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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah its the same here about most new technology like ai and improvement in solar and battery technology. One thing I have noticed is that some of the most vocal people have formed their opinions years ago and now they are not aware or ignore all the changes/improvements that have occured since.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#332
I'd be very interested to see the breakdown of input energy costs. Most notable is the raw energy cost required to power the lasers and control machinery in the experiment. But then there are other costs, all of which must be amortized over time for any real-world use case to exist. I say this because the journalists in this piece imply that net gain is simply based off of the amount of energy pumped into the experiment while it operated, but the total input energy would clearly be more than that.

On the extreme end, there's the energy cost of building the machine and engineering its components. For the vast majority of these, we can probably all agree that were a fusion power plant to be built, the net gain would fully eclipse these initial inputs fairly quickly. This may sound silly, but remember that the economic context where fusion so often sits is one that centers on renewable energy and sustainability. These costs do have to be accounted for.

On the other end, there's the energy cost consumables. For example, the deuterium and tritium fuel input into the device, which need to be purified (deuterium from water, possibly tritium from the atmosphere) or otherwise isolated (from what I understand, tritium is a byproduct from fission reactors and they serve as its primary source in scientific applications). It may well be that the energy cost of acquiring these consumables is fractions to fractions of a fraction of the energy cost of running the device, effectively constituting a rounding error. But I think when we're talking about net gain, a clear definition and accounting of the input energy required to run the experiment would be useful to communicate to the public.

I hope we see disclosure of these details with all the expected caveats when the peer-reviewed article goes to print and journalists have another feeding frenzy.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to keep the hype in check, do it with facts like /acidburnNSA did above. Let people debate. You don’t even know what will be announced. Repeating the same joke in every single fusion article is tiresome and has long past its funny expiration date.

Why does it have to be funny? It's just a sad statement about the situation. Maybe you're tired of people not being as excited as you, or even willing to for a second hold their breath any longer on this topic. But here we are at another announcement essentially saying "this shit is hard. with more funding, we could possibly maybe do something in the nearish future". Anything announced in the PRs is just mumbojumbo h…

I think one can be simultaneously excited about a big breakthrough like this, but also understand that there's still a ton more to do before we have viable fusion power.

And it's unreasonable and annoying to expect everyone to say "This is amazing, but..." rather than just "This is amazing". Yes, we know, fusion power isn't ready, and we have no idea when (or if) it will be.

I haven't been "holding my breath". I've been watching from afar, checking in occasionally (like when this sort of news comes out), and I genuinely think this particular breakthrough is exciting. I don't need the tiresome -- yes, incredibly, frustratingly tiresome -- legion of naysayers coming in and stating the obvious every single time.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#334
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.

Engineers tend to have a problem solving demeanor towards novelty, which is excellent for finding the problem with things.

Showing a room full of problem solvers an unfinished problem that lacks critical supporting evidence will no doubt elicit a general response in the skeptical-to-cynical range.

I would respectfully argue that is is a health and normal response given the audience, and should be an expected bias on HN.

This is a “show me the evidence don’t tell me about the possibilities” crowd.

I for one and deeply excited if the data proves out, but my bias is “wait and see.” This could be a massive leap towards proof it will work.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been burned time and time again by scientists over hyping stuff in the last 10 years, then combine that with the replication failures over nearly every single scientific field. Then look at the extreme amount of business fraud in the last 10 years with places like Theranos and FTX Hackernews is not infested with reflexive contrarians. Hackernews has healthy amounts of skepticism and doubt. Extraordinary c…

When people use the word "reflexive," they're talking about things like conflating business hype designed to attract publicity and VC capital with a press release for a major scientific paper from NIF. I don't think it's unreasonable for HN to hold itself to an understanding of these things. If you actually want to critically examine evidence then you must necessarily read the paper before posting.

"reflexive contrarians" in the context here was being used a perojative rhetorical trick to broadly dismiss valid doubts people have about this research.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On fusion energy and battery technology I see plenty of cynicism, but given the history of wildly over-stated "advances" in both fields I think people are justified in leaning towards pessimism.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#337
post #280

Would anyone knowledgeable about the field update their priors about whether we’ll see commercial fusion in the next 30 years, after seeing these results? If not, is there a big milestone we’re waiting for? Or will fusion advancement be a slow grind with many small improvements over decades?

I'm not an expert but I've been following the field for a while. It's telling that negligible venture capital is pursuing this route to commercial fusion, and the only cheerleading for it comes from DOE lab press releases. That's because the NIF is a thermonuclear bomb simulator developed by a lab tasked with both thermonuclear bomb development and also developing a portfolio of civilian applications for its technolo…

Thank you - exactly what I was curious to learn more about!!

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#338
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a trope; it's a cliché. There's nothing wrong with poking holes in overinflated hype, but do they have to be so boring and repetitive about it.

If you keep telling me the same thing with the same lack of results, I could say the same to you as being boring and repetitive. Just because you say 2+2=5 and someone tells you you're wrong every time doesn't mean they are boring and repetitive.

How is this "lack of results"? This particular announcement is a huge result!

Maybe it's not the result you think it should be ("with all they hype over decades, we should have fusion power by now"), but... too bad. It is what it is, and this particular announcement is indeed impressive.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#339
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.

ICF works for its purpose - research into thermo-nuclear weapons (fusion bombs).

It has nothing to do with energy generation though, and never has.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#340
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.

> This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

I don't know. Looking closely at the article reveals that the researchers achieved 1.2x energy gain from the lasers, which are about 1% efficient. Given the SOTA for such lasers is closer to 20% efficiency, this means that they achieved about 60% of break-even. But that's energy, no electricity. Even with the best current methods, about 60% efficiency is the best we can hope for in terms of getting actual electricity from this. So in practical terms they achieved 30% of break-even.

Is that good progress? I'd say so, for sure. Is this a breakthrough? I don't know, especially since the article itself says the data is still being analysed and the actual results aren't published yet. 95% of the article is just fluff about the potential and quoting 3rd parties who celebrate a result that hasn't even been officially confirmed yet.

So, no I don't think it's cynicism, I don't think it's contrarianism, and I do think it's VERY healthy to approach sensationalist headlines with a level-headed and down to Earth attitude instead.

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