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US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

energy.gov

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Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#191

Post by panosfilianos »

ceejayoz wrote: post #174
wernercd wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also wonder if Titium is that expensive... and it generates titium... would that be part of the "break even" equation? Creating something rare to sell?

Current demand is a couple hundred grams per year. We just don't need that much of it. The cost per gram would go down a lot if we needed to mass-produce it.

I think what I'm alluding to is, how much can the cost go down. In the case of fossil fuels there value is strongly based on their physical scarcity and cost of extraction/delivery etc.

How much do these things ring true in this case and what are ideas of improvement?

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#192

Post by zardo »

brofallon wrote: post #30

I'm still a little unclear on the benefits that fusion offers compared to things like wind and solar. I understand that we need to develop better storage technologies for the energy produced by wind and solar, but that seems so much easier than the challenges currently facing fusion. Wind and solar just seem so far ahead of fusion already - they're pretty cheap and very widely deployed on a global scale. In compariso…

> But maybe I'm missing something important about the economics?

I think you've understood it.

Imo fusion is never going to be able to compete with renewables+storage with the energy being captured from neutrons. Maybe reactions that release energy in charged particles or photons could, but they're even harder to do.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#193

Post by nilsbunger »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #154
Robotbeat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a significant milestone because demonstrating you can get net energy from the reaction removes a lot of uncertainty of whether it's possible in the real world. It starts to turn inertial fusion into an engineering problem of how you increase the efficiency of each stage.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#194

Post by StevenNunez »

Victerius wrote: post #123
rllearneratwork wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see "fusion Manhattan project", this planet is well overdue for new gigantic R&D projects such as Manhattan and Apollo.

Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam?

Elon Musk ::ducks::

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#195

Post by anon291 »

mustacheemperor wrote: post #2

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm taking this particular moment just to swell with pride and excitement for this achievement by science and forget about the details of how much more needs to be done to create the first power plant. I'm remembering when I first learned about fusion energy development, how distant and unfeasible it seemed, and regardless of how long the road ahead still is it's incredible how f…

Yeah... this is a great breakthrough and an historic day for physics and engineering and humanity. Every American should swell with pride.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#196

Post by Palpatineli »

Calling this fusion ignition is stupid. Laser fusion is unlike other fusion devices in that the efficiency of laser is extremely low. It is true that the reaction created 3MJ when the laser energy input INTO THE REACTION CHAMBER is 2MJ. But the whole laser system took 300MJ to run for this one shot. Thus the real Q value is extremely low compared to other fusion methods.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#197

Post by azinman2 »

pfdietz wrote: post #171
echelon wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will get there. It's just a matter of time and resources. The destination will be a milestone for humanity, so we should not give up.

Why should I agree with this article of faith? The obstacles appear quite grave to me. Moreover, even reaching that Q doesn't mean we're there. That's a necessary, not sufficient, condition. A large, complex machine that explodes the equivalent of 500 lb. bombs to generate heat to drive a turbine sounds like an engineering nightmare.

Because sustainable positive energy out has never been achieved before in 60 years of research. This is gigantic. It’s potential to decarbonize the world is massive, and now it became a whole lot less theoretical.

It’s an incredible milestone, not a solved problem.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#199

Post by maybelsyrup »

tmccrary55 wrote: post #141
jbverschoor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Russia has pretty conclusively shown that they aren't even close to the same league as the US in terms of warfare. Like comparing an amateur pickup basketball team to the Chicago Bulls.

Uh what US warfare have you been watching? Your analogy only works if it’s the like the 2000-200 Bulls (15-67).

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#200

Post by [deleted] »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #103
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #33

> 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) Yesterday, everyone was complaining about the 2.2:2.0 ratio, but now we're working with 3.15:2.05. With modern lasers, that'd be a total Q of 0.375 assuming 100% ef…

This is a stupid question but I don't know anything about fusion: How is it possible for X energy to create X+Y energy in output? Doesn't that violate some fundamental law of physics?

[deleted]
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