 minute mark and explains
| why renewables will never see more than 10-20% market
| penetration.
|
| ...and yet market penetration of wind and solar in the UK
| was 26.4% in July[0] and still climbing as we build more
| offshore wind. Plus 1.3% hydro (and 5.9% biomass if you
| count that as renewable).
|
| [0]: https://www.nationalgrideso.com/electricity-
| explained/electr...
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Then why build a fusion reactor?
| giantrobot wrote:
| There's a few reasons as I understand it, the power
| output can be on the same order as a nuclear fission
| plant. So a single plant taking relatively little real
| estate can output gigawatts of power to the grid. The
| fuel is abundant to the point of being practically
| unlimited. The fuel also needs little in the way of
| refinement and is not hazardous. A fusion core is
| naturally fail safe since energy and fuel need to be
| constantly applied, an accident might destroy a core or
| plant but not irradiate the surrounding countryside.
| prox wrote:
| It could quite literally save the world in terms of clean
| energy. I can understand why one would at least try.
| ncmncm wrote:
| 100% false.
|
| As with fission, most of the operating costs would have
| nothing to do with buying fuel. Solar and wind power
| suffer none of these costs, so fusion, like fission,
| would be wholly unable to produce power at a price anyone
| would pay without being forced to.
|
| The fission plants still operating will find themselves
| increasingly unable to produce power at a price anyone
| will pay, so will be mothballed long short of their
| design life.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There will never be a commercial fusion reactor power
| plant.
|
| And if there were, this would not contribute to its
| development.
|
| Fuel for such a plant (tritium) is practically non-
| existent. What of it that exists is synthesized at great
| expense.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Prestige, social status, bragging rights, money (a
| $billion is table stakes for fusion reactors, so a _lot_
| of folks are getting fat cuts), and cool & cushy high-
| tech careers. Really expensive research has been going on
| for 50+ years now, with no sign of development - let
| alone deployment - of actual, practical power reactors.
| ncmncm wrote:
| There are many reasons to build a fusion reactor:
|
| It keeps hot-neutron physicists, who you must recruit
| from among for weapons work, busy.
|
| It provides continual practical challenges to plasma
| fluid dynamics physicists, who otherwise have great
| difficulty funding experiments.
|
| It provides cash flow to the (chiefly) military
| contractors who build the test apparatus.
|
| In this particular case, it lets you conduct tests for
| thermonuclear weapons concepts paid for out of a
| different budget.
|
| Any expectation of _ever_ getting useful energy out would
| be the worst reason, because there will never be one
| solitary erg of that.
| elteto wrote:
| It's not the source of energy that has a cost, it's the
| process of actively capturing it, conditioning it and
| providing it that does.
|
| Therefore, providing energy, no matter the source, always
| has a cost.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Wait, are you suggesting that renewables will make energy
| too cheap to meter? I've been waiting for this moment.
|
| While renewables are making increasingly cheap generators,
| the overall systems involved in delivering reliable energy
| from them are increasingly expensive at increasing scale.
| Check energy costs to customers e.g. in Germany.
|
| Mining, energy storage, transmission, demand control,
| recycling, maintenance, land rights, etc. for any energy
| source at world scale will continue to cost well >$0. For
| nuclear fission, fuel cost is only 5% of the total cost.
| For renewables, fuel cost is 0%, but that doesn't mean
| there aren't costs.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Meters get cheaper with time too. :)
| throw827474737 wrote:
| Ah come on that wouldn't have been necessary... energy
| costs could be a lot lower if the path towards renewables
| hadn't been blocked and undermined for years, if
| something in the current situation is keeping it not from
| exploding more it is the renewables.
|
| Please better check France for the often touted right way
| of going nucelar, with half of their overaged reactors
| taken off the grid due to failing safety regulations
| (which are not too hard but have been dangerously
| softened over ye years..), cracks and corrosion problems,
| and their unfolding catastrophe in regard to nonavailable
| cooling fluid, which is a problem that will only become
| much bigger in the future years.
|
| Also don't distract and mix energy with energy, if
| something we have a heating and fuel problem, not
| electeicity. Secondly our gas reservoirs are already 75%
| filled again ahead of plan surprise surprise.. seems the
| lasts months panic had a little bit too much agenda
| involved.
|
| If you ask me energy prices here are still much too low
| for what is upcoming and humanity should really focus
| on... this will make current debates so absurd and
| laughable, not getting it.
