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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

#71

Post by waps »

devx wrote: post #18
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??

Without weapons research

1) we never would have had nuclear power in the first place. (or it would have taken decades more)

2) It would even have taken a lot longer to develop oil energy and widespread cars (allied research on oil)

3) We wouldn't know about co2 separation (since the nazi state was cut-off -mostly- from oil, they researched liquefaction and nuclear power)

Nobody ever gives cruel losers credit, I guess. Heh. But the nazis certainly did a lot of useful research.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#72

Post by dekhn »

beloch wrote: post #68
dekhn wrote: post #48

A good place to start if you want to understand the purported rationale for the NIF (stockpile stewardship), I suggest reading and understanding this light introduction to modern nuclear weapons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon (the rhodes books, Making of the Atomic Bomb is required background reading, as is Dark Sun, if you want to get into the backstore). In particular: The NIH experiment recapit…

The NIF is probably more useful for coming up with new fusion bomb designs than for stockpile stewardship, as you say, but what makes you say hot fusion can never be economically viable? The sun is proof that nature can do this on a grand scale! It may be a long ways off, but "a long ways" becomes "never" without experimental work like the NIF. Yes, the U.S. is probably doing this primarily to create new weapons just…

Whether the sun is capable of fusion isn't super important. We can take advantage of that, but it doesn't mean we can build many safe plants based on an evolution of the NIF design.

If your alternative fuel requires hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in the future, just to show viability of the basic research concept, before it can actually be useful, you will be at a massive competitive advantage relative to alternatives.

What I am saying, is that relative to other potential investments, fusion does not seem to be a worthwhile investment, as the risk/payoff ratio is worse.

As for the rest of your comments, I mostly agree I'm aware that alternatives like wind and solar have limits, but we can still use them to great effect (as augmenters, and ways to reduce reliance of less sustainable sources).

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#74

Post by Pxtl »

devx wrote: post #23

Wow, I remember seeing this project start up a few years ago, about how they wanted to make a "sun" on Earth. It seems it only took them 5 years to achieve this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3981697/Scie... In a way, it reminds of Spiderman, too, but let's hope things don't go as badly as in the movie, once we start to make that "sun" big enough to provide a ton of energy.

Well, for one thing I assume they didn't build it in Manhattan.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#75

Post by skorgu »

pjlegato wrote: post #67
sam wrote: post #47

It is an important milestone. But to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, you'll need a factor of 50-100 more energy out than in to make up for inefficiencies in electricity generation using this kind of scheme. The real story here is that this facility allows the US to do nuclear weapons research without violating the nuclear test ban treaty. If the goal was to develop a commercially viable fusion reactor, the…

Speculating about their "real" motives is just that; speculation. I'm sorry your project was defunded, but that in itself is not evidence that the facility is actually a sham.

NIF is explicitly and publicly a weapons research facility; it's right there on their website[0]. If they happen to do some useful scientific or commercial work then yay but it's a nice byproduct.

[0] https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#76

Post by darkmighty »

pjlegato wrote: post #67
sam wrote: post #47

It is an important milestone. But to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, you'll need a factor of 50-100 more energy out than in to make up for inefficiencies in electricity generation using this kind of scheme. The real story here is that this facility allows the US to do nuclear weapons research without violating the nuclear test ban treaty. If the goal was to develop a commercially viable fusion reactor, the…

Speculating about their "real" motives is just that; speculation. I'm sorry your project was defunded, but that in itself is not evidence that the facility is actually a sham.

He's not saying the facility is a sham, he is simply saying it's goals are not to generate electricity, it's simply a research tool to provide data to improve empirical models. Those models of course have all sorts of uses, and certainly a big one is nuclear weapon modelling.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#77

Post by foobarian »

pyre wrote: post #31
angersock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but what's its viral coefficient? How can we get it as a mobile app?

I'm torn. Should we focus on gamifying it or making it web-scale?

Do you want to disrupt the power grid? Fusion.ly is hiring!

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#78

Post by afterburner »

trevelyan wrote: post #66
Shivetya wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In situations of depressed aggregate demand, it really doesn't matter what you spend the money on -- you could even bury it in the ground like gold and "pay" people to dig it up. Whatever you fund is essentially a free lunch. You don't want to wait months though, which is why "shovel-ready" matters and this sort of research loses out to other sorts of projects. That said, less guns and more fusion would be nice.

Well, I get the impression billions spent on fusion research doesn't really employ that many more people, it just spends more on expensive resources. Maybe that has a knock-on effect, but using the money on more labour-intensive work (skilled or otherwise) is still probably a better use. Such as, building and installing a heck of a lot of cheap solar panels.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#79

Post by dreadpiraterob »

jimmcslim wrote: post #49

What would be the impact of a 'fusion economy', assuming realistic evolution of the technology for the purposes of commercialisation? (i.e. I'm assuming "Mr Fusion" powerplants on top of one's DeLorean aren't ever going to be practically feasible). What would such a world look like? Does it promote world peace; through greater energy security for nations, would less reliance on fossil fuels for baseload electricity g…

Fusion changes everything. Cheaper electricity makes transporting materials basically free. And projects like desalination become possible = no one remotely close to an ocean ever lacks clean drinking water again.

Re: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

#80

Post by foobarian »

icegreentea wrote: post #24
devx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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??

NIF's nuclear weapons research was in support of maintaining the current arsenal of nuclear weapons. Most notably, it helps solve the question of how to ensure current stockpiles are reliable without actually detonating a nuke (since that's a huge no-no). It also kept a generation of nuclear physicists and engineers in employment, and also providing a method by which to test future weapons designs. So really, the ans…

When thinking about nukes, always remember, the bigger and scarier they are, the less likely to be used, and the less likely are we to engage in land wars where we gut each other with bayonets.
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