[HN Gopher] US scientists boost clean power hopes with fusion en...
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       US scientists boost clean power hopes with fusion energy
       breakthrough
        
       Author : zackoverflow
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2022-12-11 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ft.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ft.com)
        
       | LatteLazy wrote:
       | The 457th "breakthrough" in fusion this year...
        
         | riffic wrote:
         | good, keep em coming.
        
       | fusion_for_all wrote:
       | came to HN to post this!! Potentially 2.5 megajoule output from
       | 2.1 input
        
       | jcadam wrote:
       | When can I pick up a Mr Fusion at Home Depot?
        
       | jeffbee wrote:
       | I guess I don't really get it. Nobody doubts that you can get a
       | tremendous output of energy from a fusion bomb with modest
       | inputs. This thing they've ignited is a tiny fusion weapon
       | without a fission blanket and with a huge, inconvenient optical
       | primary. I mean I'm all for science but I don't see the road from
       | this to civilian fusion power as people generally understand the
       | term.
        
       | Trouble_007 wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/fny0J
        
       | eqmvii wrote:
       | This would be incredible... very excited for the details in the
       | announcement coming Tuesday.
        
       | lost_tourist wrote:
       | I hope I'm wrong, but this seems like a lot of other "firsts".
       | I'm guessing the total (and I mean -total-, lasers typically
       | aren't that efficient) energy put into this will be much greater
       | than the output.
        
         | chabad360 wrote:
         | At least according to the TFA, it seems that the breakthrough
         | is that they got 2.5 mJ out vs. the 2.1 mJ that was used to
         | power the laser.
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | The efficiency of the lasers is awful though and they will have
       | to get at least 100x that energy yield for it to be a net power
       | source. A lot of heat winds up in the laser glass and it takes it
       | a long time to cool between shots so you are doing very good to
       | make a few shots a day. A real power plant is going to need more
       | like 10 shots per second.
       | 
       | Heavy-ion fusion has been talked about since the 1970s and it
       | seems much more practical than lasers for energy production
       | because the efficiency of particle accelerators is pretty good
       | (maybe 30% or more) but it takes a very big machine, the size of
       | a full powerplant, to do do meaningful development. Something
       | like that seems to need about 100 beamlines because otherwise
       | space charge effects prevent you from getting the needed
       | luminosity. Given that you are going to need to protect the wall
       | of the reactor and the beamlines from the blasts and also have a
       | lot of liquid lithium flowing around to absorb neutrons and breed
       | tritium it is hard for me to picture the beam quality being good
       | enough.
       | 
       | There hasn't been much work on it since then. If I had $48
       | billion to spend I'd think a heavy ion fusion lab would be better
       | than some other things I could buy.
        
       | mach1ne wrote:
       | Didn't they claim this already in 2013?
       | https://gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-positi...
        
         | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-11 23:01 UTC)