|
| Why not look at some other examples who fully went
| renewables and doing it succesfully? Stop looking at a
| wanted or at least easily prevented politic, lobbyism and
| incompetence failure, that now leads to prices that are
| still much too cheap for what our wastage of resources
| should actually cost, lol.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I'm stating a simple concept, which is that if you put
| some wind and solar into a heavily-fossil powered grid,
| the first 30% wind and solar are easy, and the last 30%
| are harder.
|
| But if you do 100% wind and solar, then you have to start
| spending money on things other than generators. The
| fraction of cost that is wind/solar generators vs. e.g.
| energy storage systems, transmission, recycling, etc.
| shifts from 1 to ~0 at scale.
| pfdietz wrote:
| If you look at the minimum cost of providing synthetic
| baseload in a 100% renewable scenario, the renewable
| inputs can be > 50% of the cost (the other parts being
| various kinds of storage). This is geographically
| variable, though.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > the other parts being various kinds of storage
|
| This is handwaving away the most difficult part of of a
| 100% renewable grid.
| ncmncm wrote:
| By which you mean, of course, the _least difficult_ part,
| and the part that is needed only after all the hard
| parts, the ones that actually produce energy in useful
| form, have been built out.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| No, energy storage is a far more challenging task than
| generating it. To put this in perspective, the world uses
| 60TWh of energy per day. Most energy storage projects are
| in the hundreds of megawatt hour range, a few in the
| gigawatts. Estimated for a 100% renewable grid depends on
| the solar to wind ratio and degrees of overproduction,
| but they usually fall in the range of 12-24 hours for a 0
| carbon grid. And that figure of 60 TWh is only going to
| grow as underdeveloped countries become more wealthy and
| want A/C and other amenities.
|
| This is a colossal amount of storage, far outside the
| bounds of existing storage methods. Hence why plans for a
| renewable grid assume untested mechanisms like power to
| gas or compressed air will just scale to near-infinity.
| ncmncm wrote:
| In fact energy storage is a trivial matter of high-
| school-level physics.
|
| Most existing storage, taking advantage of existing
| hydro-power dams, uses excess energy to force water up to
| the reservoir, which energy is later extracted by letting
| it flow out through a turbine. New pumped-hydro systems
| built just for storage will be radically cheaper than
| existing dams, and be practical in hundreds of times as
| many places: you just need a hilltop no one is using, and
| water to pump up to it. The reservoir may be _much_
| cheaper than a hydro power dam because it does not need
| to contain high pressure; an earthen dike suffices.
|
| There are numerous other, equally simple methods, for
| places without enough hills or water. Synthetic fuels
| like hydrogen and ammonia are an attractive choice
| because tankage is cheap, and they are transportable and
| have myriad industrial uses, so after your tankage is
| full you can sell all further production.
|
| Of course one only builds storage after there is excess
| energy to put in it. We will need a lot of it, in time,
| but it is all just construction and mechanics: ordinary
| civil engineering.
|
| (If you have to lie about the practicality of storage in
| order to promote nukes, what does that really tell us
| about your nukes?)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Fusion is trivial high school level physics, too. We all
| learn about the physics that goes on in the sun's core.
|
| You're right that hydroelectric offers lots of storage
| potential. But it's geographically limited. Great for
| countries like Norway that have lots of it. But countries
| that don't can't just summon dam-able mountain valleys.
|
| You need more than just a hilltop to build pumped hydro.
| You need a hilltop, with access to a water source. It
| also needs to be close to a transportation network
| otherwise construction costs will be prohibitively
| expensive. Pumped hydro plants do indeed cost a lot: the
| biggest one in the US in Bath County cost $4 billion
| dollars for a capacity of 24 GWh.
|
| Furthermore, it will get more expensive as it scales up:
| as the most accessible sites are developed, subsequent
| facilities have to be built in more and more suboptimal
| sites.
|
| > The reservoir may be much cheaper than a hydro power
| dam because it does not need to contain high pressure; an
| earthen dike suffices
|
| This makes absolutely no sense. I needs high pressure to
| generate electricity. Low pressure would mean there's
| hardly any potential energy to tap. If you're suggesting
| we have a tunnel leading out from under the reservoir,
| then those have to be built in exactly the right
| geography where there's an alpine lake with a height
| difference.
|
| > There are numerous other, equally simple methods, for
| places without enough hills or water.
|
| Yet, despite these methods purported simplicity you
| didn't actually specify them (Edit: you added a couple in
| an edit after I typed my reply). Because then you'd have
| to defend their viability.
