> achieve President Biden’s goal This seems unnecessarily partisan to mention
I am okay with any amount of partisanship if it means more funding for fusion research.
US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
151–160 of 1001 posts
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because now it’s reproducible, controllable and consistently net positive in terms of energy output. It’s not a fluke anymore and I assume the engineering behind this is now understood well enough to develop it further and scale it up. Fusion for the most part isn’t a physics problem it’s an engineering problem the difficulty was always in how to implement it in the real world rather than in math at ideal white paper…
What information available to the public suggests this is reproducible and consistent? They do hundreds of shots every year. Why do we think that this energetic shot wasn't just a result of getting luckier this time than they did a few years ago?
Because they’ve been able to do it multiple times, which is better than the zero or one times before.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#153I hate to ask this, but have to ... is there any danger of these discoveries being weaponized easily by hostile countries? i.e. does this make unconventional weapons more accessible to countries who otherwise have embargoes on technology and material to make atomic weapons?
The short answer is no.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
This tweet claims that 500MJ of energy was required: https://twitter.com/latzenpratz/status/1602686252486217728 > "had to put 500 megajoules of energy into the lasers to then send 1.8 megajoules to the target - so even though they got 2.5 megajoules out, that's still far less than the energy they originally needed for the lasers," says Tony Roulstone of the University of Cambridge. But it's good to finally see progre…
That’s only because they’re using old school flash pumped lasers, not the new solid state lasers you’d use today if you wanted to make a power plant demo.
It just seems a little strange to take credit for a milestone when the milestone everyone cares about is yet to be reached. (More energy out than in.)
Good to hear that there's a laser design that might achieve that.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#155Exciting! Is this work published somewhere? I'm curious to hear more about the setup and other experimental conditions.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#156Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#157Here's your most exciting paragraph > LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and busines…
That's a very apt analogy, as both this and Manhattan are weapons research programs. I'm not very excited in hearing we'll get even more powerful thermo-nuclear bombs.
You should be very excited because we live on a planet with independent competing countries and well... you don't want to live in the US or Europe with China or other not so friendly countries building a bigger more powerful nuke. If a weapon can be built, it will be built. How, when and if it can be used are things you can control not whether someone somewhere will develop it. Especially in war time, all bets are off.
Although, it would be interesting to see fusion reactors on planes and ships powering other types of weapons like lasers and more powerful railguns or faster icbms.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#158Christopher Nolan couldn't have timed the release of Oppenheimer better.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#159I hope commercial fusion power generation becomes a reality but I'm far from convinced that's the case. What we see here is just solving one problem with many more to go. Energy output exceeding energy input produces a surplus of energy. That's a must and that's the breakthrough LLNL is announcing but le tme list the some of the known barriers to producing electricity: 1. How stable is the reaction? What failure mode…
This experiment was never intended to/or form the basis of a nuclear fusion reactor.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very apt analogy, as both this and Manhattan are weapons research programs. I'm not very excited in hearing we'll get even more powerful thermo-nuclear bombs.
That isn’t what this would be used for. In fact, yields for the largest deployed H-bombs today I think are smaller than they once were (due to better targeting capabilities).
What do you think the US nuclear weapons research lab will use their research for?
You're right that increasing the yield was a bad example from my side, but the purpose is to improve the weapons, nothing else.