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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#531

Post by Galaxeblaffer »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #526
Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's simply still not true. the last three plants built in Europe (England, France and Finland) has been very expensive because they've all been first of its kind and there hasn't really been built anything else. but if you take a look at what's happening elsewhere in the world KHNP for example has their standardized APR1400 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/APR-1400 reactor that seems to be very affordable Poland ju…

Someone suggesting the organization which made these predictions about solar https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOoa6xYXIAQKUnv?format=jpg&name=... and is headed by an ex OPEC employee might be making bad cost projections when real prices of real projects in 2022 have a median far lower than their projection from 2020? Must be a conspiracy theorist.

solar is fine in some places for some usecases and yes it's very cheap to add, but we've currently got no viable solution for storing the energy efficiently.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#532

Post by crote »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #295
Retric wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel is hardly the only advantage, the major issue with fission is the enormous costs of trying to avoid problems or cleanup after them. Thus 24/7 security, redundancy on top of redundancy, walls thick enough to stop aircraft etc. Fission is still by far the most expensive power source even with massive subsides and is only even close to economically viable as base load power backed up with peaking power plants. In t…

this is simply not true. according to IEA https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el... LCOE of nuclear is cheaper than almost all other possibilities we have. sure nuclear is very expensive up front, but a nuclear powerplant can run for 100 years while wind and solar had to be completely replaced every 25 years. your correct that nuclear has had some very expensive accidents, but the chance of a mo…

Do you have a source for the 100-year lifetime?

Currently a lot of reactors are hitting the 30-40 year mark, and they are running into significant issues with the aging equipment. We are seeing an increasing number of minor incidents, often caused due to manufacturing defects finally rearing its head, or just plain fatigue.

Meanwhile, solar has a 25-year economic lifespan. At that point you can make more money by replacing them with more efficient panels. However, manufacturers have already started offering 40-year warranties for consumer panels, at which point they have a guaranteed 88% power output. Wind indeed has a lifespan of 25 years, which seems pretty average when compared to literally any other power plant with moving parts.

When it comes to accidents, they are indeed extremely unlikely. However, the figure to look at is the potential damages multiplied by the likelyhood of the accident. When we look at those two together, they are definitely worth discussing.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#533

Post by SantalBlush »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

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…

>Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over.

We see these comments on every science thread because almost all of these people lack the requisite expertise to weigh in on the actual details, so instead they make a high-level criticism to give the appearance of having some kind of knowledge on the subject. Moreover, they think that crapping on things equates to being a critical thinker, and have convinced one another that this is so.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#534

Post by elihu »

rogerkirkness wrote: post #277
root_axis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reflexive contrarianism is far healthier than blind credulity. Skepticism should be the default state, especially for claims of amazing scientific breakthroughs.

The older I get the more I think it's just counter signaling that one is smarter than whoever did this work, which is almost certainly not the case.

I think it's more often just counter signaling that one is better informed or more realistic than whoever wrote the press release or media article, which may very be the case.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#535

Post by donquixote25 »

floxy wrote: post #523
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

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…

>Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps: That device in the photo is great. Looks to be about 16AWG magnet wire. Guessing a 10mm ID of the coil, and about 25mm in length. To get to 26 Tesla, looks like you'd need to push about 33,000 A through that coil. Coil inductance might be about 1uH, and if the test lasts ~1us, then you'd need 33kV to push that 33kA through the coil. 30kV/inch insulati…

Yea, the whole target bay is in vacuum which helps with the arcing.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#536

Post by tuatoru »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #436

This is great! Why is this great? It is great because between magnetic confinement and inertial confinement approaches to fusion generation it is the FIRST one to demonstrate energy gain. If you are programmer, think of it like your program compiled successfully for the first time. It means that all of the bits between you designing the program, the program being compiled, and the operating system recognizing it as a…

For certain values of engineering steps.

Scaling up Qplasma from 1 to ~1000, and scaling up operating time from a microsecond to a megasecond are just two of them.

