[HN Gopher] Nuclear-fusion lab achieves 'ignition': what does it...
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Nuclear-fusion lab achieves 'ignition': what does it mean?
Author : SiempreViernes
Score : 140 points
Date : 2022-12-13 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| already wrote:
| More discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377
| carabiner wrote:
| Never thought I'd witness a resonance cascade... Let alone,
| create one.
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| Call me a cynic but the only meaningful thing out of this is that
| they got their funding secured.
| cpleppert wrote:
| "To demonstrate that the type of fusion studied at NIF can be a
| viable way of producing energy, the efficiency of the yield --
| the energy released compared to the energy that goes into
| producing the laser pulses -- needs to grow by at least two
| orders of magnitude."
|
| Lots of claims on HN that we were one order of magnitude away.
| Similar claims were made in other threads made about how we were
| really close to commercialization with better lasers. This
| article has the right take, this research is valuable but its
| impossible to say anything about whether indirect intertial
| confinement fusion is commercially viable. Best case scenario
| [1], we still have a way to go.
|
| [1]: An Assessment of the Prospects for Inertial Fusion Energy
| (2013)
| olliej wrote:
| It's really stretching things to say it produced more energy than
| went into the reaction.
|
| Energy in:energy out is a ratio of the amount of energy that goes
| in, not the portion of the energy that eventually hits the
| target. It's like measuring car engine efficiency by measuring
| how much of the energy reaching the wheels translates into motion
| - and ignoring the massive losses that lead up to that point.
| teach wrote:
| This article was a welcome relief after many of the others the
| past couple of days. Well-written, clear, optimistic but not
| hand-wavy, and certainly not "breathless" or loaded with PR.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| So, they generated 3.15 MJ energy from the target, at a cost of
| an input of 2.05 MJ laser light. Pretty exciting.
|
| However those lasers aren't very efficient, generating the 2.05
| MJ required more than 300 MJ of electricity.
|
| What is the path forward... Can anyone elaborate? Do we make the
| lasers 100x more efficient? Will hitting a target with a 100x
| mass yield 315 MJ?
|
| Edit: thanks everyone for the clarification. Really helps me
| putting the numbers in context.
| femto113 wrote:
| Scaling the NIF's approach (laser inertial confinement) isn't
| about more reaction mass per pulse, it's about more frequent
| pulses, and is probably not going to be practical or cost
| effective in the foreseeable future. The fuel pellets are tiny
| (~2mm), their container is only about 1cm and must be nearly
| perfectly spherical. A continuous power plant would consume
| about half a million of them per day (6 per second), all of
| which need to be shot with perfect timing, precision, and
| reliability to the exact center of the laser sphere. My guess
| is magnetic systems are much more likely to ever be used in
| power generation.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| This feels important. We already know that fusion "works"
| (proof: look up). But it's not possible to recreate the
| conditions of a star on Earth. So if this method is also
| impractical, why would I care that it "works"?
| MattGrommes wrote:
| If you create an impractical mechanism to prove out a
| scientific problem, you know it's then worth trying to fix
| the impractical mechanism. Maybe they start working on a
| way to direct the pellets into the correct path using
| magnets or something. But if you don't even know the
| scientific part works it's not worth going after the magnet
| solution.
| api wrote:
| It proves that net positive fusion is achievable here with
| known physics and technology (outside bombs which are
| useless).
|
| We had never done that before.
|
| This will probably unlock more funding. In the end a
| different approach is probably more likely to lead to a
| power plant unless truly gigantic advancements in laser
| efficiency can be achieved.
| femto113 wrote:
| Scientifically it's potentially very interesting: close up
| observation of what's going on in the center of a star and
| all that. I'd ignore all "the future of free clean energy
| is upon us at last!" hype. That's the lab and the
| government officials trying to drum up publicity that can
| then be milked for financial/political capital (it costs
| many billions to build and run a facility like this),
| coupled with lazy news outlets trying to milk
| sensationalist headlines for eyeballs.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This seems far more credible than the "This means fusion
| in ten years!" hot takes, which are - frankly -
| completely implausible, whether they're coming from
| physicists or journalists.
|
| Weapons research might be a motivator too.
|
| I would be astounded if this can be commercialised. Not
| because I'm cynical for the sake of it, but because I
| cannot in good faith see a credible engineering path
| which might make that possible without spectacular
| breakthroughs in a number of disciplines.
