[HN Gopher] The Mirror Fusion Test Facility (2023)
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The Mirror Fusion Test Facility (2023)
Author : not_a_boat
Score : 94 points
Date : 2024-05-04 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.beautifulpublicdata.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.beautifulpublicdata.com)
| api wrote:
| This field is so underfunded, but progress is still being made.
| Check out Commonwealth Fusion and their progress with insanely
| powerful compact energy efficient magnets. They recently clocked
| a stable 20T magnetic field.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Calling fusion research underfunded is rich(no pun intended).
| Costs for ITER are estimated to 45 to 65 billion USD it's one
| of the most ambitious and costly science projects in the world
| to date. That's not even accounting for all the other fusion
| projects.
|
| There are many areas in science that receive significantly less
| funding.
|
| I would also argue that the prevelant perception that fusion
| would lead to to essentially unlimited free energy is wrong.
| The extremely high capital costs would likely mean that fusion
| is unlikely to ever match solar or wind in energy production
| costs.
|
| I'm not opposed to fusion/plasma research, we have much
| insights into nonlinear dynamics and chaotic behaviour due to
| this research, I disagree with the notion that this is a field
| that achieves incredible outcomes with small budgets, that's
| far from reality.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Let's read again what you just wrote and think: "ITER are
| estimated to 45 to 65 billion USD"
|
| That's not the most costly costly project, not even close
| (prices in current dollars and total costs)
|
| Apollo project: $257 billion
|
| ISS: $150 billion.
|
| STS: $196 billion.
|
| Fusion energy has been constantly underfunded.
| pfdietz wrote:
| None of those projects was worth the cost.
| j-krieger wrote:
| the ISS was _definitely_ worth the cost.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Really? What result did ISS deliver that justifies its
| construction? It's an exercise in orbital flagpole
| sitting.
| api wrote:
| The new Vogtle reactor in Georgia (the US state) cost about
| $17B. A single offshore oil platform can cost upwards of $1B
| and we build hundreds of these.
|
| When weighed against the potential payoff fusion is very
| underfunded. If we make it work we basically have infinite
| clean energy until the heat death of the universe, not to
| mention a source of energy that could jet us around the solar
| system and beyond at speeds far beyond what anything we
| currently have can achieve.
|
| The cost of ITER is not crazy for the energy industry in
| general. Huge energy projects are very expensive. We spend
| multiples of that on oil drilling every year.
| baq wrote:
| Apple is buying back $110B of stock.
|
| They could build an Apple iFusion Reactor instead and still
| buy back $50B.
| CalRobert wrote:
| If you're the type to read comments before the article itself, do
| yourself a favour and click over if only for the fantastic, sci-
| fi level design of this device. Incredibly cool-looking.
| jcims wrote:
| Gave me Contact vibes. Love it!
| GordonS wrote:
| Wow. It almost looks alien - insanely cool, and thanks for the
| push, it's quite an interesting article.
| exochrono wrote:
| I love the juxtaposition in one of the first pictures of this
| super advanced contraption being rolled into place using
| plywood and logs.
|
| It totally looks like it could be a still from the a movie
| where medieval humans discover some sort of crazy alien
| artifact and drag it back home to put in the middle of their
| town as a trophy.
| relaxing wrote:
| These Big Science projects give me Akira vibes.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| These are good stories to keep in mind when your/our much smaller
| passion projects get killed by management. Life moves on.
| willis936 wrote:
| I worked at a fusion lab at UW Madison for a few years. There is
| a statue of these mirror magnets (with a poetically broken water
| display). The way MFTF funding cut as soon as it was complete was
| a generational shock to fusion researchers. The taste still
| hasn't left peoples' mouths.
| jethkl wrote:
| The engineering hall statue! Thank you for posting your
| comment. I thought it was an abstract sculpture trying look
| "engineery". But it's a realistic representation of a cultural
| wound, and it is a warning.
|
| https://engineering.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Kids...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| "No deed of honor is commemorated here"
| SaberTail wrote:
| > Only in December of 2022 did scientists at the National
| Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
| announce that they had achieved the first recorded fusion
| reaction with a net energy gain
|
| We've been achieving fusion reactions with net energy gain since
| the 1950s, when hydrogen bombs were developed. And, on top of
| that, the achievement they're talking about was more energy out
| than light energy put in from lasers. The NIF lasers are not
| anywhere close to 100% efficient at converting energy to light,
| and so it was not actually net energy positive.
|
| NIF is not going to lead to fusion power. That's not the point.
| Fusion bombs are primarily an engineering problem. There's lots
| of plasma physics going on that is very difficult to simulate
| with a computer, and you need real world data to inform the
| simulations to make sure they're working properly. That's what
| NIF is for. Instead of having to blow up a nuclear bomb, and
| violating test ban treaties, NIF can produce that data. And with
| the PR shine of tying it to fusion energy.
| daedrdev wrote:
| We already have enough nukes to glass the world several times
| over.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I don't understand your comment at all. It doesn't seem to me
| that GP was suggesting more bombs, just suggesting more
| testing and letting bomb makers use all their available tools
| and funding on it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is not true.
| dekhn wrote:
| That may have been true in the past but the major nuclear
| arsenals are much smaller, and the yields much lower, with
| the intent of incapacitating an enemy, not destroying the
| entire world.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It's pretty crazy that they are still working on improving
| nuclear bombs. If there is one area where the current state is
| "good enough" it should be that area. I can see the need for
| maintaining what we have already but why try to advance the
| technology? A pure fusion bomb would be cleaner as far as I
| know but do we really want to make nuclear war more feasible?
| dgacmu wrote:
| In their defense, some of the questions and that they're
| asking are about how our stockpile degrades over time - which
| hopefully means keeping weapons on ice longer instead of
| having to reprocess and build as many new ones.
