Laser fusion put on slow burn
nature.com
Laser fusion put on slow burn
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#2
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#3to help weapons scientists to care for the ageing US nuclear stockpile
Simulating explosions helps determine maintenance for nuclear warheads?
I would bet they were more likely trying to make a "nuclear" weapon without radiation/fallout and failed.
I wonder what the world would be like with really cheap power though - I'd like to think a better place to live but more likely there would be a lot more war since the energy to do it would then be cheap.
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#4one thing i never understood about fusion is how you can capture all the released energy efficiently enough. isn't it released in many ways that cannot really be harnessed directly eg: gamma radiation, x-rays, emf. that makes me think that the input:output ratio would need to be not just marginally better, but sufficiently better. does anyone know what the current best input:captured number is?
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#5Misleading title, from the article NIF is a weapons research project.
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#6I'm all for fusion research. Love the idea of clean, inexhaustible power. However, the NIF has consistently over promised and under delivered, and they have no idea _what_ their problems are [1]. They could use a little restraint when making schedule predictions.
[1] http://fire.pppl.gov/NIF_NIC_report_rev5_koonin_2012.pdf
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#7Relevant graph: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusio...
Here's the paper the graph refers to. The original graph is on page 12:
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#8Relevant graph: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._historical_fusio...
wow, that’s pretty sad. the 'moderate' path would have required an average expenditure of ~$2.5 billion a year, and projected the completion of a reactor by 2005. a pretty small investment when you consider the size of the federal budget [1] and where most of the funding goes.
even more sad, when considering the likelihood that many graphs relating to other potentially transformative technologies probably look much the same..
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Stat...
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#9to help weapons scientists to care for the ageing US nuclear stockpile Simulating explosions helps determine maintenance for nuclear warheads? I would bet they were more likely trying to make a "nuclear" weapon without radiation/fallout and failed. I wonder what the world would be like with really cheap power though - I'd like to think a better place to live but more likely there would be a lot more war since the ene…
Simulating explosions helps determine maintenance for nuclear warheads?
It's not completely unreasonable: they need to validate the computational models that are used to check if an aged nuclear weapon will explode.
Re: Laser fusion put on slow burn
#10to help weapons scientists to care for the ageing US nuclear stockpile Simulating explosions helps determine maintenance for nuclear warheads? I would bet they were more likely trying to make a "nuclear" weapon without radiation/fallout and failed. I wonder what the world would be like with really cheap power though - I'd like to think a better place to live but more likely there would be a lot more war since the ene…
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