31–40 of 1001 posts
It's a big deal, it will change the way people live. Hopefully it also help to eliminate wars, the war for the natural resources and land.
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…
What about this: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333346-ignition-confir... Allegedly ignition was achieved a year ago. How is this different?
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% efficiency through direct-energy-capture.
The jumps to get here included
- 40% with the new targets
- 60% with magnetic confinement
- 35% with crycooling of the target
The recent NIF experiments have jumped up in power. The first shot that started this new chain of research was about 1.7 MJ of energy delivered. Now, 2.15 MJ. However, the output has jumped non-linearly, demonstrating the scaling laws at work.
> I’ve helped to secure the highest ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.”
It's nice to see this milestone recognized, even if the funding it still rather small.
So much left to do. Capture that output energy. Streamline the machinery that produced the result. Do it at scale and efficiently.
But that's just engineering, as they say. Which is one thing we are pretty good at!!
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…
What about this: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333346-ignition-confir... Allegedly ignition was achieved a year ago. How is this different?
2022, not ordered by importance: Dall.E 2, Chat-GPT, Fusion Ignition. Can't wait for 2023.
Anyway, based on ITER [1] to equate the energy production of a 1000MW coal plant you would need 2.7t of coal for that plant or 250kg of deuterium and tritium for the fusion reactor (split equally). Based on [2] deuetrium costs about ~$15k a kg. But tritium is ridiculously expensive, at $30k per gram (!) [3].
This leads to a calculation of ~$700M for the coal plant and ~$3.75B for the fusion plant (of which only ~$1.5M is deuterium)
I have a few questions and I wonder if any can help:
1. Is the above fusion fuel correct?
2. What measures are expected to bring these prices down to price efficiency?
Of course, I am not calculating the cost it would take for the reactor, storage, delivery etc.
Nevertheless, this is an absolutely incredible development and the people working for this progress should be definitely proud of their work. My generation and the ones following will hail this as a breakthrough moment. Thanks!
[1]: https://www.iter.org/sci/FusionFuels
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements
[3]: https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run...
If you don't like nuclear for these reasons, you'll probably hate fusion.