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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

#411

Post by tsimionescu »

smaddox wrote: post #402
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capsules are tiny and do not generate usefull amount of energy. ITER is planned to generate 500,000,000W. Thats actually usefull

1 MJ is enough to vaporize roughly half a liter of water that started at room temperature. That's nothing to sneaze at. Obviously you would need to do with a high rate (e.g. once per second) in order for it to be viable for power production. No reason the lasers couldn't do that. The challenge is making the pellets cost effective at scale. Currently, they cost something like $10k each.

The bigger problem is the precision-machined hohlraum the pellets sit in for ignition. That costs millions of dollars, is crucial for actually achieving anything, and is destroyed in the process.

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

#412

Post by orangepurple »

akimball wrote: post #319
pstrateman wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hyperbole isn't needed. Billions of dollars an hour is 17 Trillion dollars a year. They're not being subsidized by that much

Count the socialized cost of environmental remediation please. It will run into the quadrillion zone

The entire workforce of the United States will be deployed with a vegan toothbrush in hand to scrub the Earth of all the hydrocarbons

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

#413

Post by blake1 »

snek_case wrote: post #350
wolf550e wrote: post #78

@dang This was reported and discussed 12 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28704298 The important thing to know is that the NIF is about nuclear weapons design (verification of modeling software used for nuclear weapons design), not about developing fusion power plants.

Kind of crazy that we're still spending money on this. Do we really need better H-bombs?

The fear is that the nuclear weapons sitting in storage are assumed to be functional, but might turn out not to be. This could have dangerous geopolitical consequences. We can study how the materials age, but have to use simulation to understand the effects on the detonation given the test ban. This research helps calibrate the simulations.

The civilian applications of the facility are secondary, as others have pointed out.

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

#414

Post by AtlasBarfed »

SuoDuanDao wrote: post #271
solarhoma wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

As someone who worked around fracking wells as a roughneck, I see a lot wrong with your post. >Majority of water used in hydro fracking is slick water. This is normal water with friction reducers added to it. Typically 1%. This is like saying "dihidrogen monoxide is the largest component of acid rain". Technically true, but the toxin is toxic enough even at low concentrations. You wouldn't enjoy having it in your eye…

Bingo. I knew his statement was bull** when he said it was strictly regulated.

This is America, there is no strict regulation anymore unless someone rich is being affected by it. Otherwise it's all rubberstamps, revolving door appointments, or outright bribery.

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

#415

Post by rfrey »

AlbertCory wrote: post #388
ChuckMcM wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, 100% props for the experience. And I totally respect it. The GP question was "what makes fusion different", and the only thing that is different really is the economics of how much it costs vs how much energy you get out. Energy out is, by definition, the amount of heat differential you can generate. Cost is, again by definition, the total operating cost of the heat source. So this is where the author and…

I will admit that I'm not an engineer of any relevant area here. So I offer this only as a matter of general judgment & experience, which you are welcome to say "does not apply." (But please say why it doesn't.) It's always been my impression that building things on a huge, factory-wide scale is a radically different problem than building a demo, or even reasoning about it. The latter is what you are all doing. As lo…

Don't believe me!! I have a solid grasp on why waste-heat-to-power doesn't work (despite free "fuel") and why geothermal doesn't work (despite free fuel). I pray that there is something different about fusion that means it will work... and make no claim to know that it won't. I don't know anything about fusion plants or their economics.

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

#416

Post by tsimionescu »

xondono wrote: post #236
humaniania wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy subsidies for vulnerable people are an option that negates your only argument against the most sane option of switching to renewable and nuclear ASAP, at least in extremely wealthy countries like the USA.

My argument doesn’t care who’s pocket is funding the renewables. As a society, every extra dollar spent on pricier energy is an extra dollar that can’t go to social programs, or to new start up, or anywhere.

If trillions weren't being spent on useless military purposes, you would have a point. Also, a good amount of money in the economy is wasted on stuff like new iPhones every year, bigger cars, plastic crap, Bitcoin GPUs, huge data centers for better ads, etc.

There's plenty of room for a reduction in consumption with minimal impact on lifestyle in the developed world.

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

#417

Post by rfrey »

hellohntoday wrote: post #294
AlbertCory wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skin in the game [1]. OP has actually done it ("CTO of a company providing heat-to-electricity plants"). Have you? Or you just read about it? [1] https://www.amazon.com/Skin-Game-Hidden-Asymmetries-Daily-eb... ?

OP doesn't bring up the different temperature and pressure differential of heat sources. That's a huge red flag. For all we know the CTO role at that company was entirely focused on keeping the staff laptops running and is largely disconnected from the fundamentals of heat to electricity generation. Why the hell would she (or he) ask here when (s)he has current or former colleagues in the industry to ask. My BS detec…

I said several time in this discussion that waste heat sources are typically ~600C with flow rates of ~80-100kg/s. Do the math and that's about 100MW of energy in a stack. Off the shelf Organic Rankine Cycle engines can convert heat energy at that temperature at about 20% efficiency.

Of course that varies by ambient temperature and pressure, but not significantly for the purposes of this discussion. A good rule of thumb is that for a given delta-T, current OTC tech can get you about half of Carnot efficiency at the optimal spot on the cost-efficiency curve.

I wouldn't know how to fix a laptop if you offered me a yacht to do it. What I asked about was not waste heat to power tech, but fusion power economics, which I know nothing about.

You don't seem nice.

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

#418

Post by ummonk »

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…

Burning natural gas creates heat, which is used to drive turbines and generate power. I see no reason why the heat to electricity side of a fusion power plant would be any more expensive, assuming we manage to bootstrap economy of scale.

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

#419

Post by ummonk »

solarhoma wrote: post #215
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…

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 the…

Keep these mysterious friction reducers the fuck away from my food.

I had no idea about this previously but your comment is causing more concern to me than the GP's.

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

#420

Post by ummonk »

engineer_22 wrote: post #404
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a water diversion indeed, to moronic growing of almonds in a desert! Where farmers claim more water 'rights' than physically exists. It's like you guys looked at the Aral sea disaster created by USSR and said 'hold my beer' These crops are dead, it's just a question of time, even if you diverted every drop of water and leave households to die. The sooner we accept it the better. http://www.ciesin.org/docs/00…

Building households in a desert isn't much better than farming in a desert....

The water usage of a house in the desert is minuscule compared to a farm in the desert.
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