Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
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Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#2Fusion bombs soon with a laser primer instead of fission for heat generation? Not yet I guess. Clean power? Perhaps never.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#3Fusion bombs soon with a laser primer instead of fission for heat generation? Not yet I guess. Clean power? Perhaps never.
I think you're overestimating the amount of energy released in a single fusion event and underestimating the machinery needed to generate and focus the laser pulses on the hohlraum. Remember there is no fusion chain reaction, the thing would need to keep on pumping pellets into the "primer" while firing laser pulses to keep the energy flowing. Compared to a 'simple' fission primer with a neutron reflector I don't really see the gain in a laser-primed fusion weapon, at least not one in the line of current fusion bombs.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#4The conversation has some good stuff.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#5No post body was provided.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#6Quoted post unavailable.
Cheap power enables a lot of things, like synthesis of fertilizers or the ability to cheaply desalinate water.
It won’t fix these crisis directly, but it would reduce or remove a lot of the contributing factors.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#7Quoted post unavailable.
> produce enough food to feed everyone? The soil crisis and the phosphorus crisis....
Are all ultimately problems of energy being too scarce (and therefore too expensive).
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#8The title doesn't match the contents. There is no actual justification of why this is a breakthrough.
IMHO it's a milestone, not a breakthrough. This is because it is only a marginal improvement on previous results and it is very unlikely to significantly change the state of either the science or industrial products without further work.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#9Most interesting fact from the article.
At the system level it took 300 million Joules to produce 3 Million a 1% return - so still a very long way to go!
With this kind of approach I can’t see how fusion can ever be cheap, the capital costs are enormous. Better to focus on standardised production lines for small fission reactors.
Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough
#10Quoted post unavailable.
Suggesting that energy should remain too expensive for billions of people until other problems are solved seems a bit mean.