|
| MCF seems more likely to get somewhere. But my best guess
| is that advances in renewables will have made fusion
| redundant within ten years. There is _far_ more scope for
| incremental and affordable improvements in collection,
| distribution, and storage than there is for the Big
| Science breakthroughs required to build one commercially
| viable ICF plant.
| [deleted]
| teach wrote:
| Apparently the semiconductor industry already has lasers that
| are 20x more efficient than what was used in this experiment.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Interesting, thanks! So the low laser efficiency isn't really
| important in interpreting the importance of this news.
| adrian_b wrote:
| The semiconductor lasers cannot produce pulses short enough
| for such applications.
|
| They can be used only as the pumping sources for the solid-
| state lasers or fiber lasers that can produce the short
| pulses.
|
| So the efficiencies of two lasers must be multiplied. I doubt
| that there is any chance to obtain an electrical to light
| conversion efficiency above 10%.
|
| So the energy generated by the fusion reaction should be much
| greater than 10 times the light energy, to be able to produce
| excess energy, even with lasers 10 times more efficient than
| now.
| dark-star wrote:
| Even if semiconductor lasers could put out the power required
| (they can't...), a 20x improvement would still mean the
| efficiency is only around 20%, so you'd still be putting in
| 10 MJ to get out 2 MJ...
|
| Yes, it's better, but the argument still holds
| lordnacho wrote:
| I don't get it. Wouldn't that mean it required 302.05MJ to get
| 3.15MJ?
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Kind of.. It's like saying you used a 1% efficient 100HP pump
| to start a water wheel that eventually was outputting 1.5HP
| of power. We know how to make more efficient pumps, so it's
| not terribly interesting that it took 100HP of power to
| generate the 1.5HP -- the fact that only 1HP of output power
| was actually used to start the 1.5HP reaction is the big
| deal.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The purpose of NIF is to investigate the practicality of
| inertial confinement, not "be a production fusion reactor".
| They don't use bleeding edge laser tech, nor are they really
| built to generate significant amounts of power. For context,
| modern lasers are ~20x more efficient than the ones that NIF
| is using.
|
| Reporting based on the energy put into the reaction itself
| (the lasers) reflects far better the feasibility of the
| confinement tech than spending an inordinate amount of budget
| on an already incomprehensibly expensive science experiment
| to try and optimize every last edge condition.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Aha that makes sense, it's a jumpstart basically?
| ep103 wrote:
| proof of concept, yeah.
| giblfiz wrote:
| Yes, but the name "ignition" is very useful.
|
| The idea, ultimately, is that like with a wood fire, the
| energy from the fuel "burning" is what starts the next bit of
| fuel "burning", and then as it runs on it's own as long as
| you keep giving it more fuel, you collect the excess heat by
| boiling water.
|
| So, similar to a wood fire, you might need to use a blowtorch
| to get it started, and run at a net negative of energy, but
| the exciting thing is that there was a little flame... that
| means we can probably make a roaring fire out of it.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| No it doesn't. If you throw some fuel in their general
| direction, oxygen fires are self-sustaining with relatively
| little effort. It takes more effort to stop a large oxygen
| fire than to make one.
|
| Fusion is the opposite. Fusion's natural state is Not
| Fusing, so in ICF you have to keep compressing and heating
| the fuel. Using equipment with optically tight tolerances
| and epic pulsed energy densities. Which are somehow
| maintained reliably for long periods. In spite of
| significant debris and huge temperature swings.
| teach wrote:
| Yes.
|
| In nuclear fusion, "ignition" means that you get more energy
| out than the lasers impart. This is the first time anyone has
| pulled that off in decades of trying, which is a big deal.
|
| But practical nuclear fusion would of course require that you
| get out more energy _from the entire system_ than you put in,
| and getting there will require even more problems to be
| solved. But now at least one obstacle has been overcome!
| WithinReason wrote:
| >This is the first time anyone has pulled that off in
| decades of trying, which is a big deal.
|
| Are you sure of that? This is from 2014:
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/giant-leap-for-
| nucle...
| falcor84 wrote:
| Quoting from the article you linked to:
| Hurricane's current output, although more than the
| hydrogen fuel put into the reaction, hasn't yet reached
| the stated goal to achieve "ignition," where nuclear
| fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. At
| that point it might be possible to make a sustainable
| power plant based on the technology.