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| > _I can see the need for maintaining what we have already
| [...]_
|
| The officially-stated goal of these labs (pulsed power,
| fusion, and hydrodynamic test facilities [0]) is indeed for
| maintaining existing nuclear weapons, not to design new ones
| (and also for doing basic research during free time). This
| was called the _Science Based Stockpile Stewardship_ program
| [1] - ensure that existing nuclear weapons would remain
| functional in the foreseeable future. (Interestingly, the
| lesser-known hydrodynamic test facilities such as the _Dual-
| Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility_ are more useful
| for weapon designs than fusion facilities).
|
| The idea is to test materials under extreme lab conditions to
| help computer modeling, so that it would still be possible to
| do minor design changes to replace obsolete or end-of-life
| parts (the FOGBANK incident [1] came to mind). Understanding
| long-term aging is also a stated goal.
|
| [0] http://www.wslfweb.org/docs/agex.htm
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_stewardship
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fogbank
| doubloon wrote:
| if we do not maintain expertise in nuclear weapons then we
| will end up like Ukraine.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| We already know everything that's to know about nuclear
| weapons if used for defense and deterrence. A pure fusion
| bomb would be relatively clean so it would be much more
| tempting to use as a regular weapon. What if Putin had such
| bombs right now?
| jtriangle wrote:
| It depends on your answer to the question, is nuclear war
| inevitable?
|
| If it is, making weapons that are as clean as possible is a
| reasonable goal. If you get some knowledge that's applicable
| elsewhere, that's a nice bonus.
|
| If you don't think it's inevitable, you can likely justify
| making them cleaner because it will likely have applications
| elsewhere by the logic of fusion weapons being the only place
| we've been able to harvest usable energy thusfar.
| SaberTail wrote:
| The difficulty with "clean fusion bombs" is that bomb
| makers can always increase the yield of a fusion bomb by
| making it dirty. Fusion releases neutrons, and these
| neutrons have enough energy to fission the common 238
| isotope of uranium, which releases roughly 100 times more
| energy than than the neutron started with.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Pure fusion bombs are very destabilizing, yes. The current
| nuclear arms control regime depends on uranium
| enrichment/plutonium production being heavy industry,
| requiring large facilities with unusual equipment.
|
| A research program for EPFCG pure fusion weapons could be
| quite small, only requiring a few hundred people and little
| equipment that couldn't be manufactured indigenously. Test
| explosions could be done at the kilogram scale, producing no
| radiation detectable from orbit or seismic effects, then
| easily scaled to kiloton yields.
| keepamovin wrote:
| This is such a tragedy. So ridiculous it just wreaks of
| corruption. Energy industry threatened by new tech. To not even
| turn it on? And collect the data?
|
| Like the Darkstar Mach 10 test day shutdown scene by the "Drone
| Ranger" in Top Gun: Maverick
|
| Oh well perhaps if the magnet mirrors still exist they can be
| repurposed by the Guggenheim for an installation. Beautiful
| sculpture!! Hehe :)
| doubloon wrote:
| "we must bring the deficit under control,"
|
| that's funny because Reaganomics was the beginning of the
| "deficits dont matter" wing of the Republican party.
| pstuart wrote:
| aka The Two Santas.
| api wrote:
| It was also the start of politically weaponized Keynesianism.
| When Republicans are in power they spend massively to stoke the
| economy while using deficit hawk rhetoric. When they lose power
| they blame the ensuing deficits on Democrats. Works incredibly
| well because people don't look beneath the headlines.
| FiatLuxDave wrote:
| Beautiful pictures, but I felt that the post was lacking in
| mention of Post:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_F._Post
| pfdietz wrote:
| The father of actress Markie Post from "Night Court".
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| "This is frustrating, and perhaps not the best use of our
| national talent and resources, but we must bring the deficit
| under control," so said all accountants when in charge of
| anything.
| airstrike wrote:
| looks straight out of Control (the game)
|
| <They/We must persist/fight back until net power/control is
| achieved>
| pfdietz wrote:
| If I understand correctly (and I'm not sure I am), what killed
| MFTF was they pushed ahead too fast. They didn't find all the
| instabilities before they started building it.
|
| Since then, the instability that killed it (DCLC) has been
| understood and they've found a way to design the system to avoid
| it. So mirrors are being worked on still, they just don't look
| like MFTF.
|
| https://plasma.physics.swarthmore.edu/brownpapers/WHAMmirror...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/374070078_Physics_b...
|
| https://realtafusion.com/
| willis936 wrote:
| Wouldn't that have come to light within the first few
| campaigns? It's difficult to justify spending the capital on an
| experiment that is never run, regardless of how wise it was to
| make compared to other experiments.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| I was always asking what happened with the magnetic mirror
| experiments about fusion. I only know about, what was in a book
| that I read when I was young. I think that was the "The fusion
| quest"
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