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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#21

Post by Oxidation »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

The efficiency of the lasers is awful though and they will have to get at least 100x that energy yield for it to be a net power source. A lot of heat winds up in the laser glass and it takes it a long time to cool between shots so you are doing very good to make a few shots a day. A real power plant is going to need more like 10 shots per second. Heavy-ion fusion has been talked about since the 1970s and it seems muc…

It's not worthless research (not that you said it was), as it still validates various aspects of fusion energy and some of the engineering around it. And it's always been ahead of magnetic containment devices because they only have to keep the conditions for nanoseconds.

But NIF was never, and is not, designed to be a generating reactor, or even a prototype of a testbed. It's a weapons physics facility that happens to do some energy generating research sometimes.

That aside, hitting Q=1 (and be able to use the device again) in any way at all using any equipment is a major milestone that proves humans can get there. From that point, in theory, it's just engineering.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#22

Post by chabad360 »

Oxidation wrote: post #20
chabad360 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least according to the TFA, it seems that the breakthrough is that they got 2.5 mJ out vs. the 2.1 mJ that was used to power the laser.

MJ, not mJ. 2.5mJ is roughly the energy of a single keyboard keypress. 2.5MJ is over half a kilo of TNT. Fun fact that Wolfram alpha just informed me of: a phone uses between 10 and 20 MJ a year: multiple kilos of TNT. 4000mAh * 3.7V * 365: yep, it's about right.

Oh, oops that's a mistake, thanks for catching that.

Also, interesting fun fact indeed.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#24

Post by tempestn »

This is an interesting video covering several alternative fusion power initiatives being pursued currently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNP8by6V3RA

The common thread is that they tend to aim directly for an electrical output rather than simply generating energy, and don't necessarily plan to have a self-sustaining reaction.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#25

Post by motoxpro »

LatteLazy wrote: post #15
riffic wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good, keep em coming.

10k more and we might actually make some progress. Just 20 more years!

From the article.

"Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years."

Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be insanely fast and world changing.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#26

Post by LatteLazy »

motoxpro wrote: post #25
LatteLazy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10k more and we might actually make some progress. Just 20 more years!

From the article. "Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years." Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be ins…

Sorry, I was actually making a joke: fusion power has been described as "a decade away for the last 50 years" which I think sums it up pretty well...

https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw...

The potential is hard to ignore, but that doesn't mean the potential will ever be achieved. This (like crypto currency) is the realm of vapourware I am afraid. Always just around the corner. :(

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#27

Post by simiones »

Exendroinient00 wrote: post #23

Still not nearly enough money invested to energy research.

This is not energy research, it's weapons research. Inertial containment fusion is only interesting because it replicates some of the conditions inside a fusion bomb - there is no plausible way to use it to generate electricity with anything approaching cost efficiency.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#28

Post by simiones »

motoxpro wrote: post #25
LatteLazy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10k more and we might actually make some progress. Just 20 more years!

From the article. "Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years." Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be ins…

> produce no long-lived radioactive waste

It's important to note that while this is technically true, it's mostly irrelevant. Sure, there's no material that will remain radioactive for the next 10k years, but instead you get much more highly radioactive material that will emit high doses for a "short" hundred years or so.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#29

Post by LatteLazy »

simiones wrote: post #28
motoxpro wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article. "Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years." Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be ins…

> produce no long-lived radioactive waste It's important to note that while this is technically true, it's mostly irrelevant. Sure, there's no material that will remain radioactive for the next 10k years, but instead you get much more highly radioactive material that will emit high doses for a "short" hundred years or so.

It's worth noting that the last 2 generations of fission plants were guaranteed to produce no waste, to be cheap, efficient, reliable etc. The unpalatable truth here is that we have no idea what fusion power will look like until we have built a few. The quoted section made me laugh as it's easy to be zero carbon when you don't actually exist... :)

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#30

Post by weberer »

LatteLazy wrote: post #26
motoxpro wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article. "Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years." Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be ins…

Sorry, I was actually making a joke: fusion power has been described as "a decade away for the last 50 years" which I think sums it up pretty well... https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw... The potential is hard to ignore, but that doesn't mean the potential will ever be achieved. This (like crypto currency) is the realm of vapourware I am afraid. Always just around the corner. :(

>vaporware

Have you never heard of ITER? Its set to power on in 2025.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

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