|
| Since you edited in hydrogen and ammonia:
|
| * Power to hydrogen: electrolysis of water remains
| expensive, hence why most hydrogen is built with steam
| reformation. It's not just the electricity costs, but
| also maintaining the electrodes that perform the
| hydrolysis.
|
| * Power to Ammonia: this needs a source of hydrogen, so
| it shares all of the above's issues. Ammonia is really
| just a storage mechanism for hydrogen, actually producing
| usable energy from ammonia is done by releasing the
| hydrogen from the ammonia and then running it through a
| fuel cell.
|
| You're the one being overly optimistic about the
| practicality of storage. We've had excess production
| during peak renewable generation for close to a decade
| now. The excuse that we won't build storage until there's
| an excess of electricity isn't valid. Places like Hawaii
| and California already are saturating the energy market,
| but the storage is systems you propose aren't being built
| because they aren't feasible.
|
| Intermittent sources are fine to chip away at fossil fuel
| use, or in places with widespread hydroelectric power.
| But we can't kid ourselves into thinking that storage
| will make it feasible every. Grid scale energy storage
| should be approached like fusion: _maybe_ it 'll be
| invented and change the energy landscape. But it's
| foolish to treat that possibility as a given.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Again, if you have to lie to make your case, what does
| that say about your case?
|
| Pumped hydro storage does not, as I already pointed out,
| require river valleys. It does not, in fact, need those
| other things. You make clear that you know nothing about,
| even, pumped storage. (Maybe look up the word
| "penstock"?) Why would _anyone_ trust you about others?
|
| People often badly overspend on civil projects, but that
| does not give you honest numbers -- if indeed what you
| want is honest numbers. You make very clear that you do
| not want honest numbers.
|
| Pretending that fuel synthesis depends on access to
| scarce raw materials (hydrogen, nitrogen? Really?) will
| not fool anyone. Neither will anyone be fooled by your
| insistence that its energy must be extracted via fuel
| cells.
| jholman wrote:
| I'm not the person you've been replying to, but I note
| that your replies in this chain are getting more and more
| acrimonious. If you're going to repeatedly accuse the
| other commenter of bad faith, it's probably best to stop
| replying.
|
| I'm not a civil engineer, nor any kind of expert in grid-
| scale energy storage, so I can only note that in my
| amateur readings I've seen many different people (alleged
| experts) say the same things that Manuel_D is saying.
| That doesn't mean it's true, that's not my point. My
| point is that if you know something that all these other
| commentators don't, I and others would greatly appreciate
| it if you would explain that. But you'd need to actually
| explain it, not just accuse others of bad faith.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The person he is responding to has a dismal history of
| bad faith trolling on this subject.
| rendang wrote:
| If pumped hydro+renewables is so cheap, why have
| developing countries like Vietnam chosen to build coal
| plants instead? Which large country has been able to
| replace fossil generation with wind/solar & storage and
| keep prices down?
| pfdietz wrote:
| They may not be cheaper than coal plants. But coal plants
| (indeed, any fossil fuel plants) are off the table if we
| are to stop global warming.
|
| What pumped hydro(+other storage)+renewables is cheaper
| than is nuclear. You will notice Vietnam isn't building
| nukes either.
| idlehand wrote:
| The issue is rather that due to the unpredictable nature
| of renewables, sometimes the stars align so that the
| combined output of wind, solar, and hydro end up far
| beyond what the grid needs.
|
| During those times, in some parts of Europe for example,
| renewable energy really is practically free. This is a
| problem for nuclear and fossil plants which lose money
| during those times. The renewable operators don't make
| much either but at least they don't have very high input
| costs.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > During those times, in some parts of Europe for
| example, renewable energy really is practically free.
|
| Isn't it more fair to say that during those times they
| are resting their costs at a higher rate than with their
| typical output?
| ipsi wrote:
| As far as I understand, it means something more along the
| lines of "This laser hits the fuel with 1MJ of energy which
| ignites it, but it took us 100MJ of energy to make that
| happen, because the laser is inefficient/only 20% of the
| laser hits atoms/etc, etc." Step 1, in this case, is
| producing more than 1MJ, and Step 2 is producing more than
| 100.
| bawolff wrote:
| Renewables don't have zero (energy) cost. Wind turbines
| don't make themselves, solar panels involve an energy
| intensive manufacturing process.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Imagine you 'spend' 10 GW to get 10.0001 GW out, and to do
| it you need a massive industrial facility.
