Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 833 posts

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#411

Post by Robotbeat »

DesiLurker wrote: post #377
qayxc wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy. I don't know. Looking closely at the article reveals that the researchers achieved 1.2x energy gain from the lasers, which are about 1% efficient. Given the SOTA for such lasers is closer to 20% efficiency, this means that they achieved about 60% of break-even. But that's energy, no electricity. Even with the best current methods,…

> But that's energy, no electricity as far as fusion viability is concerned net energy (over whats put in) is enough. the whole electricity is moving the goal post because there are plenty of other sources that primarily produce heat. Now regarding efficiency of laser itself, sure they are inefficient but from just nuclear fusion pov net energy gain is a significant milestone in itself. lasers can get incrementally m…

Lasers can get over 50% efficient (although these are specialized types).

It’s silly to blame a facility not designed for power production for using inefficient lasers.

This is an important and necessary step to getting resources to go further. Imagine how dumb it would’ve been to build a fusion power plant before we could even do 1.2x energy gain. A complete waste of resources.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#412

Post by tomphoolery »

jonathanoberg wrote: post #308
jonathanoberg wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is.

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

Oh I'm sorry, this is abuse! Yes, you want arguments, next door.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#413

Post by pclmulqdq »

naasking wrote: post #289
billiam wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not as always. The laser confinement mechanism works, it has been shown, lasers that are more than 20 times as efficient as these NID lasers are now available, so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. For one thing, perhaps a lot of the research money will move to lasers now.

> so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. Yes it's good progress, but an order of magnitude is not nothing. Squeezing another order of magnitude efficiency out of the lasers will be very difficult. It took 30 years or so to go from 1% efficiency to 20%, and law of diminishing retur…

It's still probably about 100x, given efficiency losses all around, even on the highest-efficiency lasers.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#414

Post by xeromal »

dsr_ wrote: post #375
paxys wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

That's because for 90% of new products, the old stuff performs better, uses fewer resources, and has been debugged in ways the new stuff has not. All the new stuff, however, has marketing and looks shiny.

The problem is this might be true, but it will not always be true. The horse was probably better than the first cars for a while, but progress changed that.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#415

Post by f38zf5vdt »

qayxc wrote: post #340
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. I don't know. Looking closely at the article reveals that the researchers achieved 1.2x energy gain from the lasers, which are about 1% efficient. Given the SOTA for such lasers is closer to 20% efficiency, this means that they achieved about 60% of break-even. But that's energy, no electricity. Even with the best current methods,…

How many times have you or literally anyone you know achieved a state of the art breakthrough in the production of energy from a nuclear fusion reactor? Is this just another Monday to you?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#416

Post by scottLobster »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #345
atty wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the spirit of your comment, and I am extremely excited by these results. However, I think the history of fusion has showed us that the cynics have had a much better track record than the fusion optimists, haha. My very uninformed opinion (nuclear physicist by training, but not specialized in fusion, lasers, or plasma physics) is that we’re still 20 years (haha) away from fusion energy making its way into…

Also this assumes we get 20 years and the science budget will not be eaten by emerging endless crisis and wars.

To be fair, fusion technology is a strategic imperative. The first nation to master it will quickly enjoy defacto Energy independence. Given that many of the crises will likely be energy-eccentric, we may see more investment in the space rather than less, especially if visible progress is being made.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#417

Post by scottLobster »

torben-friis wrote: post #408
VoodooJuJu wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're hackers, engineers. We poke around for problems before there are problems and we pry open the black box to make sure it's not just filled with Bullshit. If you want to unquestioningly lap up everything that's offered to you, then I've got some ocean-front property in Afghanistan I'd like to sell you.

That’s definitely how many people here see themselves, but excessive scepticism can also be a problem, something which is overlooked by this crowd. If you don’t push and help the many small steps that come before the big leap, many big leaps will never become feasible.

Over-hyping the small steps as big leaps is the problem. If the scientifically literate people here are sick of it, imagine what the voting public thinks.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#418

Post by jmyeet »

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 isn't cynicism. It's a reality check:

1. Energy output != power generation. At the end of every fusion reactor is boiling water to turn a turbine to generate electricity. There's a limit on efficiency and we still aren't there yet;

2. Much like all of nuclear power (fission included) we brush over capital costs and focus on operating costs because that tells a much better story.

3. We still have energy loss from neutron loss;

4. We still have container damage to content with due to neutron embrittlement.

Even the article claims (and this is optimistic) that commercial fusion power generation is "decades away".

Much like FTL travel, we get suckered into unwarranted optimism because we want it to be tru, particularly with the fuel abundance and (no) waste issues. We also fall into th enaive trap of thinking if stars can do it, it must work. But what contains stellar nuclear fusion is gravity.

I'd argue there's still way too much optimism. Pointing out these issues doesn't make you a contrarian. It makes you a realist.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#419

Post by zargon »

latchkey wrote: post #373
PaulHoule wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm just glad these scientists are working on something other than nuclear bombs.

The entire point of LLNL is to study nuclear bombs.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#420

Post by chemmail »

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 doesn't matter if we find an infinite energy source. It will just shuffle the powers around. Nothing will really change. Humans will shift their fight to something else and inequality will still be the source of most of our problems.
Post reply on HN