August 2021
elorant is posting from oort cloud, be easy on him.
Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
31–40 of 494 posts
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#32Sweet, nucluear fusion now must only be 20 years away!
20 years ago we were joking about it being 40 year away. So yes, it is timely progress.
I am still bitter that we don't invest more on this research which has the potential to solve the climate crisis "unexpectedly".
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#33Is this "plasma breakeven" or overall break-even?
Neither, it's inertial confinement fusion, which isn't really seen as a way to a successful commercial reactor (at least not that I've heard of) and is more a tool to study the physics of D-T fusion reaction in a controlled way that's not inside a nuclear bomb. It's a tool for experiments.
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably just "plasma breakeven" Sabine talks about the issue. [1] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nucle...
Sabine actually is completely misleading and misconstrues a bunch of facts. None of these plants are even attempting to have real energy breakeven and spend a ton of energy supplying experiments and unrelated support equipment. They don't even have a method of capturing energy as that's not the point as it would make it harder to test the physics. Additionally these plants have high amounts of "startup energy consump…
I think her meaning is pretty clear and correct. As much as plasma breakeven may be the entire goal of ITER it's absolutely setting them up for a badly missed public expectation. The day they declare net positive output, the world will ask when we can start building infrastructure and the answer will be "30 more years" and then they'll get their funding yanked forever.
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#35> Fusion ignition is the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. This occurs when the energy being given off by the fusion reactions heats the fuel mass more rapidly than various loss mechanisms cool it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition
>Early reports estimated that 250 kilo-joules of energy was deposited on the target (roughly 2/3 of the energy from the beams), which resulted in a 1.3 Megajoule output from the fusing plasma. Incredible progress over where they were just a couple years ago.
For reference: 1 MJ = 0.277778 kWh.
Not trying to knock the progress made or anything like that, I just needed the conversion to a more familiar unit in order to appreciate what sort of scale they're talking about.
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#36Sweet, nucluear fusion now must only be 20 years away!
Sorry, it's actually now 29.5 years away.
Also this article isn't even about a tokamak so...
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#37Funny how this story gets posted after soon after Dr Sabine Hossenfelder's debunking and deflate the fusion power hype - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY with a genuine Hans Gruber accent :)
Do you have any context on who Dr. Hossenfelder is or why their "debunking" is meaningful?
She's a German physicist who has made a name for herself, I think, arguing that mathematical beauty should not be a factor when constructing solutions to problems in theoretical physics.
I think construing her video as a "debunking" does it a disservice, for what it's worth. It's a call for journalists and laypeople to be cautious when interpreting lab results. She doesn't "dunk on" fusion power or say that it's not worth investigating.
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's important here is that they may have achieved ignition, that is making the fusion reaction self sustaining[0]. Once it becomes self sustaining one should be able to add more fuel to the pellet to get more energy out for the same input energy. It's worth noting that NIF was not intended to generate power and is not representative of a potential power plant. The lasers on NIF are old and were chosen to have a lo…
Don’t you still need to spend energy on confinement? You don’t need to “reignite” the plasma but w/e confinement solution you chosen still has a cost and a non marginal one when it comes to magnetic confinement.
this uses inertial confinement rather than magnetic confinement.
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#39Is this "plasma breakeven" or overall break-even?
What's important here is that they may have achieved ignition, that is making the fusion reaction self sustaining[0]. Once it becomes self sustaining one should be able to add more fuel to the pellet to get more energy out for the same input energy. It's worth noting that NIF was not intended to generate power and is not representative of a potential power plant. The lasers on NIF are old and were chosen to have a lo…
What is the goal of NIF? I've read repeatedly that fusion power isn't their end goal but rather to study inertial confinement. That's fine but why study inertial confinement if not to generate power? I've always been very confused about their goal. I'm a total layman when it comes to this stuff so there's some nuance I'm not understanding. Appreciate any clarification anyone can give.
Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t you still need to spend energy on confinement? You don’t need to “reignite” the plasma but w/e confinement solution you chosen still has a cost and a non marginal one when it comes to magnetic confinement.
this uses inertial confinement rather than magnetic confinement.
You still need big ass lasers or particle accelerators for ICF too, these tend to be quite energy intensive too.