|
| That doesn't cost $0. It probably costs billions of
| dollars.
| prox wrote:
| Maybe seen to many sci-fi, but can a fusion reactor go out of
| control and fuse any atom it comes in contact with? I mean
| with more energy going out than in. Sounds a bit like a
| nuclear reactor.
| gary_0 wrote:
| Short answer: No, that can't happen.
|
| Fusion reactors and conventional nuclear (fission) reactors
| are very different. Only poorly designed fission reactors
| can meltdown and release large amounts of highly
| radioactive material into the environment. And no nuclear
| power reactor of any kind can explode into a giant fireball
| like a nuclear bomb; that only happens on TV shows.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Nope, failure of containment simply means they fizzle out.
| Some massively hot plasma might go to areas immediately
| next to reactor, but it won't blow up. There isn't just
| enough temperature or pressure for fusion to continue.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The main way they seem to go out of control is in the
| schedule and budget.
| ncmncm wrote:
| The thousands of tons of molten lithium needed for useful
| operation would, if ever exposed to air, prove extremely
| difficult to put out.
|
| That would be what they might call an "expensive
| setback".
| prox wrote:
| What happens if its exposed to air?
| ncmncm wrote:
| There are some great videos on YouTube about how alkali
| metals behave in contact with air or, for extra
| amusement, water. Those don't generally present
| superheated, molten alkali metals.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It burns very hot. Also water won't help you.
|
| On other hand amounts used are relatively minor so it
| isn't massively bad issue.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Molten lithium (or Pb-Li) probably won't be used in
| magnetic fusion reactors, because the magnetic forces
| from induced currents in the flowing metal would cause
| unacceptable pressures to develop. There was hope that
| insulating coatings for metal structures could be
| developed to deal with this, but apparently even small
| cracks are too much.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The neutrons released by the fusion reaction can be
| captured by the atomic nuclei of other materials it
| encounters, in a sense fusion. This induces radioactivity
| in those materials, called neutron activation, but won't
| create a run-away reaction. Nuclear fission reactors also
| produce neutron radiation that behaves in the same way,
| except in nuclear fission fuel it _does_ create a chain
| reaction.
|
| > Sounds a bit like a nuclear reactor.
|
| They are nuclear reactors. Nuclear fusion reactors, rather
| than nuclear fission reactors.
| prox wrote:
| Right so it never goes out of control basically once you
| stop the input!
| sigstoat wrote:
| where does that even appear in sci-fi? you're the first
| person i've ever seen even type out such a thing.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| The Dark Knight has Bane trucking around an explosive
| fusion reactor.
|
| In Spiderman 2 Doc Oct is blowing stuff up with fusion.
|
| Those are the two that pop into my head.
| prox wrote:
| There is lots of sci-fi where the reactors go in full
| overload. Startrek, Starwars, Stargate. Don't quite
| recall where I got the idea exactly from to be honest.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Start Trek uses matter-antimatter reaction as power
| source. Provided we ever find out how to do that, if this
| reactor stores any substantial amount of anti-matter -
| which appears to be the case in Star Trek, with the
| confinement being achieved by usage of dilithium crystals
| - the failure mode would be loss of confinement, with the
| result of antimatter coming into contact with regular
| matter. This will lead to all anti-matter instantly
| converted to energy (taking the equivalent mass of matter
| with it) resulting in enormous explosion probably
| converting any matter in the vicinity into a superheated
| plasma cloud and enormous burst of high-energy radiation.
| Star Trek reactors are not very safe, as it looks from
| the descriptions.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Iron Man's "arc reactor" is explicitly supposed to be a
| fusion reactor and it blows up, taking a building with
| it, during the events of the first Iron Man movie.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Fusion reactor can, in theory, go out of control, but it
| won't "fuse any atom it comes in contact with". Somewhat
| simplified:
|
| The failure mode for a regular (fission) reactor can be
| twofold. The better scenario is that by some kind of
| mechanical failure the radioactive materials escape the
| confinement, and instead of putting their energy into the
| electricity generation mechanisms, just start shooting it
| around, irradiating things, thus breaking them (including
| living organism's cells and DNA) and causing them to become
| secondary sources of radiation. The worse scenario is that
| that before that, radioactive materials become too close
| together, starting self-sustaining chain reaction, which
| outputs immense amounts of energy (essentially, like a
| nuclear bomb), inevitably leading to destruction of
| whatever container it is in (no container can survive it
| for long, too much energy) and spreading around, by which
| time we're back to the scenario above (since once the
| materials have spread around, the chain reaction would
| stop) only with much more material which is much more
| energetic and thus will spread around wider and do more
| mess.
