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First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

firstlightfusion.com

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Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#121

Post by labster »

rob74 wrote: post #119
labster wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only a small portion of the Sun (relatively speaking lol) is hot enough to fuse matter. It kinda sounds impossible the way you phrased it but it really isn’t. It’s just… 20 years off.

...and it's been 20 years off for the last 50 years, I've heard that joke before.

You’ll hear it again in ten years, too. I suspect fusion energy is possible, it’s just really hard. It’s like powered flight, which was imagined for centuries and we couldn’t quite do it, until suddenly someone did it. Eventually, the physics, materials, and engineering will make a path.

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#122

Post by dev-3892 »

elil17 wrote: post #94
starwind wrote: post #9

You too can achieve nuclear fusion! https://makezine.com/projects/nuclear-fusor/ And just like everyone else, you'll suck up a lot more energy than you'll produce

Haven’t some recent experiments done more energy out than in?

nope

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#123

Post by sbierwagen »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #116
sbierwagen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly the laser enrichment process is smaller and cheaper, though it's also kept secret. You still need thousands of kilograms of natural metallic uranium, which is a rare heavy metal with few commercial uses and one really salient illegal one, or thousands of tons of uranium ore, which, see previous. It's hard to buy this stuff secretly, because not many people have it, and people who do have it have a big, sal…

Is enriching uranium in the US actually illegal? Seems like the answer is no.

I would be interested to see what you’ve read to lead you to that conclusion.

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#124

Post by IshKebab »

dangrossman wrote: post #48
IshKebab wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really unique to Britain? It's the first definition on Wiktionary and it doesn't mention anything about it being regional. Is scheme really only negatively in America?

Yes. The Wiktionary entry mentions this: "In the US, generally has devious connotations, while in the UK, frequently used as a neutral term for projects"

Ah I missed that. Interesting!

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#125

Post by SimplyUnknown »

mannykannot wrote: post #106
SimplyUnknown wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, the newsworthy part is that they achieve fusion using their "two-phase" which is supposedly different than conventional tokamaks such as ITER uses. I'm not sure how either of those technologies exactly work, but the article seems to suggest this is a cheaper way to build a fusion reactor. Then again, this is a press piece, so not exactly unbiased.

Devices like tokamaks use powerful electromagnets to compress a plasma. An alternative uses very powerful lasers to explosively vaporize and compress a pellet of fuel. In comparison, this uses the steampunk-esque method of firing a pellet of fuel into a target with a "hypervelocity gas gun". This is just a press release, but an unusually informative one. For more information on what they have and have not done, see h…

Thanks for the short explanation. That clears things up, and you make the First Light approach sound very cool.

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#127

Post by colechristensen »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #116
sbierwagen wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly the laser enrichment process is smaller and cheaper, though it's also kept secret. You still need thousands of kilograms of natural metallic uranium, which is a rare heavy metal with few commercial uses and one really salient illegal one, or thousands of tons of uranium ore, which, see previous. It's hard to buy this stuff secretly, because not many people have it, and people who do have it have a big, sal…

Is enriching uranium in the US actually illegal? Seems like the answer is no.

The Atomic Energy Act put a licensing requirement on all civilian use of nuclear materials, in this case for uranium concentrations above what is found in nature. Enriching is definitely in this category.

To enrich uranium legally in the US you would have to get a license by justifying why you were doing it and there are not many legitimate reasons to do so outside slightly enriched uranium for power plants or highly enriched for a few medical isotopes.

But if you just decide to do it, yes it’s illegal and the NRC will probably find you.

https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/governing-laws.html#aea-1954

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#128

Post by colechristensen »

speed_spread wrote: post #96
djrogers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, only 5 countries in the world have been able to do it. I think you’re a tad optimistic there - sadly we have many more than 5 nuclear powers today.

5 countries have developed Uranium enrichment facilities.

Argentina, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, the Netherlands, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States

There’s the list of “known” meaning publicly acknowledged countries with operating enrichment facilities, more than 5.

Notice it doesn’t include Israel which more or less everyone believes has nuclear weapons meaning enrichment facilities. There are several other countries which are very reasonably believed to have or have had enrichment programs.

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#129

Post by [deleted] »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #56
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The answer was "10 years away" for decades, right up to 2015, and then one day in 2016, that day was "today". I've heard this a few times. In 2014 I was doing an MSc in Intelligent Systems ("AI" after the Winter) and Go was discussed in class in the context of Russel and Norvig. I don't remember the tutor saying that beating a grandmaster (? do they have grandmasters in Go?) was "10 years away". I remember him say…

For example https://www.wired.com/2016/01/in-a-huge-breakthrough-googles... >In early 2014, Coulom's Go-playing program, Crazystone, challenged grandmaster Norimoto Yoda at a tournament in Japan. And it won. But the win came with caveat: the machine had a four-move head start, a significant advantage. At the time, Coulom predicted that it would be another 10 years before machines beat the best players without a head…

[deleted]

Re: First Light (Oxford University spinout) achieves nuclear fusion

#130

Post by eole666 »

ncmncm wrote: post #98
eole666 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But fission is already not competitive with solar/wind + storage." Any source about that ? It just sounds like an arbitrary anti-nuclear opinion without any evidence backing it. But I'm still cursious if you have anything serious to prove this claim.

I could go google that for you. But, why? Innumerable commercial entities are building out solar and wind farms as fast as they can scare up capital. Literally not a single purely commercially-backed nuke plant has ever been built in 70+ years. Not one. Capital did build and operate coal plants, at a profit. But nobody is building new coal plants, anymore. Even operating an existing coal plant is not competitive any…

"Literally not a single purely commercially-backed nuke plant has ever been built in 70+ years. Not one."

Sure, let's check wikipedia to see how this is not true : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

Also, after googling it: yes indeed, in some countries renewable energies are more competitive than fission. But that's not the case everywhere : https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el... Or maybe you were just talking about the US, in this case your statement might be true.

I hope renewable energies cost will keep decreasing as much as it did those last ten years but I'm not as optimistic as you are.

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