I have a feeling there is still some science to do.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#537

Post by jkelleyrtp »

floxy wrote: post #523
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

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…

>Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps: That device in the photo is great. Looks to be about 16AWG magnet wire. Guessing a 10mm ID of the coil, and about 25mm in length. To get to 26 Tesla, looks like you'd need to push about 33,000 A through that coil. Coil inductance might be about 1uH, and if the test lasts ~1us, then you'd need 33kV to push that 33kA through the coil. 30kV/inch insulati…

Before ignition, very little science had been explored in the "burning plasma" regime. Now that ignition had been figured out, an entire new field of experimentation has been opened up.

https://www.llnl.gov/news/three-peer-reviewed-papers-highlig...

In particular, the original article talks about magnetic compression hypothesis being a byproduct of white dwarf simulation. With this new regime, they were able to apply the same ideas to fusion, resulting in the breakthrough.

With ignition being a regular thing in laser fusion going forward, I suspect many groups will have some slightly varied approach or some technique improvements.

If you're into fusion and lasers, there's a lot of areas that are still ripe for magnitude leaps.

- Laser power, timing, materials, and cost

- Metallurgy of the target canister

- Construction of the target and perfecting it as you mentioned

- Absorption of energy

I believe the NIF will focus on #2 and #3 as of course they focus more on making the "boom bigger" rather than making it cost effective of useful. IMO another group (startup or otherwise) will step in as an actual project in this space.

One area to innovate here is to use a different fuel mixture that doesn't produce neutrons. We wouldn't need liquid lithium/lead, breeding, or any of the complexities people very commonly complain about.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion

It's entirely within the realm of possibility that the technique to achieve ignition will open the door for 5:1 or 10:1 q with neutron-free fuels.

Even a total Q of 2:1 or 3:1 is a huge win, and that's within a magnitude of the modern tech.

--

Something I want to mention here too - the easiest aneutronic fuel mixture available is H2 + He3. It hasn't been explored too much since He3 is hard to come by on earth (though you can mine it from the moon!).

But, Helion has patented a way to generate He3 from H2 fusions. We don't need to mine He3 to achieve neutron-free fuels, just need to transmute it from seawater.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#538

Post by floxy »

steve_avery wrote: post #255

I have personally taken a tour of the NIF at Livermore. The guide was an old hand, who constantly remarked about the efforts of NIF towards "stockpile stewardship," ie the maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons. It seemed like NIF was all about the stockpile stewardship first, and fusion research was a secondary consideration. The capability of the NIF to get positive energy from the energy that they impart…

I'm a complete layman when it comes to ICF, but I'm assuming that there is a scaling factor between surface area and volume that would eventually help here? As in, the lasers initiate fusion on the surface of the fuel pellet, which propagates the fusion into the interior of the pellet in a chain reaction / positive feedback kind of way. So that if you increased the surface area of the pellet by a factor of 10, you'd get 100 times more total output energy (since there is 100 times more mass in a pellet with 10 times the surface area). So you'd need 10 times the current input power, but would get 100 times the output power.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#539

Post by peterashford »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #531
Schroedingersat wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone suggesting the organization which made these predictions about solar https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOoa6xYXIAQKUnv?format=jpg&name=... and is headed by an ex OPEC employee might be making bad cost projections when real prices of real projects in 2022 have a median far lower than their projection from 2020? Must be a conspiracy theorist.

solar is fine in some places for some usecases and yes it's very cheap to add, but we've currently got no viable solution for storing the energy efficiently.

Batteries, pumped hyrdo, compressed air energy storage, hydrogen, the (large and growing) EV fleet, thermal energy storage

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#540

Post by wingworks »

SantalBlush wrote: post #533
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

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…

>Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. We see these comments on every science thread because almost all of these people lack the requisite expertise to weigh in on the actual details, so instead they make a high-level criticism to give the appearance of having some kind of knowledge on the subject. Moreover, they think that crapping on things equates to being a critic…

They're probably going by past experience in other tech products, which get development news but then you never heard about it again, or, if your lucky it hits consumer markets like 10 years later.

I have no experience in fusion, so can't comment on that either way.

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