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Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

imperial.ac.uk

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Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#211

Post by Robotbeat »

thehappypm wrote: post #198

I'm struggling to understand what exactly happens. The deuterium and tritium mixture is hydrogen -- so it is a gas? So is it in some sort of gas-containing container, that also lets laser light through -- probably some kind of glass container? What kind of glass container can survive having this much energy pumped through it, and such a hot gas inside it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition

It’s actually frozen deuterium tritium. Inside a small pellet blasted by X-rays which compress the pellet until it’s hot and dense enough for the fusion energy produced to continue burning and heating the deuterium/tritium until much more energy is produced than the energy of the X-rays.

It all happens in an instant. The pellet’s structure doesn’t survive. But it happens fast enough that just the inertia of the pellet (turning to a gas and then a plasma) keeps things confined for long to fuse a significant amount of the deuterium/tritium.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#212

Post by thescriptkiddie »

rfrey wrote: post #61

Meta-question about fusion energy -something I don't understand about the movement. I spent a few years as CTO of a company providing heat-to-electricity plants. We financed and built them off high-heat plants like natural gas turbines. The "fuel" was heat going up the stack - so it was essentially free. We still couldn't compete with conventional electricity plants, even with a $30/tonne price on carbon in Canada. G…

The unpopular truth is that fossil fuels are far too cheap. If the negative externalities were priced in, they would be at least twice as expensive, perhaps as much as ten times.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#213

Post by humaniania »

Mewit wrote: post #181
humaniania wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas is only inexpensive because of fracking. With fracking in the USA at least the people involved can set up an LLC that dissolves after the well runs out. They are not required to disclose the contents of the fracking wastewater fluid. It gets pumped back down underground where it could dissipate into the rest of the water system. These people claim that it's safe for decades when our computer models can't…

I don't think it is accurate to say it "dissipates into the rest of the water system". Typically the hydrocarbon formations being fracked are thousands of feet below the water table, separated by thousands of feet of impermeable shale. It's the same, or more so, for disposal zones where the frack fluid that flows back is injected. For the fluid to mix with a potable aquifer, it would have to leak within a wellbore. T…

"impermeable" until there's an earthquake caused by fracking and things shift deep underground where nobody can monitor or track what is happening? Seems exceptionally short sighted to me.

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/does-fracking-cause-earthquakes

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#214

Post by xondono »

humaniania wrote: post #102
rfrey wrote: post #61

Meta-question about fusion energy -something I don't understand about the movement. I spent a few years as CTO of a company providing heat-to-electricity plants. We financed and built them off high-heat plants like natural gas turbines. The "fuel" was heat going up the stack - so it was essentially free. We still couldn't compete with conventional electricity plants, even with a $30/tonne price on carbon in Canada. G…

Natural gas is only inexpensive because of fracking. With fracking in the USA at least the people involved can set up an LLC that dissolves after the well runs out. They are not required to disclose the contents of the fracking wastewater fluid. It gets pumped back down underground where it could dissipate into the rest of the water system. These people claim that it's safe for decades when our computer models can't…

What a great way to not answer what OP is asking.

If you don’t like fracking, that’s alright, but sustaining ourselves without it it’s not really an option. Right now our options are:

1) Use coal, accept the consequences of the increased climate change.

2) Keep using gas, reduce the future costs of climate change, deal later with the speculative consequences you mention.

3) Switch to renewables and drastically increase energy costs, which will trap millions of people into poverty, and put millions more in risk.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#215

Post by solarhoma »

humaniania wrote: post #102
rfrey wrote: post #61

Meta-question about fusion energy -something I don't understand about the movement. I spent a few years as CTO of a company providing heat-to-electricity plants. We financed and built them off high-heat plants like natural gas turbines. The "fuel" was heat going up the stack - so it was essentially free. We still couldn't compete with conventional electricity plants, even with a $30/tonne price on carbon in Canada. G…

Natural gas is only inexpensive because of fracking. With fracking in the USA at least the people involved can set up an LLC that dissolves after the well runs out. They are not required to disclose the contents of the fracking wastewater fluid. It gets pumped back down underground where it could dissipate into the rest of the water system. These people claim that it's safe for decades when our computer models can't…

There is a lot wrong with your post.

>They are not required to disclose the contents of the fracking wastewater fluid.

Majority of water used in hydro fracking is slick water. This is normal water with friction reducers added to it. Typically 1%. Though can change based on the design of the frack. These are maybe not disclosed to the public since they typically are proprietary formulas that each vendor creates on their own. Each wanting to protect their IP from other vendors supplying the friction reducers.