|
| The failure mode of fusion reactor, if it happens, would be
| different, since it does not contain fissile material.
| Instead, it contains some light elements (usually the mix
| of deuterium and tritium, both of which are just hydrogen
| with some extra neutrons) which are heated and compressed a
| lot to start forming helium. If something breaks, the
| elements would not have anything to contain them (since,
| unlike what happens in the Sun, they don't have nearly
| enough gravity in themselves to be able to counter the
| thermal forces taking them apart) so what you'd get is a
| lot of very hot gases (mostly hydrogen) flying around. It's
| no fun, especially given hydrogen likes to explosively
| combine with oxygen in the air under the right conditions,
| but there would be no radiation involved, and it won't be
| able to "fuse" with anything else because it won't have
| enough energy to initiate the fusion process (that why we
| needed to compress and heat it up in the first place). So
| if everything goes very wrong - which is not very likely,
| but we're assuming the absolutely worst case scenario - we
| will have an explosion but noting like fission reactor. The
| containment is absolutely necessary - at least in current
| fission reactors - to achieve more energy out than in - and
| if it fails, the energy output will stop. This is one of
| the reasons fusion reactors are supposed to be safer.
|
| There still could be some radioactive contamination
| involved due to fusion causing neutrons to fly around, hit
| the surrounding materials and turn them radioactive, and
| these could be spread around by the explosion, but less
| than in the fission case.
|
| Now you may ask how hydrogen bombs are so destructive then?
| The big difference they use a regular nuke to ignite the
| reaction. Unless somebody builds a fusion reactor inside an
| exploding nuke, that's not the scenario we'll be dealing
| with in the fusion reactor case.
| prox wrote:
| Thanks for explaining it so well, that gives a lot more
| perspective. Some have replied fusion is still to
| expensive to run, is that true?
| smsm42 wrote:
| Right now nobody has a functioning fusion reactor, so
| nobody knows how expensive it would be to run one.
| Hopefully, there would be some way to make it cost
| reasonable money - since it has many advantages over
| existing solutions - but I have no idea if it's feasible
| with current technology.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Very well said, thanks. After you do 90% of the work, you
| have to do the other 90%.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Or, in this case, the other 90000%.
|
| This result does not bring us any nearer to civil energy
| production via fusion.
| ivoras wrote:
| Thanks for the great explanation!
|
| Would you mind answering a layman's question on where the
| energy comes from in fusion: my understanding is that the
| problem here is that energy has to be put in to overcome
| electromagnetic repulsion between atom nuclei so that the
| strong force can take over and combine them into a new
| nuclei, releasing energy at that time.
|
| Is this interpretation correct-ish?
| danans wrote:
| Here is a video by Sabine Hossenfelder explaining exactly that:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| It's easy to trigger some fusion in a D-T mix. As in, an
| enterprising high school student can do it on his tabletop with
| parts mostly scavenged from tube televisions.
|
| The problem is that the fuel mass that undergoes fusion has a
| lot of mechanisms for energy loss, which mean that you need to
| continously apply a lot of energy into the system to keep it
| going.
|
| "Ignition" refers to achieving conditions where the energy
| output of fusion matches the energy loss from the hot spot. In
| this situation, it is no longer necessary to feed in energy to
| keep the reaction going, so long as there is sufficient fuel.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I like how they don't even try to pretend that this is a route to
| practical power generation, it's all about research into the
| fundamental physics of fusion - which is a worthy goal in itself.
|
| > The record shot was a major scientific advance in fusion
| research, which establishes that fusion ignition in the lab is
| possible at NIF," said Omar Hurricane, chief scientist for LLNL's
| inertial confinement fusion program. "Achieving the conditions
| needed for ignition has been a long-standing goal for all
| inertial confinement fusion research and opens access to a new
| experimental regime where alpha-particle self-heating outstrips
| all the cooling mechanisms in the fusion plasma."
