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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#481

Post by colechristensen »

mgoetzke wrote: post #38

While I appreciate all the effort in nuclear fusion and do think we should continue to invest a little of each years global R&D budget, it seems these reactors (e.g ITER and this one) still require tritium which is rather hard to come by efficiently. Which means normal nuclear reactors will be needed to make it and minimising any economic viability of the dependent fusion rector for a long long time.

Tritium will be bred in the reactor that uses it. Exactly how is a problem which will be solved further down the development path but there’s little question about the viability of that.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#482

Post by jimbob45 »

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 isn't practical and it isn't exciting. Shoving unexciting breakthroughs in everyone's face is part of the problem with science funding today. It's tough for actual breakthroughs to get traction in the news cycle because of all these underwhelming duds.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#483

Post by adamsb6 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #452
scottLobster wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most people, yes it's just another Monday. Same way the observation of the Higgs Boson was just another day. Maybe worth an hour or two of curious investigation, but of no immediate consequence. Question is, are we watching the first Wright Brothers' flight, or are we watching one of the marginal glider improvements in the 19th century that would eventually contribute to the first Wright Brothers' flight 40 years…

For the vast majority of people, the Wright Brothers' flight was also "just another Monday [or whatever day it happened to be]". It's a bad criterion for judging something noteworthy.

In the case of the Wright Brothers, most people didn't even believe it. One factor at work was that they'd been primed by years of Respected Scientists saying that it was physically impossible.

The newspapers didn't cover it until random people started asking why the feats they'd seen with their own eyes weren't being written about.

https://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/Aviations_Attic...

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#484

Post by zbobet2012 »

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…

EUV light source generate plasma that is in the megakelvin range today for silicon lithography. It's obviously not the same and still cooler, but the assertion that we don't make use of highly energetic plasma is off.

Secondly, your attempt at being pithy about nuclear bombs is a complete loss. We previously only knew how to achieve an inertial confinement based fusion reaction with a positive Q factor by first setting off a fission bomb, and this was only done for the neutron generation to increase the amount of fissionable material exploded (which is why they are called fission-fusion-fission bombs).

We can now generate fusion energy in a way that is obviously confine-able. That's a major step, and it's not THAT hard to imagine many mechanisms of turning a hot droplet into energy. For example the hohlraum itself in an indirect system will obviously be heated by the reaction and could be used to generate steam. Engineering that makes no sense though if you can't get a high Q factor out of the ignition itself, hence the focus.

This four sentence post is a perfect example of OP's point. No insight, no though process, just a pithy negative reply.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#485

Post by qayxc »

donquixote25 wrote: post #463
qayxc wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does it only feel "very healthy" to be critical because you are being critical of the idea? Who's critical of the idea? I literally said it's good progress. What 's not good, however, is exaggeration, sensationalism that puts potential views and hype before substance, and raising expectations for something that's still essentially just basic research. This has nothing to do with bias of any kind. It's just poor jou…

Many fusion new articles have this problem but i would argue that this time, how FT categorized this is appropriate. This is literally the first time the scientific break-even (not engineering break-even) has been achieved by any controlled experiment, including MCF. How is that not a breakthrough?

> How is that not a breakthrough?

I will try to be really positive here. The researchers managed to achieve ignition on an area less than the width of a human hair for 100 trillionths of a second.

The resulting fusion may have gotten scientific break-even (again - no officially published results yet). This is great progress in terms of basic research, for sure.

On the other hand, we have experiments like Wendelstein 7-X, an experimental reactor that already can hold a stable plasma for seconds and is planned to go up 30 minutes of continuous operation early next year (construction is already finished).

The researchers state that they want to test, whether continuous operation is possible, how the plasma can be handled, how the materials and magnetic fields can be optimised and whether their approach is practical.

So on the one hand we have a theoretical result that may or may not be a scientific break even and is hailed as a major breakthrough that will open the door for commercial fusion reactors and lasts for trillionths of a second within a miniscule aera. No continuous plasma, no work on practical reactor design, just good old fashioned basic research at its best.