| tingletech wrote:
| from your article:
|
| > Hurricane's current output, although more than the
| hydrogen fuel put into the reaction, hasn't yet reached
| the stated goal to achieve "ignition," where nuclear
| fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply.
| darksaints wrote:
| How do fusion bombs achieve "ignition"? It's not with
| lasers, right?
|
| Also, couldn't the net energy from the ignition be used to
| continue the reaction, so you only need the lasers for
| startup?
|
| Sorry for the newb questions, just curious.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _" ignition" means that you get more energy out than the
| lasers impart. This is the first time anyone has pulled
| that off in decades of trying, which is a big deal._
|
| The term is refreshingly intuitive. For decades we've been
| striking stone and flint. Sparks. We just got a bit of
| kindling going. It's no bonfire. But it's a big step
| forward.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This means we might have power as cheap and plentiful as solar
| and lithium batteries are today in a couple of decades, when
| solar and Batteries will be even cheaper.
| jujube3 wrote:
| https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nucle...
| didibus wrote:
| > The US$22-billion ITER project -- a collaboration between
| China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the
| United States -- aims to achieve self-sustaining fusion, meaning
| that the energy from fusion produces more fusion
|
| It's refreshing to see collaboration like this still happening,
| even with all the tensions between all those countries.
| coolspot wrote:
| It was happening for decades. Unclear how the war affects it
| now, but I believe most RU hardware (cryo and magnets) was
| already delivered/installed.
| [deleted]
| moloch-hai wrote:
| It is not a nuclear-fusion lab. It is a nuclear-weapons lab. What
| it means is they got a better system to model weapons.
|
| What it means to DoE higher-ups is that if they paint it as a
| breakthrough in energy production, they can unlock funding
| increases. So they do.
| habibur wrote:
| In more human terms : They fused in 0.6 kwh
| energy. Which produced 0.9 kwh energy.
|
| These megajouls are confusing for me. kwh is what we use for
| resident home power billing unit.
| moloch-hai wrote:
| Moreso: they managed to put in 0.6 kWh of the highest grade of
| energy imaginable, and got out 0.9 kWh of hot neutrons, the
| lowest grade of energy imaginable (short of neutrinos).
| freedom2099 wrote:
| Joules it's a pretty fitting unit... we are talking about
| energy in the form of heat here... kWh is a u it used for
| electricity! Didn't you study physic in high school?
| habibur wrote:
| Peace.
| fsh wrote:
| In Europe, kWh is used for both your heating bill and your
| electricity bill. Since kWh and Joule are two different units
| for the exact same physical quantity, they can be used
| interchangeably.
| mettamage wrote:
| > Joules it's a pretty fitting unit... we are talking about
| energy in the form of heat here... kWh is a u it used for
| electricity! Didn't you study physic in high school?
|
| I'd rephrase this to: Joules it's a pretty fitting unit. We
| are talking about energy in the form of heat here, kWh is a u
| it used for electricity.
|
| The question at the end comes of as potentially
| condescending. I'm not sure if you're aware, which is why I'm
| mentioning this rephrase.
| freedom2099 wrote:
| I was being condescending!
| [deleted]
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You could communicate as much without the last insulting
| sentence delivered for no particular purpose. It elevates
| the discussion and keeps you from ending up banned.
| dvh wrote:
| Can someone calculate how much installed solar power could we get
| by pausing fusion r&d for the next 10-20 years?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Not enough.
| coolspot wrote:
| About zero if China refuses to sell us solar panels due to some
| conflict.
| phtrivier wrote:
| Informative and sobering. That's what we need, not press
| conferences.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't know. This is not "we're there", not by a long shot.
| But it still seems to me to be worth throwing a lot of confetti
| over.
| choeger wrote:
| If I am not mistaken, there is also no current technology to
| actually _harvest_ that energy, right?
|
| So the lasers need at least 10x the energy they themselves put
| into the target. Conversion is still unclear. Are we even at 1%
| to a demo reactor, let alone a commercially viable one?
| zbobet2012 wrote:
| This is the third thread today with pithy "this means nothing
| takes". If you're thinking of posting a one liner on the subject
| you should probably stop.