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I feel like the pendulum has swung too far the other direction
| these days. It used to be we'll have cold fusion in 20 years
| which was hopelessly over optimistic. Nowdays its. We are
| spending 10 years on a myopic proof of concept that has no
| practical uses and never will.
| seedless-sensat wrote:
| The private fusion companies still have ambitious (and most
| likely unrealistic) goals
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| So did the Moller Air Car.
|
| Moller at least had a brief prototype that hovered.
|
| There are probably real scientists, engineers, and
| approaches, but it's probably about fleecing dumb investors
| at a fundamental level.
| dcow wrote:
| We're just biding our time until 2050, at which point we will
| unlock the ability to build industrial scale fusion energy
| plants.
| planck01 wrote:
| I would love that. But honestly, I would be surprised if
| fusion energy will be economically feasible before 2100. If
| ever.
| dcow wrote:
| According to SimCity, the year is 2050 on the dot.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Just watch out for any stray solar microwave beams in the
| mean time.
| jefftk wrote:
| I'd bet on that. I'd give Commonwealth Fusion Systems
| alone 40% in the next 20 years.
|
| More on recent fusion developments:
| https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-
| the-f...
| planck01 wrote:
| I hope you win! I usually get my reality checks from
| Sabine Hossenfelder, who a while back explained that all
| these fusion claims are wildly optimistic. You can find
| her video here: https://youtu.be/LJ4W1g-6JiY
|
| I am no scientist, so it is hard for me to know if team
| optimistic or team pessimistic is right. But even if it
| is the latter, I think we should put more money and
| research on it!
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I maintain that we would be further along with fusion had we
| not kneecapped fission into a regulatory abyss.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| One of my elderly relatives commented last week that he has
| been hearing that the new experimental results will promise
| reliable fusion plants in less than a decade ... Since 1960
|
| (He used to be one of those guys inside an ICBM silo during
| the Cold war)
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > which is a worthy goal in itself.
|
| I'd like us to focus on practical power generation. It will be
| the most defining aspect of future of US and largely the world.
| Everything is tied to energy and if we can make energy cheap
| enough so that its not worth metering; we'd secure the future
| from literally any calamity (including CC). Even the shittiest
| efficiency of carbon capture can be put to use when energy is
| cheap. 4% efficiency? Cool. Entropy increase from residual heat
| loss wouldn't make meaningful dent on the world's temperature.
| It is the carbon that is the problem (greenhouse effect).
|
| We have an almost unlimited source of energy from nuclear +
| solar. There are always going to be people and ideologies that
| oppose technological progress and prevent humanity from
| propelling forward. I belong to the camp where I'd want us to
| become a Kardeshev Type 1 civilization. Fusion would be a
| direct contributing factor for it.
| dataflow wrote:
| > we'd secure the future from literally any calamity
| (including CC)
|
| What is CC here? Cosmic collapse? Credit cards?
|
| Edit: Ah, of course. Thanks.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| You know as a matter of fact credit cards are not a wrong
| answer, really. We only got to the point of 9 billion
| humans on a tiny planet meant for a few million at best,
| because the only way out of compound interest debt--
| synonymous with credit cards--is economic growth--usually
| more humans.
|
| China saw it that way, in the time of Han Chin, the first
| Chinese emperor. Wealth comes fundamentally from
| _agriculture_ because then you can make more servants slash
| slaves for the emperor, that 's literally what he called
| them, then instead of emperor you have an Emperor, Emperor
| of China. That's what the original historical sources say!
| More food more people more servitude more wealth for the
| man at the top of society.
|
| So credit cards are that. Uniformly crazy interest rates,
| and shitty scams to jack up the rates just barely before
| getting taken to court. Or a French Revolution, which they
| know about and fear. Know the harm they do, the houses they
| take, the homeless they make, the people they imprison
| indirectly, the children they starve, they know. What's
| it's name, FICO score, patio11 talked about them, they are
| 100% certain you--anybody who reads this--is strictly
| inferior to them. He says if you talk back to their claim
| you are an inferior debtor who deserves a low credit score
| they react like it's a shoe factory dealing with a talking
| shoe. An object. A servant slash slave.
|
| Owes them money just because. Or because that debt was
| inherited. They actually have all the machine learning
| models and all the statistics you could possibly ask for
| (generally they claim this is fraud detection, but it's
| price discrimination too) to determine exactly how much--to
| the thousandth of a percentage--they can fuck with people
| with their usury--their theft--before people go bananas.
| Usury means you gotta pay back the debt or be homeless.
| Tolerate crimes in your gainst with no recourse. Any crime.
| No recourse. In my case murder. No recourse. Cops won't
| show up for you.
