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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

ft.com

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#311

Post by kelnos »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #49

After a few more major breakthroughs we'll be where fission was in 1942 after Fermi made the first man made neutron chain reaction. After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like, and see how much people actually care about small amounts of tritium radiation. At the moment fuel costs in fission are like 5-10% of total costs for a fission fleet. In fusion it could be lower, but that wil…

Personally I think fission power's failure is a political and marketing one. I don't agree that the waste disposal issues, or the safety issues, are quite the big deal people make of them. (Not saying there are no unsolved issues, just that the issues that exist are not significantly worse than those present burning fossil fuels, and are better in some dimensions. They're just different, and in some ways very emotionally so.)

I think it might be fine that fusion power may be more expensive in some ways than fission, as long as its reputation is kept clean (figuratively and literally). Market fusion power as the savior of humanity, and get enough people to believe it, and it'll be fine.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#312

Post by gaucheries »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

> This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians

hey, at least all of them are highly educated and extremely correct about things. read about it on their blogs. (sarcasm enabled for this reply)

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#314

Post by cpleppert »

senko wrote: post #288
boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

> It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. [..] This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy. The problem is that fusion "breakthroughs" have been hyped by the press for many decades now. After a few such articles gets people excited and then reality crushes the hype, people learn to dismiss every new story as yet another inconsequential thing blown out of proportion. I'm…

It isn't just hyped; popular reporting on fusion power hasn't been very accurate. It doesn't help fusion power that things like this are trumpeted as a breakthrough when the reality is that the INF was never was a viable way to generate power in first place.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#315

Post by catach »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

I do not think I can meaningfully increase my levels of credulity (nor my skepticism). I strive to communicate my thoughts accurately. Given those two points, how is it not healthy?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#316

Post by teawrecks »

spoils19 wrote: post #285
rogerkirkness wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older I get the more I think it's just counter signaling that one is smarter than whoever did this work, which is almost certainly not the case.

Quoted post unavailable.

The average HN reader strikes me as someone who can talk big, spout buzzwords, and play skeptic, but make them actually solve something and they crumble instantly.

Maybe the average HN reader is smarter than the average reddit reader (very slightly if at all), but they're not more useful than someone who actually did work and shared it publicly.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#317

Post by zbobet2012 »

jeffparsons wrote: post #281
boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

> This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy. What could be done about that aside from expecting people to just... be better? I think the shape of these forums induces those kinds of comments, even if the community and moderators make a real effort to uphold higher standards. And I think if I encountered the same people in a different kind of forum then I might have a higher…

I'd say most of the problem here is that viewpoints are meted out as simple pithy statements. Half of the comments on this thread are one sentence statements saying the building has 200x to go before it's truly net positive.

You get more content out of a discussion with your neighbor in 30s than that. Those comments are genuinely worthless, they don't talk about things like:

1) What are the parts of an inertial confinement fusion based system which are difficult and which are missing today and would need serious investment

2) What is the likelyhood that the power output observed here could double, or more with other scale factors?

3) What's the net system costs once a plant is made. Is the fuel cheap or expensive?

Etc. It's fine to be contrarian, but most of the contrariness on this most internet forums is of the most basic, shallow kind that is defeated in a moment by any serious thinking.

The short answer to being better? Posts with more in depth content. I seriously think HN should consider banning pithy one or two sentence posts "they still would only get 1/4 the power" you find all over the place.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#318

Post by rukuu001 »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

Seeing headlines like this every year or so will do that to you

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#319

Post by kelnos »

danbruc wrote: post #178
est31 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589... > The fusion reaction at the US government facility produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers, the people with knowledge of the results said, adding that the data was still being analysed. They probably upgraded the rig since the Wikipedia article was written, so most likely t…

If this is assumption is true, they only produced 0.6 % of the energy they spent. Another question would then be, how relevant this is, i.e. could the UV light be produced much more efficiently than the experiment does? Maybe some constraints forces them to use a very inefficient process? In that case it might be reasonable to use the UV laser power as the reference for the gain.

Sure, and if they upgrade the lasers themselves to current laser tech (as I understand it, the NIF's hardware is around 25 years out of date on that front), then that 0.6% number probably jumps to 20% or so. Which still isn't enough, but is way closer than 0.6%.

Add to that the fact that improvements in laser efficiency is a hot research area (as lasers are used commercially in a lot of places, and cost-cutting is always a concern), and this is starting to feel a little more attainable.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#320

Post by honeybadger1 »

boc wrote: post #251

It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.

It's mostly British folks in those comments as well. If you are looking at real estate in Britain, now you know what you are dealing with.
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