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US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#431
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> True in the Civil War. >You think so? Ya'll lost 200,000 men to Southern fever, steel, and shot. Next time it'll be 20 million. Know your limits, yankee, and stay north of Dallas. The south started with a treasonous surprise attack and had most of the the infantry that wasn't stationed in isolated western frontier territory or along the us-canada border, the countries war college at westpoint and many of the countr…

Well put. For our international observers I would note that the War of Southern Aggression that began with the treasonous attack on Fort Sumter is nearly identical to the behavior we're seeing out of similar origins today. New US states were increasingly free rather than slave states, and thus when democracy wasn't going the way of those who wanted to maintain slavery, they attacked their own government.

The terrorist attack on January 6th was the exact same root cause, democracy not going the way some want it. Leading them to embrace terrorism and violence. After the Civil War, the KKK was created, which continued the terrorism of our citizenry for decades. Yet in that case, the KKK came after the failed attempt at succession, today MAGA came before the attempt.

I describe myself as a 'pre-MAGA Republican who supports labor unions', but there's a rotten seed in American discourse today that was always there and it's largely the same people then as now.

The south would have no chance in Round 2. Most of their money and manpower actually comes from 'Yankees'. Which historically when someone is called that, it's the easy indicator to who is loyal and true to the United States, a real American patriot. Whether spoken spoken by a Brit or Johnny Reb, you definitely want to be called a Yankee as it's a badge of honor that you are loyal to your nation.

Those that are moving south are whose ancestors' allegiance was to the United States of America in the Civil War, and they still maintain that allegiance to this day in those families. They are not loyal to the defunct Confederacy and would not die for their Lost Cause.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question on my mind is: where do I sign up to join this effort?! Edit: I'm Canadian, the question is rhetorical.

Assuming you have experience in software, then https://www.llnl.gov/join-our-team/careers/find-your-job/0d6...

BTW, they don't seem to have software roles at NIF: https://www.llnl.gov/join-our-team/careers/find-your-job/liv...

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#433
post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given it's Musk and his stated primary life goal, the most ridiculous aspect of the Twitter debacle for him, is: not only of course did he overpay for Twitter by at least 2x; not only is his net worth going to contract as Tesla's stock compresses (such that the poor Twitter decision is going to be that much more painful in relation to his overall wealth); but the $40x billion could have probably paid for getting Star…

>the $40x billion could have probably paid for getting Starship to Mars. Maybe he doesn't actually believe in Starship.

It appears to be working/progressing properly so far (and quite rapidly compared to norms in the industry), including the Raptor engines. I doubt that's it.

Musk has very obviously poor impulse control. Someone more contained, patient, less impulsive, would have waited and taken a more strategic approach to acquiring Twitter (which would have left an opening to let the stock implode with the rest of the tech market, after which one could have pounced and grabbed it for far cheaper). On the flip side, that less impulsive person probably wouldn't have started SpaceX in the first place (given the suicidal fiscal task involved and context at the time in the industry), or wouldn't have gone to the financial extremes required to make it succeed (betting essentially all of his wealth on Tesla and SpaceX).

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#434
The design of the National Ignition Facility was never intended to study commercially viable fusion power. It's exclusively a physics testing facility with origins for testing the physics of thermonuclear fusion weapons for better bomb design.

Nothing that happens at the NIF is very useful in heading towards commercially viable fusion. The design of the testing apparatus is also similarly incompatible with making a sustained fusion device as there is no way to continuously feed in fuel into the device, nor methods of extracting the energy.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy is conserved in the universe so there is never any net energy gain. See how pedantic and not helpful that is?

In nuclear fusion, mass is converted into energy according to the famous equation E = mc^2, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light.

Fair enough. To be extra pedantic, mass-energy is conserved in a fixed inertial frame of reference.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#436
post #98

Calling this "ignition" is a misnomer. The correct term, as given in the article (as opposed to the headline) is exceeding breakeven: more fusion energy output than energy input to the target. "Ignition" means the reaction becomes self-sustaining and does not require any further input of energy to continue.

And it was just that the after the initial laser pulse that triggered ignition there was no need to sustain it to continue to heat up the fuel to induce fusion. The fact that this indeed was ignition was one of the main reasons why the fusion reaction itself was net positive.

> it was just that the after the initial laser pulse that triggered ignition there was no need to sustain it to continue to heat up the fuel to induce fusion

I don't see this anywhere in the article. Is there a better reference for what actually happened during the experiment?

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#437
post #351

> LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE) Yesterday, everyone was complaining about the 2.2:2.0 ratio, but now we're working with 3.15:2.05. With modern lasers, that'd be a total Q of 0.375 assuming 100% ef…

"Yesterday, everyone was complaining about the 2.2:2.0 ratio, but now we're working with 3.15:2.05." What is the difference between todays announcement and yesterdays ? I thought we were just getting re-submitted headlines, but apparently this news is different than yesterday ?

The official announcement (with the real info) was this morning.

Before that, the only official word was that an announcement was coming, and all the info was unofficial leaks and rumors.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

money is always the bottleneck in some sense. There are diminishing returns but in general more money will make it happen faster.

You might be right — we threw enough money and put humans on the Moon. The Manhattan Project was well funded and produced results as well.

I believe the Manhattan project (where we basically built an entire new city, and entire new manufacturing process from scratch: mining operations, refineries, enrichment, milling, etc.) cost less in constant dollars than the stealth fighter.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the mass before of their fuel, 1 deuterium atom + 1 tritium atom: 2.01410177811 u + 3.01604928 u = 5.03015105811 u vs the mass of the fusion products of 1 helium atom and 1 neutron: 4.002602 u + 1.008 u = 5.010602 u You'll notice that even though we started with 5 neutrons and 2 protons and ended up with the same number there was some additional binding energy that is unaccounted for in the new configu…

Do we know how much tritium is needed for a city's energy generation? What about a state etc? Reason I ask is the only uses I have seen for tritium is on old watch dials made in the pre-90's. Curious how much of this resource is out there.

TLDR is there isn't nearly enough tritium, but fusion reactors can make more (while still generating energy)

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#440
post #406

The most surprising thing I've learned from this is we're only allocating $624 million / year to this program. We really need better mechanisms for deciding how to allocate taxes.

Its actually pretty good, since this is primarily weapons testing. The real money is being spent in the EU, where there is at least a chance of getting a sustainable fusion reaction.

It's, depending what calculation you believe, around 20 billion for ITER. Started in 2013, first plasma in 2025, first full fusion in 2035. So about a billion per year. Of course, costs are calculated differently, and I'm not sure on what time scale the 600 million are, but it's not that drastically different.

Research wise, it's a pretty big chunk of money. But yeah, more money in research would be nice. (Disclaimer: I am a scientist with grants.)

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