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Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#11

Post by mrterry »

rozap wrote: post #3
sliverstorm wrote: post #2

Not really well-informed enough to comment on details, but it's fantastic to see the field is still moving, even if slowly. Proud that we are still funding this kind of research.

Sorry to piss on your parade, but.. "Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission." Admittedly that is phrased in an odd way...

The showers continue. Budget pressures have NIF down to shooting three days a week. To make matters worse, DoE has decided to cut funding for high energy density physics, ie the field covering the physics needed to make NIF ignite and turn laser fusion into a viable electricity source.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#12

Post by sliverstorm »

rozap wrote: post #3
sliverstorm wrote: post #2

Not really well-informed enough to comment on details, but it's fantastic to see the field is still moving, even if slowly. Proud that we are still funding this kind of research.

Sorry to piss on your parade, but.. "Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission." Admittedly that is phrased in an odd way...

Not thrilled about that part, but the "Soon after" refers to events past, not the success this article is about.

However, the latest experiments...

So, at least the fusion research is still funded and still moving.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#13

Post by Shivetya »

Jormundir wrote: post #5

I think Nuclear Fusion is the single most exciting up-and-coming technology. I can't believe we're not throwing a hundred billion dollars at it. Make fusion, not war.

Too bad shovel ready money wasn't spent on more long lasting impact projects like this. Where has all that money gone from the drawn down of the wars? Where is the investments going in alternative energy?

Well that last is easy, groups who contribute politically, hence solar and wind. They receive far too much in ways of support whereas hard science projects like this with incredible payoffs are pushed off because they don't payback in political contributions.

There are a myriad of ways to finance such an ambitious project through clean energy taxes but unfortunately they suffer the changing whims and needs of politicians. Yeah certain industries would go by the way side with this type of power available but many of them have big money invested in energy creation and distribution many would simply shift some columns in their spreadsheets and still balance out.

Considering the deficits the US runs, just in a day or two of deficit spending is more than what this facility budgets for this research.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#14

Post by knappador »

Producing net-energy is a different story than collecting net-energy. NIF just blows up a canister with a pellet and takes forever to reload a shot. On the other hand, an at-least-as-promising technology like Dense Plasma Focus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus) is still receiving minuscule funding. I'm hoping to be able to meaningfully support DPF and other fusion technologies soon. DPF has my attention so far because of its scaling characteristics.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#15

Post by rpedela »

germano wrote: post #9
rpedela wrote: post #4

Great, but I don't see how these extremely expensive nuclear fusion projects will ever beat price/kW of coal without heavy subsidies. My bet is that dense plasma focus is the future of cheap, clean power. Only time will tell though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus

I would imagine that the price/kW of coal will become easier to beat as we run out of it.

Pick your favorite energy technology (oil, wind, solar), it still applies.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#16

Post by guimarin »

tl;dr - Another article about the US nuclear weapons research facility at Lawrence Livermore, AKA NIF, and its sideshow 57th priority.

On a related note. It's been really sad to see the US slowly lose its edge in plasma based fusion tech, specifically tokamaks, which seem to be the only credible long-term method of sustaining a fusion reaction for power-plant purposes.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#17

Post by chc »

Shivetya wrote: post #13
Jormundir wrote: post #5

I think Nuclear Fusion is the single most exciting up-and-coming technology. I can't believe we're not throwing a hundred billion dollars at it. Make fusion, not war.

Too bad shovel ready money wasn't spent on more long lasting impact projects like this. Where has all that money gone from the drawn down of the wars? Where is the investments going in alternative energy? Well that last is easy, groups who contribute politically, hence solar and wind. They receive far too much in ways of support whereas hard science projects like this with incredible payoffs are pushed off because th…

It seems to me that the more plausible explanation is something like "Solar and wind power are proven to work, whereas fusion research is still trying to find something that even looks like it might work." Even after this "milestone," fusion still requires more energy from us than it gives back.

Basically, the funding is going toward practical technologies, in the sense that you can actually put them into practice today and reap rewards.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#18

Post by devx »

Jormundir wrote: post #5

I think Nuclear Fusion is the single most exciting up-and-coming technology. I can't believe we're not throwing a hundred billion dollars at it. Make fusion, not war.

> Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission.

That was so disappointing to read. Don't we have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet 10x over already? Why would that still be the focus instead of inventing new sources of virtually unlimited energy??

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#19

Post by nickpinkston »

This is awesome news - I visited the NIF a few months ago and they seemed a little downtrodden when asked about results.

I bet they're all cocky now!

They also told us that the lasers they use, if built with modern tech today, would actually only be the size of a 40' cargo container (as opposed to like 100K sq-ft building), and cost like 1000x less. Pretty epic...

If we invested in fusion power like we did water power less than a century ago, I can only imagine the possibilities...

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#20

Post by claudius »

sliverstorm wrote: post #12
rozap wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to piss on your parade, but.. "Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission." Admittedly that is phrased in an odd way...

Not thrilled about that part, but the "Soon after" refers to events past, not the success this article is about. However, the latest experiments... So, at least the fusion research is still funded and still moving.

This bit of the fusion research is mostly aimed at making small-scale experiments on weaponised nuclear fusion without having to set off nuclear bombs every other day. As a long-term energy source, it is assumed to be rather unusable.
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