Government funded science is winding up behind a private paywall?
Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
91–100 of 194 posts
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#92> led NIF's critics to label the facility an enormous waste of taxpayer dollars > government shifted NIF away from its fusion goals to focus on its other mission: simulating the conditions inside nuclear weapons I think right there lies the problem with our world. People take up more issue with a multi-billion dollar research facility for science than one for military applications. If we spent a small fraction of the…
> we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future I have a feeling that if we had fusion plants providing limitless cheap power, we'd get back on an 8% yearly growth track for energy consumption, like with oil consumption before 1970. Then within a century or so, we'd be producing an amount of power equivalent to 20% of what the earth receives from the s…
I don't think fusion power plants are going to be that much cheaper to run than current nuclear power plants. Fuel costs are a small part of the operating costs of a nuclear plant (16% to 28%) and the capex costs probably won't be that different (e.g. they will still be based on heating water to create steam to power turbines to turn generators).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plan...
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I understand, they are hoping to achieve fusion ignition, where no additional external energy will be required to generate power. So current efficiency calculations are irrelevant in that case.
Yes, but in the article they also say this isn't possible with their current techniques. Anyone have a figure that represents how far off they are?
they also say this isn't possible with their current techniques.
That's fine by me, it was not very long ago that we were unable to get more out of the fuel than we put into the fuel. That's step one to fusion ignition, and was done for the very first time last fall, so as far as I'm concerned they are still fleshing out step one.
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#94Like Thorium this does not prove that it will ever be commercially viable source of energy.
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends what question you are asking. If the question is "should we fund projects even if we don't know if or when they will have demonstrable results?" then I would argue that, yes, some portion of research should go towards that. How long is "long enough" to deem that a line of experimentation "didn't work out?" There is no period long enough. Sometimes a negative result is quite useful down the road. Some resea…
Without harsh assessments, a massive project will eventually dedicate some of its resources into self-perpetuation, that is justifying its existence rather than producing results.
It's a risk we need to take (or mitigate) if we want to have a steady flow of new breakthroughs. Science, just as programming or any other creative discipline, is best done when you have more money than you need and nobody is looking at your hands.
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
cheers https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26434203/nature13008.pdf
No offense to anyone, but this link should be deleted. You may not like the system, but HN isn't the place to protest IP laws with civil disobedience. A lot of YC companies have their own IP they'd like to protect I'm sure.
This isn't protesting the law with civil disobedience, it is breaking the law because the direct expected value of breaking the law (people having access to this specific paper) is greater then the expected cost of breaking the law (~0).
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#97Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…
I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr-BBl82YJD...
Those PDFs are normally watermarked with a unique identifier for your account. It's not worth it.
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm on campus right now and can download the PDF. I'd upload it, but I don't want to pull an Aaron Swartz. EDIT: Okay here, but I have limited bandwidth so get it while you can: https://mega.co.nz/#!CNgVhZra!JcsLGB5y0FGUffI4rdyNr-BBl82YJD...
Those PDFs are normally watermarked with a unique identifier for your account. It's not worth it.
I didn't log in. For almost all of these they detect that I'm connecting from my campus IP block and unlock everything.
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#99Here's the paper. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... They would like to charge you $32 to look at it, nature -ally. The fusion yield is (?) 14 kilojoules (inferring this from physicist Mark Herrman's "5 million billion fusions" [WaPo], at 18 MeV per fusion), which is a moderate improvement over the 8 kilojoule achivement from last fall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6459289 [WaPo]…
I talked to a friend who works there, this is more of a PR move. Back at the lab it is business as usual.
The PR guys often work on a different schedule than the actual science, but those times do usually correlate well with the funding deadlines for some strange reason... It's probably work as usual at the NIF because everyone is working on a big, long, grinding project that's slowly making progress rather than bashing out stunning Eureka moments complete with Dom Perignon showers like you see in a Hollywood flick.
Re: Scientists Say Their Giant Laser Has Produced Nuclear Fusion
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> we could probably solve some really fundamental world problems (i.e. energy, climate change) in the near future I have a feeling that if we had fusion plants providing limitless cheap power, we'd get back on an 8% yearly growth track for energy consumption, like with oil consumption before 1970. Then within a century or so, we'd be producing an amount of power equivalent to 20% of what the earth receives from the s…
An old article on exactly that which I found interesting http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-e... To sum it up "Free energy" buys us about 300-400 years of growth before thermodynamics kicks our ass.
Fortunately, if we had a lot more cheap energy we could probably get to space pretty easily too. So a lot of the growth wouldn't be happening on this planet.