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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

#471

Post by maire »

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....

They were diverting water from regular farms in the Sacramento delta to almond farms. The delta farmers were naturally upset.

The diversion was actually being pushed at the federal level, but Sacramento successfully fought back.

Almonds also do not respond well to periods of drought since the trees need to be watered each and every year. Annual crops can be rotated based on water availability.

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

#472

Post by mcdevilkiller »

tlb wrote: post #428
smaddox wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

1 MJ per second is 1 MW, a power level typical of portable diesel generators. Conventional nuclear plants are hundreds of megawatts each. Apparently it is quite hard to repeat the laser blast quickly, because the optical system heats up during a pulse causing the beams to deflect as the materials expand and contract due to temperature. The NIF design requires dozens of laser beams to align precisely on a very small p…

Portable as in a trailer, right? 1MW is around 1340 horsepower.

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

#473

Post by learc83 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #424
learc83 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could just implement enough surge pricing that people/companies work around peak times on their own and build their own storage.

Industry often works around the clock already. You don't want to buy and install three times the equipment you need, and have it sit idle 16 hours of the day. You also don't want to shut down for winter just because the electricity is less abundant then.

Someone needs to pay for the storage and additional generation—both the direct costs and the externalities. Why not let the market figure out who pays for it?

If factories can’t afford to pay those prices, they’ll have to rework their business model, or maybe relocate to areas with cheaper power.

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

#474

Post by pfdietz »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #202
brightball wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their carbon emissions are still dramatically lower than those of coal and oil. There are bigger fish to fry than NG. NG is likely going to be a critical transitional fuel for the planet to depend on while we get to more abundant renewable options, grid batteries and nuclear/fusion/thorium.

Leaks and emissions specific to NG aside, NG is primarily a byproduct of the oil extraction industry. It lives in a symbiotic relationship with it. To truly get off oil we need to get off gas as well. There's a reason why oil patch boosters and lobbyists and climate change deniers in places like Alberta are also pushing natural gas; the fortunes of oil and gas are tied together. This is a lobby and sector we need to…

In the US, the vast majority of NG production is "dry" gas, not associated with oil.

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

#475

Post by ransom1538 »

ashtonkem wrote: post #390
ransom1538 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course, the consequences of climate change are billions cast into abject poverty" The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. But no one wants difficult debates (at least people that matter). Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. I foresee a population explosion into areas once uninhabitable.

> The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. It’s always disturbing how quickly this stuff goes from here to “we have to prevent other people from having kids rather than having Americans stop consuming”. Get your neighbor out of their F150 before trying to sterilize the global south. > Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. Fusion. Fission has…

"F150 before trying to sterilize the global south"

Right. So people not buying a f150 will help combat the climate destruction of a doubling population in the next 40 years. Is this a joke? I don't understand how a smart group can say such stupid things.

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

#476

Post by ransom1538 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #312
ransom1538 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course, the consequences of climate change are billions cast into abject poverty" The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. But no one wants difficult debates (at least people that matter). Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. I foresee a population explosion into areas once uninhabitable.

You can either cull billions of people or transition to clean energy, and yeah, people are rightly fixated on the latter. > Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. What a foolish thing to say.

> Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse.

Doubling the population will make things worse in 40 years. How is this hard? Double chickens? Double cows? Double coal plants? wtf? lol. You are the fool. Trying googling "when does population double".

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

#477

Post by RhysU »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #464
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.

Well...yeah. The national labs do fusion experiments because they can't do bomb tests any more. (It's also the reason they tend to have the biggest supercomputers in the world, so they can simulate nuclear explosions.) But that doesn't mean they don't learn things that might be useful for energy production.

The test ban treaty was a slick example of pulling up the ladder after arriving somewhere first. Want weapons research? Now you need weapons researchers and supercomputers...

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

#478

Post by mcguire »

Aeolun wrote: post #249
mcguire wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" But nuclear is reliable and doesn't need this "natural gas assist". Even if a hurricane sweeps over an area, the nuclear power plants will keep working. " Actually, they don't. " As a precaution measure, the reactor shall be shut down at least two hours before the hurricane’s strong winds arrive at the location. Generally this happens when the speed reaches between 70 and 75 mph (between 113 and 121 km/h). " ( http…

Given how long it took Fukushima to cool down, does this actually do anything appreciable in the two hours before arrival?

I believe it means that, 2 hours before arrival, the reactor is off. Dead. Not generating heat.

They'd need to start shutdown sometime before that.

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

#479

Post by throwaway894345 »

ransom1538 wrote: post #476
throwaway894345 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can either cull billions of people or transition to clean energy, and yeah, people are rightly fixated on the latter. > Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. What a foolish thing to say.

> Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. Doubling the population will make things worse in 40 years. How is this hard? Double chickens? Double cows? Double coal plants? wtf? lol. You are the fool. Trying googling "when does population double".

> Doubling the population will make things worse in 40 years. How is this hard? Double chickens? Double cows? Double coal plants? wtf? lol. You are the fool. Trying googling "when does population double".

Ooooff.

1. The population isn't projected to double even in the next century much less the next 40 years. In the next eighty years, the population is expected to increase by only 40%. If you took your own advice ("Google") then you'd know this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow...

2. You're incorrectly assuming that the greenhouse gas emissions scales linearly with the population size *even as the emissions per MWh approaches zero. The demand for energy does indeed scale with population (probably sublinearly, but not going to pick that nit right now), but the goal is to drive down the emissions per unit energy to nearly zero much faster than population grows.

Better luck in the future.

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

#480

Post by [deleted] »

ransom1538 wrote: post #475
ashtonkem wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. It’s always disturbing how quickly this stuff goes from here to “we have to prevent other people from having kids rather than having Americans stop consuming”. Get your neighbor out of their F150 before trying to sterilize the global south. > Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. Fusion. Fission has…

"F150 before trying to sterilize the global south" Right. So people not buying a f150 will help combat the climate destruction of a doubling population in the next 40 years. Is this a joke? I don't understand how a smart group can say such stupid things.

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