|
| Let's save some time out of discussion now:
|
| 1. The lasers at NIF are not designed to be efficient, and they
| are very old. Modern semiconductor lasers are 20x more efficient.
| The 300MJ wall plug conversation is stupid, stop pointing it out.
|
| 2. Dropping crystals and hitting them with lasers is not hard, we
| do it in semiconductors for EUV light source generation all the
| time. In fact EUV light sources do it at 100khz or more.
|
| 3. Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a
| particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant
| on the planet works.
|
| Make no mistake there are a lot of engineering problems to solve.
| The "droplets" are enormously expensive, the "firing" itself
| creates debries which need cleared from the chamber, dt supply is
| not something that's readily available in large quantities, blah
| blah. I'd love interesting conversation about what stands between
| ICF and a real energy plant, not hot takes.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| > 3. Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a
| particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power
| plant on the planet works.
|
| Coal and nuclear are uncompetitive simply from the cost of the
| steam side. Today you can just about give a steam plant free
| energy and it still makes a loss.
|
| Solar or wind does not have this limitation. CCGT gas plants
| gets around it by having a turbine giving raw mechanical power
| and then utilizing the same awful steam side to get the last
| percentage points of efficiency at a much smaller required
| scale.
|
| Unless you can step around the steam turbine I do not see this
| becoming anything outside of incredibly small niches.
| Gud wrote:
| Neither coal nor nuclear are uncompetitive.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Compare newly built renewables with all costs included to
| the marginal cost of paid of coal and nuclear. [1] Today it
| is often better to simply shut down your existing nuclear
| plant and build a renewable instead. For a more
| comprehensive look see [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png
|
| [2]: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-
| energy-...
| kube-system wrote:
| Looks like you'll pay the same price if you shut down an
| existing nuclear plant for wind/solar, unless you can bag
| some subsidies.
| gpapilion wrote:
| I reckon solar is competitive in the day time without storage
| or peaker plants to support low generation time. I'd love to
| see the analysis of solar with the built in assumption of
| burdening the hourly cost with the infrastructure required to
| generate the required power at 10pm.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The generation during the day will not be burdened by that
| infrastructure. The night time generation will simply be
| day time cost + infrastructure.
|
| Theoretically, you can bet that your traditional power
| plant only runs at night. But now your capacity factor is
| less than half the available hours for the same capital
| investment and it looks even bleaker.
| gpapilion wrote:
| This is where I think it probably should be. Solar w/o
| another generation or storage source doesn't accurately
| represent the full picture of what is really required to
| support the a whole day of electricity. So the combined
| total cost is probably what should be shown to represent
| the costs of a full day cycle of solar, or a rainy day.
| fuckHNtho wrote:
| My cynical take is a lot of people are subconsciously unhappy
| with how BS and mundane their "tech" jobs are. They chose
| money+cool, only it turns out the 'cool' part was a lie to get
| them to churn out as much useless BS work as possible. So they
| get through the day by fooling themselves: slap a cool tech
| name on your product, make trendy graphics ( https://traefik.io
| https://github.com ), pretend you're doing some sci fi shit.
| Then any real tech happening in the world exposes your BS so
| you need it to be framed as a disappointment.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm 42 and there have been "breakthroughs" in fusion
| announced at least once per decade of my life. There's a very
| real chance that this breakthrough means the first fusion
| power plant will open after I'm dead, as none of the men in
| my family have reached 80.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| So, the issue is that the community here has grown old,
| cynical and unable to appreciate anything that might only
| help the next generations?
| malwrar wrote:
| No, the community here is skeptical of science reporting
| that seems too good to be true and progress in fusion
| energy production fits the mould. I'm not an expert on
| fusion or the physics, so the best I can do is agree with
| this sentiment and note details from skeptical comments.
|
| Hey, if we're wrong life will change for the better for
| billions of people. I like being surprised with good news
| more than disappointment.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a
| particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power
| plant on the planet works.
|
| River power spinning a generator? Wind farm power? Are those
| counterexamples?
| falcor84 wrote:
| Well, these aren't "bundles" per-se, but as I understand it,
| both are relying on the Earth-as-a-system converting heat
| from the sun falling on particular areas into large-scale
| flows, which we humans can then hook into.