|
| Debt grows surprisingly fast. Just as surprisingly fast as
| the equity in the home grows surprisingly slow. People
| always feel cheated by their mortgage because _they did get
| cheated by unforgivably incorrect math._ What does that
| mean? Ignoring all the intermediate steps, more kids to
| inherit the debt.
|
| And technically--and I can justify this mathematically and
| in a court of law--even simultaneously--compound interest
| is contradictory to the laws of physics. It would not work
| out mathematically even if they did do the math correctly,
| which they do not. It could work in an infinitely-
| dimensional universe. If they did it correctly. But not in
| a 3-dimensional universe. You can have, at absolute most,
| cubic growth. Otherwise you end up with shitty debt.
| Unforgivably incorrect math declaring you are a servant
| slash slave. A letter demanding you make a choice:
| servitude or tolerating crime against you.
|
| Shitty debt.
|
| Credit card debt.
|
| 9 billion humans.
|
| Climate change.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Not really. A direct hit by a CME from the Sun would
| probably seriously damage a fusion plant. Magnets would
| need to be replaced along with a lot of electrical
| equipment.
| tommsy64 wrote:
| Climate Catastrophe?
| agar wrote:
| Climate change
| IntelMiner wrote:
| Climate Change I assume
| hyuijk wrote:
| My understanding is that one big reason so much money was
| invested in this lab is because the research has direct
| applications to nuclear weapon design. It's a dual use lab so
| to speak. The process they are studying is very similar to
| what's happening in the core of a thermonuclear bomb.
|
| > 1978: This report reviews aspects of the military
| applications of the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) program
| at Sandia Laboratories
|
| https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6412035
|
| > Today, research on inertial confinement fusion--the other
| leading approach--remains largely under the control of US
| national weapons labs. The military focus has had profound
| impacts on the development of inertial fusion energy.
|
| https://thebulletin.org/2013/07/nuclear-weapons-the-death-of...
| Pixelbrick wrote:
| Better they keep a cadre of smart people who can do this
| stuff than lose the institutional knowledge.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
| throwoutway wrote:
| Maybe this is a dumb question: I thought all nuclear bombs
| were fission, not fusion. How could fusion be at the center
| of a fission bomb?
|
| I didn't even know fusion had a weapons research program
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Nope, the most powerful bombs use both - in effect they use
| fission to perform fusion. Obviously the problem with this
| for energy production is that it is not a very controlled
| reaction.
| smueller1234 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon
|
| The "hydrogen" in "hydrogen bomb" relates to fusion. In a
| nutshell, these types of devices use a fission bomb to
| create the environment (pressure/temperature) that causes
| lighter atoms to undergo fusion, which significantly boosts
| the explosive yield compared to a pure fission bomb.
| donkarma wrote:
| they have a fission primary stage to ignite the fusion
| secondary stage
| wiml wrote:
| Usually if it's called an "atom bomb" or "A-bomb" it's pure
| fission, and a nuclear bomb, thermonuclear bomb, or
| hydrogen bomb is fission-fusion-fission. A fission bomb
| compresses the hydrogen to cause it to fuse, and the extra
| energy and neutrons from the hydrogen fusion cause a whole
| lot of additional fission in the uranium tamper. For
| details look up the "Teller-Ulam" design, wikipedia has
| some good descriptions.
| orlp wrote:
| I'm curious what you think the hydrogen in a hydrogen bomb
| would split into.
| sweetheart wrote:
| Sheesh, tough crowd.
| cnasc wrote:
| We actually got to fusion bombs pretty quickly, in the
| 1950s. Presumably almost all practical nuclear weapons
| since then are fission bombs
| khuey wrote:
| All nuclear bombs involve fission. Some (termed
| "thermonuclear") involve fusion. A fission first stage is
| detonated to ignite a (much higher yielding) fusion second
| stage. Most bombs deployed today are thermonuclear simply
| because it's the most sensible way to scale up the yield of
| a weapon.
| throwoutway wrote:
| This makes sense, thank you
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is single use masquerading as dual use.
|
| The purpose is probably personnel related: employees on this
| do not need a security clearance, so cost less.
| pxhb wrote:
| This is false, _almost_ all of those employees have a Q
| clearance. You can search the job listings for keywords
| like 'Wci' 'high energy density', etc to confirm.
|
| Part of the purpose is definitely personnel related though.
| Part of the US nuclear deterrence is the projection of
| having a large, highly skilled nuclear weapon related
| workforce.
| trhway wrote:
| Those experiments and supercomputer modelling is what
| allowed US to get sub-10kt nukes without actual testing.
