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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

#81

Post by hoseja »

albertopv wrote: post #72
hoseja wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They basically have no real achievements yet - the energy harvesting system isn't working, they are just fusing D+He3 - even though the concept sounds impressive. The video was cool but not cool enough to break through healthy fusion vaporware skepticism.

There is no energy harvesting system yet, next prototype will be include that. I like their "fast" (relatively speaking, of course) prototyping process.

Why not do a major announcement with the working prototype though, is what's ringing the alarm bells for me. Yeah sure they can promise the next prototype will do the magic thing but why not wait for that.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#82

Post by pmontra »

maegul wrote: post #68
sudhirj wrote: post #65

It’s practical proof that in a single pulse we can get more energy out than we put in. We do spend a shit ton of energy setting up the pulse, and we haven’t figure out how to get that energy out and make electrons move, but it’s been proven possible. The “breakthrough” is the proof that it’s possible. Everything else is now optimisation and engineering, and needs mostly time, sweat and money.

Yea, and I wonder how much our need, at a cultural level, for progress will factor into this. If we feel like we need to progress and can't go "backward" with our energy technology, there may just be an irrational impetus to make it happen. Solar and wind etc may just feel too "primitive" and nuclear too old and toxic and Chernobyl. Fusion though, once there's enough buy in and enough of a sense of it being doable, w…

Culture bends to circumstances. When or where people can't cook or stay warm using the power sources they are accustomed to they go back in an instant to old ones. Logging and campfires, stoves, etc.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#83

Post by emptyfile »

IanCal wrote: post #78
moffkalast wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if it's true or not exactly, but I don't see how the NIF experiment would be any different from that if that were true, and in that case it wouldn't be news at all. It's not like they didn't use absurd amounts of laser power to get a tiny poof.

But there was more energy released than laser power going in. That's what the news was about

No post body was provided.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#84

Post by nottorp »

garyclarke27 wrote: post #9

Most 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.

This is still fundamental research not commercial engineering. Like everything good before it.

Even in engineering problems, two people started a little electric car company in 2003. No, youknowwho wasn't involved yet. Would you have said "i can't see how electric cars can ever be workable" then?

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#85

Post by skelpmargyar »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #64
skelpmargyar wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's better to focus on standardised production lines for small fission reactors currently if your goal is to produce energy for the power grid right now, but that's not what cutting-edge research or science is about. Whoever launched the first firework probably didn't see how people could walk on the moon either. Science is rarely a linear path. It's also rarely "I have this problem so I solved it this way." That's…

That's because this breakthrough is being sold - from a dull business and product oriented perspective - as an incredible etc etc which makes a new kind of product more likely. No one is shitting on the research itself. But the PR around this story has carpet bombed sci-comm as a potential practical energy source . Not as basic research. So it's perfectly reasonable to ask if there's a there from a commercial POV. An…

I don't see one part of the article that sold this from a dull business and product oriented perspective or any unreasonable sci-fi nonsense. They only explained some of some people's future goals of fusion. Not necessarily even the goals of this program. You can't ask about a commercial POV of something that likely isn't even close to existing. Think past the damn business perspective! It's science! This is Hacker News not Shark Tank! It's like asking what is the commercial POV of lake houses on Titan. It's just ridiculous. One step at a time.

The comment I replied to stated "Better to focus on standardised production lines for small fission reactors." To you, is that not shitting on the research? It implies the only purpose for this research is for power generation. And that it is clearly inferior to small fission reactors for that purpose, when the technology doesn't even exist yet. It just diminishes the accomplishment as a whole. It's so short sighted from a group of people who's jobs only came to existence <100 years ago.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#86

Post by sigmoid10 »

rob74 wrote: post #43

Still unconvinced why this is such a major breakthrough - it may be the first net-positive controlled fusion, but the distinction between controlled and uncontrolled fusion is a bit academic in this case. In uncontrolled fusion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon ), you are using a nuclear fission primary stage to generate enough energy to start the fusion reaction in the secondary stage. In the NIF,…

You greatly underestimate the order of magnitude difference of produced energy in these two examples. You can't contain a bomb's hydrogen fusion reaction in a chamber for the simple reason that you need a nuclear fission warhead just to ignite it. So if you want to produce useful, controlled energy outside of killing things, the lasers are your only shot for inertial confinement fusion. Yes they still get damaged, but lasers have seen ridiculous advancements in precision and instantaneous power over the past few decades. This news shows that practical fusion is now only an engineering problem, not a fundamental physics one - like it still is for Tokamaks and Stellarotors. For them noone knows if it is even possible to e.g. control turbulence long enough to achieve net positive energy gain.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#87

Post by est31 »

DecoPerson wrote: post #67
noobermin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said while the intent the current internet is pretty centralized at least in some senses.

But it’s software defined, so it’s much quicker to work around failures of those centralised points.

Yeah compare broken water pipes with broken facebook/whatsapp etc. If the former is broken, people don't have water until the issue is fixed. With latter, at least they can use one of the alternatives (and they do, usage counts of alternatives go up during outages).

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#88

Post by rurban »

nottorp wrote: post #66

No one's commenting on the self sustaining part. Would it have kept going without external energy input if they had more fuel? I don't think the 1% system wide would matter if it just went on after the first few seconds.

They are not talking about a few seconds, they are talking about a few nanoseconds. Which is NOT stable at all.

A few seconds would be a major breakthrough indeed.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#89

Post by Retric »

sudhirj wrote: post #65

It’s practical proof that in a single pulse we can get more energy out than we put in. We do spend a shit ton of energy setting up the pulse, and we haven’t figure out how to get that energy out and make electrons move, but it’s been proven possible. The “breakthrough” is the proof that it’s possible. Everything else is now optimisation and engineering, and needs mostly time, sweat and money.

Sort of.

This milestone is liberating more fusion energy than photons used to start the reaction, but the energy source for the machine was electricity and it produced zero electricity. If you tried to convert the heat back to electricity you would be talking less than 0.1% of the electricity used being recovered at the other end.

Re: Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

#90

Post by noobermin »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #86
rob74 wrote: post #43

Still unconvinced why this is such a major breakthrough - it may be the first net-positive controlled fusion, but the distinction between controlled and uncontrolled fusion is a bit academic in this case. In uncontrolled fusion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon ), you are using a nuclear fission primary stage to generate enough energy to start the fusion reaction in the secondary stage. In the NIF,…

You greatly underestimate the order of magnitude difference of produced energy in these two examples. You can't contain a bomb's hydrogen fusion reaction in a chamber for the simple reason that you need a nuclear fission warhead just to ignite it. So if you want to produce useful, controlled energy outside of killing things, the lasers are your only shot for inertial confinement fusion. Yes they still get damaged, bu…

This is the real key. A LOT of people (and digging through their comment history, many of them) are MCF people who somehow poo-poo this result but then go on to extol how MCF schemes or companies are still a safer bet...even when none of them have even achieved any level of Q, heck they didn't even beat NIF's old result.

If this result is "useless" and "shouldn't be news," then the whole field of MCF and all the start-ups are even more "useless" and should be even less as news, because a small non-zero number is still larger than zero.

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