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US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

energy.gov

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Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#361

Post by vel0city »

orthecreedence wrote: post #322
Firmwarrior wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fuel actually isn't that expensive or rare Those crazy sci-fi stories from the 30s and 50s where everyone used nuclear power (and it was so cheap they didn't bother to meter it) were all completely accurate from a non-political viewpoint

Oh, interesting. I read/heard a few places that most fuel used for fission was controlled by a few countries. I was unaware it was abundant.

The stuff is kind of all over the place, but it's not high purity. The engineering to refine the material is highly controlled.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#362

Post by zaroth »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #344
azinman2 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the bottleneck for fusion money though?

yes. fusion funding has been sliding downwards for decades which is a large reason why it takes so long to do anything. It's largely the same reason why NASA takes so long to do anything. 1. Shortage of funding 2. failure can result in loss/exhaustion of funding 3. extremely low risk tolerance 4. physical experiments needing new HW only happen when the likelihood of success is extremely high 5. projects are over engi…

I can't agree that funding is "largely the reason" why NASA takes so long to do anything. I doubt funding is a top 3 reason.

NASA just isn't about high-risk / high-reward "moonshots" anymore. The overarching political environment doesn't allow it, never mind the office politics.

NASA will get back to the moon using easily an order of magnitude more funding than it should have taken, with a launch system that costs an order of magnitude more money for each launch than it should. (almost two?)

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#363

Post by Tuna-Fish »

floxy wrote: post #189
pfdietz wrote: post #71

Earlier 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.)

>The Q needs to be something like 500 to 1000 Why wouldn't a final Q of 50 be economically viable? Interest on capital costs? Other?

Inertial confinement fusion requires fairly expensive targets to collapse. To make it economically viable they have to produce a lot more energy per target destroyed.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#364

Post by pishpash »

867-5309 wrote: post #328
eklitzke wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related, but I think this is an interesting fact, all the atoms in our universe/galaxy/solar system with a mass up to that of iron are formed in the core of stars in stellar fusion. Hydrogen fuses into helium, and as a star nears the end of its lifetime you get heavier elements like lithium, carbon, and so on. Under normal stellar fusion no elements heavier than iron will be produced, and iron is only el…

we are all made of star stuff

Star stuff sounds like some German element.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#365

Post by leephillips »

malfist wrote: post #64
teeray wrote: post #11

Can someone ELI5 why this is significant over previous fusion experiments?

No other fusion experiment has achieve greater outputs than inputs. So this is the first time that a fusion reactor has been net positive for energy production

Neither did this one. This is not a net positive. That’s what they told journalists to start the current cycle of hype, but note that announcements direct from DOE don’t use that language.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#366

Post by p_j_w »

makestuff wrote: post #353
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #33

> 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) 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% ef…

> It's nice to see this milestone recognized, even if the funding it still rather small. Just wait until the DoD figures out they can use this for some military application and it will get 100x funding overnight.

This is already used for nuclear weapons research, which is why it's under Dept. of Energy.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#367

Post by TheCoelacanth »

azinman2 wrote: post #197
pfdietz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because sustainable positive energy out has never been achieved before in 60 years of research. This is gigantic. It’s potential to decarbonize the world is massive, and now it became a whole lot less theoretical. It’s an incredible milestone, not a solved problem.

It's a common joke that fusion power is always 50 years away. With this milestone, is it finally less than 50 years away?

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#368

Post by trhr »

adventured wrote: post #278
maybelsyrup wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh what US warfare have you been watching? Your analogy only works if it’s the like the 2000-200 Bulls (15-67).

> Uh what US warfare have you been watching? The one where the US tends to perform well against its adversaries. True in the Civil War. True in WW1. True in WW2. True in Korea. True in Vietnam. True in the Gulf War. True in Afghanistan. True in Iraq. And now just a smidgen of its old weapons are helping Ukraine humiliate Russia. The US was in Afghanistan for two decades with 1,932 soldiers killed by hostile action. R…

No post body was provided.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#369

Post by panosfilianos »

devmor wrote: post #315
panosfilianos wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a ton for that! $25/MWh is great but not the 10x economic impact I expected. Especially since [1] we see PV at $50/MWh currently. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

The economic impact doesn't just come from the fuel to energy ratio. One of the biggest differences is also in the space required. Nuclear fusion reactors could eventually end up being very small - like smaller than an SUV. Imagine the cost savings in miniaturizing electrical grids.

This seems interesting but not especially impactful.

For me, the question here is: can we get our energy to cost 90% less than it did?

Don't get me wrong, I recognise that this is still a huge win (especially environmentally) and that it can have huge runway effects (eg. much more effective decentralization etc.) but it's quite interesting on how we can get these billions of people out of poverty first (or during).

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#370

Post by jameshart »

makestuff wrote: post #353
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #33

> 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) 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% ef…

> It's nice to see this milestone recognized, even if the funding it still rather small. Just wait until the DoD figures out they can use this for some military application and it will get 100x funding overnight.

Cheap and abundant energy has a multitude of military applications.

Peaceful ones too, probably.

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