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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#441

Post by qayxc »

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…

> the whole electricity is moving the goal post because there are plenty of other sources that primarily produce heat.

There's no industrial processes that make use of plasma in the 10s of megakelvins. It's also not moving the goal post at all, since generating electricity is the literal goal of nuclear fusion. If it's just heat you're after, we've solved that problem over 70 years ago. There's hundreds if not thousands of thermonuclear fusion devices readily available literally at the push of a button. But for some odd reason we try hard not to use them and focus on electricity instead...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#442

Post by dr_orpheus »

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 think there are a couple different types of cynicism and one might be more justified than the other.

The first one I see is along the lines of "This was only net energy gain in the plasma and not overall so it shouldn't be called a breakthrough". The net energy gain in the plasma is still a huge step and rightfully called a breakthrough.

The second one is along the lines of "These are just intial results and the article says the data is still under review". This one I totally get. Replication of scientific results and accounting for all sources of errors is real big deal. The NIF had an experiment last year where they we able to achieve an ignition reaction but were unable to replicate it.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#443

Post by scottLobster »

atty wrote: post #435
scottLobster wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I’d switch that from “quickly” to “eventually”, or “have a head start to” - we could get grid independence “relatively” quickly if the government subsidized it (I highly doubt first Gen fusion competes with natural gas or solar cost-wise), but a large amount of energy is used in transportation, home heating, etc.. Until those become fully electrified you’re still stuck in the fossil fuel economy.

True, I meant "quickly" on a relative scale. One advantage the 1st gen fusions would have is immunity to the supply shocks of fossil fuels and the intermittency of solar/wind. Plus we have workable electric vehicles and every home that has fossil-fuel powered heat by definition has a connection to the electric grid.

It wouldn't happen overnight, but I can think of few things that would kickstart the electrification of everything better than functional fusion power plants.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#444

Post by mgaunard »

nine_k wrote: post #388
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".

Rather, very anti science and technology hype . Many visitors of this website measure experience by decades, and have seen many waves of hype resiting in not much progress in unyielding areas, from self-driving car and silver-bullet methodologies to, well, commercial fusion. When demonstrable, measure progress is achieved, visitors of this site get very excited and positive, from things like the Rust language all the…

Not really convincing since Rust is 99% hype from people who misunderstand C++ and are just happy to join an "inclusive" cult

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#445

Post by whimsicalism »

kelnos wrote: post #360
whimsicalism wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> all fusion "got more energy out than we put in" I'm curious - given that this is the first time we have ever done this (even with the constrained definition as discussed in this article), how there can be a '"usual caveat" about all of the "got more energy out than we put in" stories'? AFAICT, this is the first such "story" to have ever happened artificially in history.

Because people like to shit on fusion, sometimes understandably so, after decades of over-promising and under-delivering. It's annoying and tiring, but there we have it. Yes, it's true that in this case we didn't actually "get more energy out than we put in" when considering the full closed system, but the point of this research was to see if they could get more energy out of the reaction itself than was put into it…

To be fair to the original commentator, their comment was moved from a different article where it was not so clearly explained.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#446

Post by aksss »

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".

Most people in tech are cynical about tech because they intimately know the vision is waaay further out than reality, they know the breed and sometimes the names of the squirrels running in the wheels making it work, and have gone through more figurative duct tape and baling wire than most developing nations.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#447

Post by jkelleyrtp »

Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away".

I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations

Getting fusion right is done a magnitude at a time. Right now NIF is within 1 magnitude if they built it with modern laser tech. Many fusion designs are 10 magnitudes away or more.

Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-im...

This includes

- Cryo-cooling the main target

- New alloys

- Magnetic compression of targets

The recent advancement that helped reach ignition (in the last article) boosted performance 40%.

The advancement between then and now: nearly 60%.

Within the past 6 months, NIF has nearly doubled energy output of the reaction.

Plus, if you know anything about fusion research, you'd know that energy outputs tend to scale non-linearly with energy input and size. This tends to be on the order of the power 3 or 4. Hence the existence of ITER.

NIF has uncovered some new science, closed the magnitude gap, and made it actually realistic for inertial confinement to be a feasible tech for a power producing plant.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#448

Post by Animats »

floxy wrote: post #372
kelnos wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NIF is using old laser technology. Current tech can get above 20% efficiency. Sure, that still means more improvement is needed, but 200x is probably an overstatement by an order of magnitude. > So we might be as close as 10-20 years away, as always! I don't really get the cynicism here. This is a huge milestone that's been passed. Maybe with this, we actually will be 10-20 years away. Or maybe it's more like 30-…

Anyone have insight into how this new development differs from this article from back in 2014 about the NIF, entitled: "Fusion Leaps Forward: Surpasses Major Break-Even Goal" https://www.livescience.com/43318-fusion-energy-reaches-mile...

Right. Livermore has been working on this since the 1970s, with increasingly powerful lasers. Now, they claim "theoretical breakeven" - slightly more energy came out of the reaction than went into the reaction. But 100x less than went into the lasers, let alone the whole facility. Nor is energy being recovered.

This was never expected to be a power plant technology. It's a research tool, for studying fusion.

"Technical breakeven" is when the plant generates enough energy to run itself. This is at least 100x below that.

"Commercial breakeven" is when it makes money.

How's that Lockheed-Martin fusion thing coming along?[1]

[1] https://lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.htm...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#449

Post by leaving »

ibejoeb wrote: post #381

Very encouraging to see at least some enthusiasm for this. This is the real way forward. We can't just stop using energy. We can't buy our way forward with "carbon offset" fees. And, most importantly, we can't just redirect all of our environmental conservation efforts to eliminating energy use. Remember when we were going to save the rainforests? Don't forget why we called these "green" initiatives in the first plac…

You are correct. We need to control our own numbers at a sustainable level.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#450

Post by anyfoo »

qayxc wrote: post #441
DesiLurker wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> the whole electricity is moving the goal post because there are plenty of other sources that primarily produce heat. There's no industrial processes that make use of plasma in the 10s of megakelvins. It's also not moving the goal post at all, since generating electricity is the literal goal of nuclear fusion. If it's just heat you're after, we've solved that problem over 70 years ago. There's hundreds if not thousa…

The question is whether this is a breakthrough and a significant milestone or not. It seems to me like your comment suggests that we have hit the "significant milestone" marker only when we have an actual electricity-generating fusion reactor, which I think diminishes the actual breakthrough that a positive net energy gain represents (if correct). It was long sought after, it has now been reached.
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