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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#361

Post by eternalban »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #58
SuperFine wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like I guess we still don't have anything better than boiling water, right?

Right. But slapping boiling water around the burning plasma is kind of a rube goldberg usually. See LLNL's LIFE design for example [1]. Things like molten salt walls circulating through a steam turbine and all that. There are other ideas too, but it's hard to beat a Rankine cycle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy

HILIFE-II Inertial Confinement Fusion Power Plant Design:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150404075829/https://hifweb.lb...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#362

Post by DennisP »

ak217 wrote: post #280
zaking17 wrote: post #244

Would anyone knowledgeable about the field update their priors about whether we’ll see commercial fusion in the next 30 years, after seeing these results? If not, is there a big milestone we’re waiting for? Or will fusion advancement be a slow grind with many small improvements over decades?

I'm not an expert but I've been following the field for a while. It's telling that negligible venture capital is pursuing this route to commercial fusion, and the only cheerleading for it comes from DOE lab press releases. That's because the NIF is a thermonuclear bomb simulator developed by a lab tasked with both thermonuclear bomb development and also developing a portfolio of civilian applications for its technolo…

Funding is starting to kick in for private laser fusion attempts. Over the past couple decades, lasers have advanced even more dramatically than superconductors.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.2.2021102...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#363

Post by pianoben »

ShivShankaran wrote: post #283
carabiner wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 5-10 years if this turns out to be the key unlocking it. If it is, the floodgates will open for funding, public and private, and we'll see a race to build the first reactor. Similar to how the first COVID vaccine was predicted to take 2-3 years and it took 8 months instead because it was a priority.

It took only 8 months because covid has been in existence for decades. Covid 19 strain was new and the vaccines had to be adjusted to new strains not created from ground up

Not so; the mRNA technology used to develop and deliver the vaccine has been in progress for decades. The hardest parts were done before SARS-CoV-2 ever existed, but it's wrong to claim that "the vaccines" needed to be tweaked - they never existed.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#364

Post by dawkins »

doctor_eval wrote: post #327
jonathanoberg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't Yes, it is. You just contradicted me No, I didn't Yes, you did No, no, no You did just then That's ludicrous Oh, this is futile No, it isn't I came in here for a good argument No, you didn't. You came in here for an argument Well, argument isn't the same as contradiction Can be

"An argument is a connected series of statements intended to form a proposition. Contradiction is merely the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says" "No it isn't!"

Argument - Monty Python https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDB5gbtaEQ

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#365

Post by ForgotIdAgain »

paxys wrote: post #352
wolverine876 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many on HN have the same response to many things in every domain, not just research.

For being a tech entrepreneur forum people here are strangely very anti science and technology. The top voted responses to every new product announcement are essentially "why do we need this? Pen and paper work just fine".

In my experience, the more someone has deep understanding in tech, the more they are critical of it. Especially true in my field of infosec.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#366

Post by hardtke »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #325
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.

Look if a scientist at LLNL is excited about it, then there's a conflict of interest here. The fact of the matter is that there is such a high likelihood that inertial confinement is a dead end, because as far as I can tell there is not a realistic plan to harvest the produced energy, which at least, some of the other designs do. The bar is literally higher in other branches of fusion research (and they too are getti…

Agree with the first sentence. I worked at a couple of national labs and the number one priority is to keep the lab open by justifying the flagship project. NIF has a long history of disappointments so it's nice to see some success, but it still isn't clear building this thing was justified. The main rationale during the planning stages was "stockpile stewardship" which loosely translate into "making jobs for nuclear weapons scientists even though we aren't building any."

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#367

Post by rawgabbit »

steve_avery wrote: post #255

I have personally taken a tour of the NIF at Livermore. The guide was an old hand, who constantly remarked about the efforts of NIF towards "stockpile stewardship," ie the maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons. It seemed like NIF was all about the stockpile stewardship first, and fusion research was a secondary consideration. The capability of the NIF to get positive energy from the energy that they impart…

What is your opinion of ITER? https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nucle...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#368

Post by PaulHoule »

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.

Lotsa reasons.

(1) We are used to the same "news" story being cycled again and again. I think a year ago we heard about a previous breakthrough in ignition. When I hear a story like this my first instinct is that the old story has been recycled and I'm not sure that there is any actual news.

A few months back it was announced that scientists had discovered a black hole that was nearest to the earth and it still gets posted to HN which makes me wonder if they discovered a closer one.

(2) For a while there have been two parallel tracks, one of very slow development efforts at LLNL and IETF which might yield a power source in 50 years and another about firms from Lockheed Martin to scrappy startups who are promising to build a "Mr Fusion" tomorrow. There are still memories of the Pons & Fleischman affair from the 1980s and a strange subculture of LENR activists who claim they will sell you a fusion power source today. One could easily assume "fusion is the new blockchain" in this climate

(3) Fusion research has proceeded with no direct line to a practical power source for a long time, the sharpest critique you hear is "the point of the NIF is to do subthreshold tests of nuclear weapons, not develop a power source"

(4) Fusion is really hard. They might have to get the energy output up 100 times and increase the shot rate 500,000 times to build a real power source, even if 1-3 aren't enough to make you dismiss the whole thing. People will point out that ignition is a big threshold and it might not be so hard to increase the energy output from here out, but we have a long ways to go.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#369

Post by gaucheries »

gaucheries wrote: post #312
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)

downvoters of this comment, be sure to leave a link to your blog, too

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#370

Post by hotpotamus »

Robotbeat wrote: post #153
VaxWithSex wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or fusion. There are always these articles: net energy gain finally! and then: no not really.

Reminds me of solar. That took a century to get to where we are today where the net energy output is much greater than the energy needed to manufacture them. It being hard and it requiring continual progress does not mean that progress does not occur.

How long has humanity been working on fusion? Wasn't Ivy Mike in the early 50's? Glaciers continually progress too, but it's not obvious on human timescales.
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