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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

#401

Post by Mistletoe »

ajross wrote: post #300
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…

Actually current modeling has supernovae as being only a small contributor to the measured abundance of heavy nucleii. These guys tend to come from a more exotic source still: material thrown off as a neutron star is tidally disrupted during a merger event with another neutron star or black hole . The wikipedia page is pretty good, as always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis Almost everything with mass o…

Good Lord the universe is old. To think of how rare all that must be and how it had to have time to somehow get here to our planet.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#402

Post by davrosthedalek »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #321
jameshart wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except… chemical bonds don’t ‘store’ energy. Molecules are a low energy configuration . It takes energy to rip them apart! But, O2 molecules, with their double bond, don’t take much energy to break apart. If they do, and then pair up with say a bunch of Hydrogen and Carbon atoms that were nearby in some long chain or something, they form bonds that are stronger - that take more energy to break - and you end up with s…

There's a fundamental tradeoff between technical precision and explaining things in a way that's relatable to simpler stuff. Deal. With. It.

Not if the original description is exactly the opposite of what happens. You get energy out by making stronger bonds.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#403

Post by MichaelZuo »

whimsicalism wrote: post #395
petilon wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you consider that they laser they used consumed 300 megajoules from the wall plug, in order to send 1.8 megajoules to the target, the fact that they got 2.5 megajoules out looks puny in comparison. Even newer lasers only have 20% wall plug efficiency according to the press conference. So the important point here is, there was no net energy gain. They spent 300 megajoules to get 2.5 out. The scientists only talk…

Energy is conserved in the universe so there is never any net energy gain. See how pedantic and not helpful that is?

That's a non sequitur. The laser ignition facility is not a smaller version of the entire universe.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#404

Post by BizarroLand »

b33j0r wrote: post #298
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…

It’s funny that alchemy was kinda onto something, but underestimated the energy requirements by orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude

True, all you need to turn lead into gold is a moderately powerful collider and some hydrogen.

The conversion is also very slow. And expensive. To make it this way it would cost a Quadrillion dollars an ounce.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-l...

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#405

Post by twarge »

blackbear_ wrote: post #97
twarge wrote: post #40

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.

Furthermore, fusion does not produce highly radioactive, long lived nuclear waste. “Fusion produces only low level radioactive waste — more than fission does — but this low level waste does not pose any serious danger,” said González de Vicente. Contaminated items, such as protective clothing, cleaning supplies and even medical tubes or swabs, are short lived, low level radioactive waste that can be safely handled wi…

Perhaps Dr. dr Vicente is talking about ITER, but surely not a real fusion reactor.

Here's something talking about an actual fusion reactor:

"While the radioactivity level per kilogram of waste would be much smaller than for fission-reactor wastes, the volume and mass of wastes would be many times larger."

and

"To reduce the radiation exposure of plant workers, biological shielding is needed even when the reactor is not operating. In the intensely radioactive environment, remote handling equipment and robots would be required for all maintenance work on reactor components as well as for their replacement because of radiation damage, particle erosion, or melting."

https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#406

Post by jboy55 »

spencerchubb wrote: post #274

The most surprising thing I've learned from this is we're only allocating $624 million / year to this program. We really need better mechanisms for deciding how to allocate taxes.

Its actually pretty good, since this is primarily weapons testing. The real money is being spent in the EU, where there is at least a chance of getting a sustainable fusion reaction.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#407

Post by davrosthedalek »

p_j_w wrote: post #366
makestuff wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not really. I mean, yes, nuclear weapons are a thing, but Dept. of Energy supports many many directions not related to nuclear weapons. Physics research is mostly funded by DOE Office of Science or the National Science Foundation.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#409

Post by CuriousCosmic »

zaroth wrote: post #362
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree however that culture was caused by a lack of funding.

You can't be swift and lean when you are given very limited, budgeted funding. You can't take risks or you risk putting people out of a job and killing the program.

That leads to an overly conservative culture that restricts any risk taking and over-engineers everything to the point failure is effectively impossible.

This slow movement, overly conservative, design by committee approach helps limit risk but it absolutely balloons costs in the long run and horrifically delays progress. Of course if they were a company they'd eventually run out of money but that's not really an option for gov orgs so when the overly conservative, limited run designs end up encountering production issues, the projects explode in cost with nearly no upper limit.

TLDR: The political climate is a direct consequence of the lack of budget and continued restriction of that budget only worsens the problem.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#410

Post by yuvalkarmi »

Tangential, but fun: the following is NOT what this post says. The following is the response to a the ChatGPT prompt "write the press release by an imagined body called the Department of Energy announcing the achievement of fusion ignition." Mind you, ChatGPT training data ends in 2021, so it's definitely not aware of this news:

"The Department of Energy is pleased to announce the successful achievement of fusion ignition in our latest experiment. This breakthrough marks a major milestone in our pursuit of clean, limitless energy.

Fusion, the process by which atomic nuclei combine to release vast amounts of energy, has long been considered the Holy Grail of energy production. It has the potential to provide an virtually limitless supply of clean, safe energy, without the harmful greenhouse gas emissions or dangerous waste products of other forms of energy production.

For decades, scientists and engineers have been working to unlock the secrets of fusion and harness its power. This has been a challenging and complex endeavor, but we are now closer than ever to achieving our goal. The successful fusion ignition in our experiment marks the first time that this process has been achieved outside of the core of a star. This is a significant step forward in our efforts to harness the power of fusion and bring it to practical use.

We believe that fusion has the potential to revolutionize the way we produce energy, and we are committed to pursuing this technology with all of the resources at our disposal. In the coming years, we will continue to conduct experiments and research, with the goal of developing a fusion reactor that can provide a stable, reliable source of energy.

We are extremely proud of this achievement, and we will continue to work tirelessly to develop this technology and bring it to the world. This is an exciting time for energy production, and we are confident that fusion will play a major role in our collective future. We are grateful for the support of our colleagues and partners in this effort, and we look forward to continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible."

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