| manmal wrote:
| GP was likely referring to power plants that burn things in
| order to heat up water to make steam in order to rotate an
| iron core encircled by copper wire. Using kinetic energy like
| wind or flowing water is a nice shortcut to the rotating iron
| core. Even nicer: Cut out the rotating iron core and directly
| produce voltage via photons hitting a semiconductor.
|
| I share GP's sentiment though that, in the end, there are
| remarkably few concepts at the bottom layer of electricity
| production.
|
| (There are other means of course, but they are not in use for
| power generation in amounts that can drive even one
| household, AFAIK)
| jboy55 wrote:
| The problem I have with this announcement is how limiting this
| technology path is to the future generation of power. If you
| look at the details, they imploded a sphere containing hydrogen
| with X-rays created by the interaction of the lasers with an
| outer casing. As a reminder, the second stage of an hbomb is
| the implosion of a cylinder of hydrogen, encased by uranium, by
| x-rays ablating the outer case. X-Rays produced by the
| explosion of a A-Bomb. The lasers are thus serving as a proxy
| for the first stage of a H-bomb.
|
| The critical question, how much of this design is to figure out
| how to produce energy from fusion with the aim of powerplant
| design, and how much of the design is to better replicate the
| second stage of a h-bomb?
|
| Edit: I'll have to research, but I would have to expect that
| the announcement of the h-bomb had language that also heralded
| this as the beginning of a 'fusion age' of power generation.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Sketch thing is that perhaps they're try to design an
| hydrogen bomb that doesn't require a fission primary. Use a
| laser to ignite the first stage, which ignites the next and
| so on. What if you can get 100X boost per stage, three stages
| gives you a gain of 1 million.
| jboy55 wrote:
| There is just basic h-bomb efficiency gains here. By
| lowering the energy requirement for the fission primary by
| finding more efficient ways to control/generate the X-Rays
| you can use a smaller and smaller primary. It also occurs
| to me how analogous this research is to the early x-ray
| laser tech, that Teller claimed could shoot down warheads
| for the Star Wars program in the 80s. Those designs had
| rods that would amplify and focus the x-rays from a nuclear
| bomb on incoming warheads. If you could initiate the x-ray
| chain reaction from a laser, you would be able to launch
| these without breaking the 'no nuclear weapons in space'
| treaty.
| cpleppert wrote:
| The studies done ten years ago suggested that the best case
| scenario was about thirty years( one demonstration phase of 15
| years and another development phase of 15 years). This was
| premised on the INF demonstrating ignition using indirect drive
| soon after operation. There was also an expectation that the
| INF would transistion to researching other, possibly more
| promising technologies like direct drive ignition.
|
| Instead, it took over ten years to simply demonstrate ignition
| using the indirect drive method which was chosen specifically
| because it was seen as being more technologically viable. This
| "big breakthrough" was supposed to happen immediately after
| operation!
|
| No one knows whether commercialization of inertial confinement
| fusion is even possible. Laser efficiency is just one small
| part; the work to produce and develop a system to reliably
| shoot hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than
| shooting a static target in ideal conditions.
|
| Compared to these engineering challenges demonstrating ignition
| is the easy part.
| zbobet2012 wrote:
| > Compared to these engineering challenges demonstrating
| ignition is the easy part.
|
| Again, let's discuss what those challenges are. A bunch of
| talk about how hard it might be with no detail on what makes
| it hard isn't really informative to anyone.
|
| > the work to produce and develop a system to reliably shoot
| hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than
| shooting a static target in ideal conditions.
|
| Please see my note #2 about EUV light sources and similar
| technology. My understanding is the timing and precision
| requirements are much higher here, but on the other hand the
| "rate" of fire would be necessarily much lower making
| something perhaps feasible.
|
| From the presentation and panel today, one of the key drivers
| seems to be the purity of the capsules and the ability to
| correct for asymmetries in the implosion caused by them. The
| results announced today where not because of the purity of
| the capsule, but instead because of the correct prediction of
| the asymmetries in the implosion and the ability to counter
| that with modifications to the laser strength and timing.
|
| The NIF isn't (as others have noted) necessarily focused on
| bettering these two factors.
|
| What I'd like to understand is what are the major tradeoffs
| in ICF vs MCF that would drive pursuing the difficult
| engineering problems of one vs another.
| cpleppert wrote:
| >> My understanding is the timing and precision
| requirements are much higher here, but on the other hand
| the "rate" of fire would be necessarily much lower making
| something perhaps feasible.
