Remarkable. It's still nuclear energy, and the sobering part for me is that fusion neutrons are an order of magnitude more energetic than fission neutrons. Add the fact that fusion plants are an order of magnitude larger, and you get orders of magnitude more nuclear waste with order of magnitude higher activation/radioactivity. If you don't like nuclear for these reasons, you'll probably hate fusion.
US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
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Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#242Widespread energy generation nuclear fission is politically impossible in most Western countries. Why are people optimistic that fusion won't have the same kind of problems, such as new plants being too expensive to build and old obsolete plants being too useful to decommission?
> such as new plants being too expensive to build and old obsolete plants being too useful to decommission?
There's no guarantee that these issues will be surmountable.
But fusion largely avoids the fear association with past fission disasters and fears about nuclear waste. This is a non-trivial political problem in many parts of the world, especially much of Europe. If fusion becomes economical (big if) and the differences between it and fission are well communicated it might be easier for the world to swallow.
I think visions of a 100% fusion world are fairly pie in the sky. Most of our energy most of the time will probably come from already viable renewables. But renewables cannot offer consistent baseline power all day, year-round, in every part of the world. We need either huge breakthroughs in storage, or carbon-free baseline generation. Economical fusion if it were achieved could offer that without some of the most politically difficult drawbacks of fission.
I'd probably still bet the farm on renewables + storage though, at least for my lifetime.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#243> achieve President Biden’s goal This seems unnecessarily partisan to mention
The full quote is > This historic, first-of-its kind achievement will provide unprecedented capability to support NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program and will provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy. That is his administration's goal, and it's the directive that DoE is working under…
Wow so all this was accomplished starting from scratch in January 2021. Given another year or two and a second Biden term we should be finished.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#244Here'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…
The question on my mind is: where do I sign up to join this effort?! Edit: I'm Canadian, the question is rhetorical.
Google "national ignition facility careers" and this is the first link
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#245Since I absolutely decided to take this in the worst possible way (get the downvotes ready) What is the timeframe for those lasers to light a bulb somewhere, vs the timeframe of those lasers killing someone on a battlefield ? (As in, how much of is applicable for the military?)
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Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#246Earlier 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.
An answer matched in tenor and tone to the question, but nonetheless entirely serious,
is that because while the obstacles are grave, the consequences of failing to overcome them are much graver still,
and to the best of our collective knowledge,
industrial scale fusion would be the least bad answer to our energy demands for the next epoch.
That is true but also does not obviate the need for other parallel efforts and other technologies whose challenges are also very grave, e.g. the need for very near term very large scale carbon sequestration, for a modern electrical grid with deep redundancy and resilience, the need for effective safe scalable stores for energy from whatever source, etc.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#247I thought we had passed this mark a long time ago, but only during short stints. However, the way they're realizing it by shooting a fuel pellet with lasers is unsustainable and impractical IMHO.
If only they were shooting a fuel pellet: they are instead shooting a hohlraum, a precision-engineered piece of gold and that, in turn, shoots the fuel pellet with X-Rays, acting as a kind of aiming/synchronization device. The hohlraum is destroyed in the process, and currently costs millions of dollars to build a new one.
The hohlraum is destroyed in the process, and currently costs millions of dollars to build a new one.
Hohlraums are expensive but not millions of dollars. This 2004 report puts the cost at about $2500 each (still far too expensive for a power plant of course) while examining ways to get them under $1 each.
"Cost-Effective Target Fabrication For Inertial Fusion Energy"
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam?
> Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam? they're working on getting you to click on an ad
They can't exist any more for structural reason.
This generation was classically educated, without TV or social media in their childhood. They spent the time we're wasting on HN reading _books_ and following the discipline their elders learned in WWI. They had plenty of occasions to tinker.
I claim the brains of those generation was structurally different from ours, and we're talking about the best minds of this generation.
It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads" - the reality is that, no, we webshits are not the "best minds".
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
The B-21 isn't unmanned, the nuclear-capable B-2 already existed, and we've had fusion bombs since the 1950s.
I thought they said it could fly unmanned.
They've said it might, someday, be modified to do so. The current iteration of it requires a manned crew.
Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Q needs to be something like 500 to 1000, not because of energy breakeven, but to produce enough energy that the shot is financially positive. The amount of fusion energy produced in this shot is worth a penny or two. (And even then, it's dubious a laser fusion scheme will be competitive with other energy sources.)
Offset the financial viability with the cost of freedom from energy reliance and the need (more like craving) for military interventions
Foreign energy reliance is finished and has been for some time. North America can produce more petroleum energy than it uses. In both 2020 and 2021 the US was a net petroleum exporter.