>It gets pumped back down underground where it dissipates into the rest of the water system.

This is the most inaccurate and hyperbolic part of your response. It is markedly false. The slick water is typically reused after the well back flows. They store the water onsite for the remaining wells. Or transport to another pad for continued hydro fracking use. Any water that is produced during well production is pumped into non-human use reservoirs. These disposal wells are called SWD’s, saltwater disposals. The depths of the wells vary, in our field it was 7500’. Whereas freshwater wells for human and cattle use were 300’. Regulatory bodies strictly manage the creation of SWD’s with significant research and paperwork to show the reservoir you are disposing into is not or has ever been used for human consumption. The water at this reservoir will not magically make its way into the freshwater reservoir.

>These people claim that it's safe for decades when our computer models can't predict the weather accurately next week.

This seems more emotionally driven than anything. Who are ‘these people’. How does this correlate to weather? I have worked with hundreds of wells that are +80 years old still in good standing. If the well integrity is in question a cement bond log is run, along with other logs. If it is found there are any discrepancies they are fixed. Or the well plugged and abandoned, is filled with cement and the wellhead removed.

I have not heard of fracking water ever being used for crops. Apologies for any spelling or grammar errors as I am on my phone writing this message.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#216

Post by Robotbeat »

xxpor wrote: post #35
AutumnCurtain wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Yeah, the idea is to do like dozens of these explosions per second, like in an internal combustion piston engine. There was a conceptual design for a fusion power plant based off of laser inertial fusion like NIF called LIFE.

Works kind of like the EUV light sources TSMC uses to make the highest end computer chips, except a fuel pellet instead of a drop of tin. Like so: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#217

Post by humaniania »

Mewit wrote: post #181
humaniania wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas is only inexpensive because of fracking. With fracking in the USA at least the people involved can set up an LLC that dissolves after the well runs out. They are not required to disclose the contents of the fracking wastewater fluid. It gets pumped back down underground where it could dissipate into the rest of the water system. These people claim that it's safe for decades when our computer models can't…

I don't think it is accurate to say it "dissipates into the rest of the water system". Typically the hydrocarbon formations being fracked are thousands of feet below the water table, separated by thousands of feet of impermeable shale. It's the same, or more so, for disposal zones where the frack fluid that flows back is injected. For the fluid to mix with a potable aquifer, it would have to leak within a wellbore. T…

Also maybe read the entire article on using fracking wastewater on crops:

Until now, government authorities have only required limited testing of recycled irrigation water, checking for naturally occurring toxins such as salts and arsenic, using decades-old monitoring standards. They haven’t screened for the range of chemicals used in modern oil production.

No one knows whether nuts, citrus or other crops grown with the recycled oil field water have been contaminated. Farmers may test crops for pests or disease, but they don’t check for water-borne chemicals. Instead, they rely on oversight by state and local water authorities. But experts say that testing of both the water and the produce should be expanded.

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#218

Post by Robotbeat »

Animats wrote: post #133

Oh, this is just laser fusion. One pulse of power. That's not a power source, even potentially. It's a lab-sized H-bomb experiment. This isn't one of the magnetic containment systems achieving ignition and sustaining the reaction. Now that would be an achievement.

Internal combustion piston engines also do intermittent combustion. If you were to make a power plant based off of this, you would need dozens of these per second (and much more efficient lasers and a tritium breeding liquid lithium metal jacket and… a lot of other stuff).

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#219

Post by boringg »

tehbeard wrote: post #58

I don't know what has happened more, nuclear fusion "breakthroughs", or Voyager "leaving the solar system"...

Agree. I will add in the mix new Energy Storage breakthroughs. The cynic in me suspects its a research money grab or a validation on money spent with no real forward trajectory.

At least the voyager is clearly plodding along towards the Oort Cloud and eventually out of the solar system. Sadly I will be long dead and hopefully these comments will still live on (300 year estimate for Oort Cloud at its current speed of 1M miles a day).

Re: Major nuclear fusion milestone reached as ‘ignition’ triggered in a lab

#220

Post by tediousdemise »

regularfry wrote: post #210
tediousdemise wrote: post #193

What are the odds of runaway fusion occurring? Is there any consideration that a violent reaction could engulf the planet and end life as we know it?

Zero.

Is this because the chain reaction is limited by the fuel source?
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