|
| Leaving aside rate of fire and energy efficiency you have
| to develop a system that can shoot the hohlraum into the
| reactor chamber such that the lasers can be steered onto
| the target with enough precision to produce ignition. I
| believe 100um is the miniumum for the type of targets used
| in the INF. This all needs to occur within the reaction
| chamber. Besides the thermal loads you also have residual
| gases within the chamber. These conditions somehow have to
| be accounted for or you won't get ignition.
|
| The work they did in demonstrating ignition is great but
| the engineering challenges for commericalization are
| immense. EUV lithography took decades to develop and
| perfect.
|
| >>What I'd like to understand is what are the major
| tradeoffs in ICF vs MCF that would drive pursuing the
| difficult engineering problems of one vs another.
|
| MCF is generally seen as a much easier approach because you
| avoid the problems with repeatedly generating fusion
| conditions and you remain in the ballpark of what can be
| solved with better technology. You can come up with a
| tokamak that you can be absolutely sure will probably work
| with enough money; but I'm not sure the same is true with
| ICF.
| zbobet2012 wrote:
| https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.p...
|
| and
|
| https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE-1911_web.p...
|
| actually layout some of the challenges. they are not as
| you state and there ARE tradeoffs between MCF and ICF.
| Most experts agree MCF is closer to realization, but
| that's a very well educated guess not a surity.
| everyone wrote:
| I read a comment here before saying that the purpose of the NIF
| is to get more data for making hydrogen bombs, while being unable
| to test actual bombs due to treaties. And that the press releases
| they have about fusion energy are mainly bullshit for the press.
|
| Is there anything to that claim or is _it_ bullshit?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Part of their job is to make sure that the nuclear stockpile is
| still reliable. Since they can't actively blow up a nuke
| nowadays, they instead rely on experiments and simulation.
|
| However, like a lot of the Department of Energy's work, their
| nuclear research also relates heavily to civilian applications.
| They are not 'bullshit' for the press.
| dougmwne wrote:
| "However, while the fusion reactions may have produced more than
| 3 megajoules of energy -- more than was delivered to the target
| -- NIF's 192 lasers consumed 322 megajoules of energy in the
| process."
|
| Well that says it all right there and really cuts through all the
| fluff on this story. Sounds like a nice milestone that has
| absolutely nothing to do with our ability to get a useful amount
| of energy back out. We are still at least 2 orders of magnitude
| away from a power source.
| sigmar wrote:
| No one at this lab is saying it is ready for commercial sales.
| The technical Q&A even featured them saying high energy lasers
| might not be the best tech for driving the fusion in a
| commercial setting- https://youtu.be/Eke5PawU7rE?t=5250
| dahfizz wrote:
| We already have lasers which are an order of magnitude more
| efficient than the one the lab was using. This is about a proof
| of concept, not about being an actual power plant.
|
| Also, as I understand it, the whole thing scales up very well.
| Now that we can "ignite" fusion in the little pellet used for
| testing, we can scale up to ignite a larger amount of fuel in
| order to get out much more energy.
| carabiner wrote:
| They put 2.05 MJ in and got 3.15 MJ out. The 300MJ comes from
| equipment inefficiency- remember this is a research facility to
| prove plasma physics and ignition itself, mainly designed for
| weapons research. The fact they got definite fusion at 1.53x
| input energy is not just breakeven, but net gain. This is the
| first time _ever_ we 've gotten net gain, in any fusion device.
| A lot of people in gov leadership thought fusion was
| impossible, the fact they can said they did it, despite 1980s
| era technology and a shoestring budget for decades, really says
| something.
|
| ICF is just one fusion technology, and probably not the best
| one, but fusion in general will probably see a massive budget
| increase worldwide now that it's been proven it can be done.
|
| I fully expect a working fusion plant of some kind by 2030,
| assuming funding increases. Once we get them commercialized;
| coal, wind, solar and other power production will be obsolete
| for the most part. We can also use fusion heat to separate
| waste into it's base elements (you can recycle anything!), and
| help make any process needing a lot of thermal or electrical
| energy more efficient.
| boppo1 wrote:
| How much easier to build and safer are they than fission
| plants? Otherwise they will still be politically
| bottlenecked.