On the other hand we have working, practical fusion reactor experiments that are already able to hold a stable plasma for seconds and are tackling the engineering challenges of actually producing electricity. Some are designed for engineering break-even and Qp > 1 (e.g. ITER) and not ready yet, while others "simply" examine the practicality of a particular design (e.g. Wendelstein 7-X) and actually worked and continue to improve by orders of magnitude (in terms of operation time), pushing continuous operation time up to 30 minutes.

Now that I gave some context, how much of a breakthrough are we talking about? I don't know. All these experiments are important, of course and are required for the end goal of achieving economically viable stable power generation using nuclear fusion. I'd just like to wait for an official publication and a proper subsumption by other experts in the field.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#486

Post by moloch-hai »

scottLobster wrote: post #416
PicassoCTs wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no more reason to believe that than about fission. Fielding practical fusion would cost more than fission, and fission is not today competitive. (Some people are spending others' money trying to make fission competitive.) Unless somebody comes up with a copious supply of cheap tritium, it can have no substantial effect here, though it might be useful for outer solar system exploration.

But building out solar, wind, and storage will very predictably achieve energy independence, for radically less expense. No breakthroughs needed, but gratefully applied where found.

Can fusion power generation be made to work cheaply? Each day the question becomes less relevant.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#487

Post by simonh »

ethanbond wrote: post #354
Moissanite wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On fusion energy and battery technology I see plenty of cynicism, but given the history of wildly over-stated "advances" in both fields I think people are justified in leaning towards pessimism.

The reality of course falls short of the most optimistic projections, but e.g. for batteries: look around! Wealthy countries at least are now full of little gadgets that couldn't have existed even a few years ago due to the battery demands. A walk down any street in NYC you'll see probably 5-8 different personal transportation systems that are pretty close to sci-fi.

I agree on batteries, but something like half a dozen Manhattan projects worth has been spent on fusion research so far and we don’t seem anywhere remotely close to achieving even a fraction of its promise. I remember reading about the future of fusion energy in my teens, and now my daughters are coming out of their teens. And I had kids late. I’m sorry but technical break even just doesn’t cut it for me at this point.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#488

Post by marricks »

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.

People get cynical when they’ve been duped a hundred times on a hundred different things. I’d blame media more than users.

But yeah, certainly seems like this time is different. Really hope we start seeing more breakthroughs after this as it’s great news.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#489

Post by dontwearitout »

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,…

I like to remind people now and again that humankind's very first attempt at inertial confinement fusion was wildly, ridiculously, terrifyingly successful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike.

These may seem like tiny steps forward, but once the genie is out of the bottle it's going to be nuts.

Also this laser tech is ancient, once there's a major economic driver behind it I expect they'll rapidly advance.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#490

Post by jillesvangurp »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #60
rapsey wrote: post #51

Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.

> Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them. Right now they are, but they often rely on materials from politically unstable regions (particularly Africa), or potential political rivals (China). Also, many solar panels require polysilicon from China, which is almost certainly produced with forced labor. https://www.csis.org/analysis/dark-spot-solar-energy-indust…

There are quite a few battery chemistries now that don't involve any cobalt. And the ones that do can get their cobalt from more reputable sources than the mining industries founded by colonial powers in Africa. (often backed by big oil and mining corporations). Cobalt and other minerals were mined long before lithium ion batteries came along, for example.

For all the crocodile tears about children mining cobalt, it's easy to forget how other industries can be just as bad or much worse. Of course, critics of batteries are laser focused on only and exclusively criticizing how bad things are when it comes to batteries and literally nothing else whatsoever.

I mean, do you want to talk about oil? Or coal? Or copper? Or uranium? Nasty industries, each of them. Especially oil. Lots of environmental destruction, poor working conditions, the occasional bit of genocide or sponsored corruption, wars, etc. Mining and oil/gas industry just are a nasty. Especially when everybody just accepts it as normal and looks the other way.

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