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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#261

Post by billiam »

e1g wrote: post #71

Good write-up to temper expectations at https://twitter.com/wilson_ricks/status/1602088153577246721 My TLDR (from a layman): * The output is greater than the energy *in the lasers*, but the lasers deliver 1% of the energy required to power them. Need 100x improvement to break even. * Converting the generated energy into electricity would cut the output in half. We need a further 2x improvement here, so it's ~200x to…

No, not as always. The laser confinement mechanism works, it has been shown, lasers that are more than 20 times as efficient as these NID lasers are now available, so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. For one thing, perhaps a lot of the research money will move to lasers now.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#262

Post by dundarious »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

"Exciting" for individuals within the field often does not translate to "exciting" for everyone else. It's quite reasonable to think there's a good chance this is not the beginning of a "practical for energy generation" fusion revolution.

It is very interesting, but in the same way that advances in particle physics are interesting.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#263

Post by squokko »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

I think it's just the difference in expectations between scientists and laypeople. "Major fusion breakthrough" to a scientist could mean one step out of 200, over 3 decades, towards functional fusion power. Scientists understand the long arc of progress. But these labs need to market to the public as well who invariably end up expecting a SimCity Fusion Power Plant within 18 months.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#264

Post by gumboza »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

To an external non-technical observer, this is about as exciting as me hitting a clean compile in the scale of things. It really makes me happy but no one else cares until the product arrives.

I'm excited for both for reference.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#265

Post by zbobet2012 »

ghostly_s wrote: post #257
DennisP wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partly that's because they use laser tech from the 1990s, with less than 1% efficiency. Now we have NIF-class lasers with over 20% efficiency. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.2.2021102...

They'd still be getting only ~1/4 of power input with a 20% efficiency laser.

Yes, but the overall we get "more power out of the building then we put in" isn't the goal. They are trying to drive the Q factor of the reaction itself up. If they get that to > 5x what the laser strike hits (a very real probability) it's likely trying to make a building that has a net positive Q makes sense.

That building would use modern lasers, modern supercapactiors, etc. to significantly change the "other" parts of the equation.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#266

Post by underscore_ku »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

No post body was provided.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#267

Post by wolverine876 »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

What I encourage people to do, and what I was encouraged to do by a professor, is to find the value in things. Yes the thing, any thing, has great flaws, risks, is an imperfect match, etc. That goes without saying, and is is in some respects pointless to say - we can stay in place without going through the effort of researching something. It's the value in things, and finding that value, that moves us forward.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#269

Post by wolverine876 »

squokko wrote: post #263
boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

I think it's just the difference in expectations between scientists and laypeople. "Major fusion breakthrough" to a scientist could mean one step out of 200, over 3 decades, towards functional fusion power. Scientists understand the long arc of progress. But these labs need to market to the public as well who invariably end up expecting a SimCity Fusion Power Plant within 18 months.

Many on HN have the same response to many things in every domain, not just research.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#270

Post by eindiran »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

It's not reflexive-contrarianism as such; it's that the science press has historically been so, so bad that cynicism is the only healthy response. Think of the last 5 things you've seen in the science press: which ones were overemphasized? Which ones were exaggerated to the point that they didn't reflect anything meaningful about the actual result? And thinking back on the press releases over the years, what percentage of what you've read end up having an actual effect on the world? Add to that the fact that this is about fusion breakthroughs, something that has been wrought with complete disinformation by the science press since the late 1940s. Of course people here are going to be cynical about it.
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