| ep103 wrote:
| IANAScientist, but I believe I read that fusion requires a
| steady input of energy to continue the reaction. So much,
| much safer than fission, which is a chain reaction that can
| go out of control at any time, fusion, you just turn off
| the power and it stops.
|
| IIRC
| d23 wrote:
| Do you have a background in this field?
| dougmwne wrote:
| I do not. I would say if I did.
| d23 wrote:
| To be blunt then: your comment does not add to the
| discussion in a substantive way.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| The next steps in the story are, how easy is it to make this
| process more efficient? Is there something fundamental that is
| lessening the efficiency, or is it a matter of needing to buy
| part X or laser X or variant y to improve efficiency?
|
| Most research achievements are wildly inefficient because
| efficiency is not really their goal, they're looking for proof
| of concept. Once the concept is proven, you step into a whole
| different ballgame when efficiency is the goal. (Hopefully, who
| knows.)
| rini17 wrote:
| There's a reason for optimism as for the lasers' efficiency.
| But there are many other aspects that were only approached
| theoretically so far, such as how to get useful energy out of
| the reactor.
| simplicio wrote:
| Not useful for commercial energy production, but useful if you
| want to study self-propagating fusion explosions in a bomb,
| which is the actual purpose of the facility.
|
| NIF is really confusing the issue (I think this is the first
| pop-sci article Ive seen that even mentions nuclear weapons,
| and its relegated to one sentence surrounded by discussion of
| commercial energy). They're (justifiably) excited because after
| a decade of trying, they've finally managed to fulfill the
| facilities primary purpose and recreated an important aspect of
| the conditions inside a thermonuclear bomb.
|
| But they're obviously reluctant to foreground the bomb stuff,
| so instead they hand-wave in the direction of energy
| production, which doesnt make a lot of sense, and leads to a
| lot of folks pointing out that the energy needed to get the
| reaction going is more then just the laser pulse itself, which
| would make a big difference for commercial production, but
| doesn't really matter for the experiment theyre trying to
| perform
| TheCondor wrote:
| This is closer to pure science. This is in a lab. They aren't
| even attempting to make a "power source" so much as testing and
| verifying the theory.
| dougmwne wrote:
| And that is great! My issue is the way the science is
| reported in the media making it sound like we are on the cusp
| on some kind of energy revolution, when we very much are not
| and don't even have a line of sight on it yet. But then I
| suppose public hype will lead to Congress dollars and nothing
| gets done without those.
| TheCondor wrote:
| Seemed like this article in Nature did pretty good. They
| explicitly said: "I don't want to give you a sense that
| we're going to plug the NIF into the grid: that is
| definitely not how this works," and "Although positive
| news, this result is still a long way from the actual
| energy gain required for the production of electricity,"
| said Tony Roulstone, a nuclear-energy researcher at the
| University of Cambridge, UK, in a statement to the Science
| Media Centre.
|
| Still, "the NIF experiments focused on fusion energy
| absolutely are valuable on the path to commercial fusion
| power", says Anne White, a plasma physicist at the
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
|
| There is a pretty solid disconnect between the public's
| perception of how science works and happens and how it
| does. For this to really matter, someone else needs to
| duplicate the experiment and verify the data. It's a huge
| win if the hype can lead to that.
| cainxinth wrote:
| It means practical fusion power, which has been 20 years away for
| the last 60 years, will now be just 10 years away for the next 30
| years.
| trhr wrote:
| Followed, of course, by being 5 years away for the next hundred
| years.
|
| Big oil is much more competent adversary than science.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Well not even that, there isn't even a roadmap to improve laser
| efficiency 100x
|
| Even a 90% efficient high powered laser is way beyond fusion in
| terms of technical difficulty.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| But am I wrong in thinking that it's conceivable that we
| could see a further doubling in Q-plasma? If that happens,
| perhaps along with significant-but-plausible improvement in
| laser efficiency, then things could start to look fairly
| promising.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong comment?
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Nope! My point was that your comment assumes no further
| increase in Q-plasma. But the experience of the last few
| years suggest that there's reason to hope that won't be
| the case. We can come at the problem from both sides.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| Didn't someone the same thing about atomic power back in the
| middle ages?
|
| But that's OK, fusion is a hard thing to do outside of a star.
| It may take decades longer for it to be practical but doesn't
| the potential return on investment make it worthwhile to keep
| working on it now?
| androtech wrote:
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