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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

#591

Post by w0mbat »

subsubzero wrote: post #372
spullara wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the mass before of their fuel, 1 deuterium atom + 1 tritium atom: 2.01410177811 u + 3.01604928 u = 5.03015105811 u vs the mass of the fusion products of 1 helium atom and 1 neutron: 4.002602 u + 1.008 u = 5.010602 u You'll notice that even though we started with 5 neutrons and 2 protons and ended up with the same number there was some additional binding energy that is unaccounted for in the new configu…

Do we know how much tritium is needed for a city's energy generation? What about a state etc? Reason I ask is the only uses I have seen for tritium is on old watch dials made in the pre-90's. Curious how much of this resource is out there.

Tritium is also used in gun sights.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#593

Post by kelnos »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #154
Robotbeat wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only because they’re using old school flash pumped lasers, not the new solid state lasers you’d use today if you wanted to make a power plant demo.

It just seems a little strange to take credit for a milestone when the milestone everyone cares about is yet to be reached. (More energy out than in.) Good to hear that there's a laser design that might achieve that.

It is a milestone, and I do think the researchers deserve credit for that. Getting more energy out of the reaction than was delivered to it by the lasers is actually important.

No one (except perhaps poor science "reporters") is claiming that this means we now have free and cheap fusion power. Of course the energy put in to operate the lasers themselves needs to be accounted for -- and it is! -- but that doesn't make what they've achieved useless. It's also useful to remember that the researchers involved are not the people writing press releases and articles; let's not minimize their achievement just because of sloppy, sensationalist reporting.

I like the analogy downthread of a kid being excited about scoring a home run in baseball, but the dad chastising the kid for celebrating before actually winning the game. That's what it feels like is happening here.

This is a huge step in the right direction, and it should be celebrated as such.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#594

Post by floxy »

pfdietz wrote: post #380
azinman2 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To achieve fusion for power production, you need more output than input. For 60+ years this hasn’t been achieved in a replicated fashion. Now it has, and it’s 50% more power rather than 0.1% more power as was sometimes shown for 2 nanoseconds before. So now we know fusion for power is possible. If it can be scaled successfully (now likely not an if anymore, but a function of time), then we have the ability to have cl…

I'm asking why this somewhat arbitrary line being crossed is something I should care about. It doesn't imply fusion will reach a state of practical application. Why is this more exciting that achieving a ratio of .1, or .5, or 2, or 10? It seems entirely arbirary to me, and smells of an argument that somehow this has made the end goal significantly more attainable.

>why this somewhat arbitrary line being crossed is something I should care about.

That is something personal and unique to each individual. In 1903 when the Wright brothers flew a heavier-than-air machine for 59 seconds, 99.99999% of the people on the planet wouldn't have cared. The airplanes you've flown on are vastly far removed from that original one. Same story for the point contact transistor in 1947. None of that solid state physics is used for modern transistors. Some people like to be early adopters for new ideas and things. Some don't. And that is OK.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#595

Post by govg »

supergirl wrote: post #457
sigmar wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their goal was to produce a fusion reaction not to improve laser efficiency. That's a bit like complaining they didn't account for the energy used to structure the fuel. I don't think it's 'specific accounting' when (output/input)>1 was their goal from the start

yeah but why is that a worthy goal? does anyone know how to make the lasers 100x more efficient? or did we shift the problem from one impossibility (efficient fusion) to another (efficient lasers)

Because their mandate is to study a different part of the puzzle from what the laser researchers do. The NIF uses really old laser tech, and in parallel the world has moved onto 20x more efficient lasers. The NIF just wanted to prove they could get a laser (bad one) to hit a pellet and the pellet would send out more energy than the laser put on it. Improving the laser, improving the pellet materials, improving transfer from pellet to usable energy are all different problems being solved by different people.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#596

Post by low_tech_punk »

low_tech_punk wrote: post #590
freediver wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting these in the same basket is hardly justified.

AI can be quite useful in real-time computation for magnetic confinement. But sure, that's beyond GPT-3's current capability.

And at some time point in the future, the fusion generated energy will be used for training the power-hungry AI to improve the efficiency of fusion.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#597

Post by hgsgm »

steam_raven wrote: post #451
stock_toaster wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff”. – Carl Sagan

We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names" Nikita Gill

Was that originally in a different language? "Heart" makes more sense than "soul", and could be translates loosely.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#598

Post by micromacrofoot »

sigmar wrote: post #179
micromacrofoot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that while this is important progress, it's a bit of specific accounting. The entire system still requires more energy input than output, but this isolated piece can now output a little more than input. > This is indeed a promising and exciting result, but we need to remember that this does not take into account the energy required to run the lasers that confine the reaction and other inefficiencies and losses.…

Their goal was to produce a fusion reaction not to improve laser efficiency. That's a bit like complaining they didn't account for the energy used to structure the fuel. I don't think it's 'specific accounting' when (output/input)>1 was their goal from the start

The goal in the eyes of the layman is to produce a stable fusion reaction that outputs more than input.

While this is great progress, I feel that it's important to have the full picture. There's a lot of "fusion reaction breakthrough fatigue" stemming from the misunderstanding that fusion power isn't a technology that requires a singular breakthrough.

There are many breakthroughs required to get to fusion powered energy, and this is an important one (worth celebrating) on a long road ahead.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#599

Post by panick21_ »

p_j_w wrote: post #373
adventured wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given it's Musk and his stated primary life goal, the most ridiculous aspect of the Twitter debacle for him, is: not only of course did he overpay for Twitter by at least 2x; not only is his net worth going to contract as Tesla's stock compresses (such that the poor Twitter decision is going to be that much more painful in relation to his overall wealth); but the $40x billion could have probably paid for getting Star…

>the $40x billion could have probably paid for getting Starship to Mars. Maybe he doesn't actually believe in Starship.

Or maybe he expected Twitter to actually make money, or at least not lose money.

And this could still be true.

People here act like he bought Twitter and then deleted the website. This isn't the case.

Did he overpay, yes, but its still a business that is worth something.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#600

Post by sergiomattei »

randomsearch wrote: post #513

This is a really hard question to answer, but do you think in peacetime 1930s if you’d asked someone how long it would take to build the bomb, they’d say “we’re only a few decades away with proper funding”? The pay off achieved by accelerating fusion development seems to justify almost any amount of spending. Is it worth going for it? The most important subquestion for me: is there a sufficiently brilliant living sci…

Science is a collaborative achievement. There isn’t one scientist that can deliver at this scale and complexity.
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