| Credible promise of responding with those small nukes
| directly against Russian regime is what stopped Putin's
| threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
|
| Wrt. inertial confinement fusion productization I think
| the delay is intentional (just look at Sandia z-machine
| results from 20+ years ago and all the ways of tempering
| and redirecting progress since then there) as such
| schemes allow for fusion weapons without fission primary
| which will completely break the non-proliferation regime.
| throwoutway wrote:
| > Credible promise of responding with those small nukes
| directly against Russian regime is what stopped Putin's
| threat of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
|
| Link to credible reports where the US said they would
| respond with nukes? AFAIK, this never happened and I paid
| close attention
| CyanBird wrote:
| Correct, this has not happened and will *not* happen
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| I have no inside knowledge whatsoever but we can all rest
| assured that each side is in a near constant back and
| forth of implicit unstated "communication" about
| capabilities and doctrine.
|
| Merely publishing a paper on a certain subtopic in the
| fusion space can easily be interpreted as an implied
| threat or threat response.
|
| Of course the US does have a stated doctrine of using
| nukes only in response to nukes used against it or its
| allies. It is enormously doubtful that the US would
| trigger an end-of-days scenario in response to Russia
| using tactical/low-yield nukes against a non-US-ally like
| Ukraine, but the uncertainty is for sure purposefully
| cultivated.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| The US had nukes substantially under 10kt long before
| these experiments or the existence of supercomputers...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_devi
| ce)
| trhway wrote:
| W-54 isn't here anymore. So instead US have tuned down
| W-76 into 5-8kt. I.e. getting new capabilities without
| testing (there are recent tuned down, though not that
| low, versions of B61 too). And that is open information.
| One can expect that classified would be at least a step
| ahead, i.e. something like 1kt. Coupled with high
| precision delivery and earth-penetration designs (that US
| has been using across the range - from conventional to
| B61) that makes for extremely effective deterrence as it
| allows to take a out a dictator like Putin deep in his
| underground bunker if he crosses the line, and other
| strategic keypoints without initiating full scale war.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Former LLNL employee here:
|
| You're partially correct on accident. It _is_ single use,
| but not in the way you think. The NIF facility was built
| for the express purpose of nuclear weapon design, and any
| fusion science that comes out of it should be considered a
| happy accident. I can assure you that very nearly 100% of
| the people working at the NIF have Q level or higher
| clearance. The costs are absolutely astronomical.
| rcgorton wrote:
| Kukumber wrote:
| Another proof that innovation doesn't come from capitalism
|
| Capitalism will make sure the tech is locked down behind patents
| ;)
| imperial_march wrote:
| Capitalism is why it was done in the first place, instead of
| people waiting in lines outside stores.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| This whole comment chain is utter nonsense. Not only is the
| research publicly available (so much for capitalism locking
| knowledge behind patents) but the research was done at a
| government funded lab (capitalism had nothing to do with
| getting this done). Not a huge fan of capitalism myself, but
| these comments literally make no sense.
| voxl wrote:
| Modern capitalism is effectively local optimization. Academic
| research doesn't follow that same flow, so to claim
| capitalism is responsible for academic progress is an
| interesting claim.
| Kukumber wrote:
| Capitalism is why we still don't have it
|
| Capitalism is why we still burn coal and use gas
|
| Capitalism is why china is already ahead
|
| I can continue with many more examples :)
|
| They all waiting in line to get government funding
|
| Capitalism is why there is no chip fab in the US
|
| Intel is waiting in line for government funding
| kortilla wrote:
| > Capitalism is why china is already ahead
|
| Yes, adopting capitalism is why China got so far so fast.
|
| > Capitalism is why there is no chip fab in the US
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/intel-breaks-
| ground-20-bl...
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| In a free market, socialists could create a lot for profit
| collective fusion power coop. Funny how that never happens.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| We should require every fusion breakthrough article to state Q in
| the title
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| q is more of the fan way to look at it than the engineer way to
| look at it
|
| people throw it around like "you need q=1.35 to be economical"
| but that's kind of nonsense
| arnaudsm wrote:
| What are the other relevant numbers to summarize the
| progress? $/kWh?
| tinco wrote:
| No, that's just a different way of writing Q. There is not
| a continuous gradient along which nuclear fusion research
| progresses. It will have a negative $/kWh ratio until the
| first commercial plant is built. Until then it's milestones
| that show possibilities.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-08-14 23:00 UTC)