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Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

fusionenergybase.com

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Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#61

Post by aurizon »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #15

I heard that NIF was never intended to be a power plant, not even a prototype of one. It's primarily a nuclear weapon research program. For a power plant you would need much more efficient lasers, you would need a much larger gain in the capsules, you would need lasers that can do many shots per second, some automated reloading system for the capsules, and you would need a heat to electricity conversion system around…

Yes, after the test ban treaties, there was a huge push into exploring mathematical emulations of all aspects of fusion, and all assorted bombs, as well as laser ignition of pellets with these large lasers using inertial confinement of the pellet as the laser impacted it - analysing the fusion by observation of emitted neutrons. xrays etc. They issued reports from time to time(sanitised), and probably used the secret data to fine tune emulated weapons with fact points. The pellets were composed of potential fuels, various Hydrogens and Lithiums, varied in composition to explore the ignition space. A number of pellets performed well in terms of gain, but were far-far from useable fusion when the LL labs costs were factored in. I think they determined it could not ever work as a fusion energy source, but it provided data. They still mine data from it with various elemental mixes making up the pellets.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#62

Post by gosub100 »

dale_glass wrote: post #34

It should be noted that "breakeven" is often misleading. There's "breakeven" as in "the reaction produces more energy than put into it", and there's breakeven as in "the entire reactor system produces more energy than put into it", which isn't quite the same thing.

Especially since steam turbines are in the 30-40% efficiency range

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#63

Post by stshank »

damnitbuilds wrote: post #55

Hmm. How much of this progress is really progress to actual useful fusion power ? I want to believe, but this does not make that easier.

Progress toward net fusion energy is critical for delivering fusion power on the grid. It's not the only progress required — the rest of the machine has to be economical to build and operate. Most of the fusion machines in this paper are scientific projects, but as commercialization progresses, fusion machines with power plant needs in mind should arrive.

(I work for one startup in the field, Commonwealth Fusion Systems. We're building our SPARC tokamak now to demonstrate net energy gain in a commercially relevant design.)

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#64

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

Calwestjobs wrote: post #29
UltraSane wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar + days of storage is far more expensive than fission. Grid scale batteries like California has spent billions on only have 4 hour capacity. Fission can also supply heat that is needed for many industrial processes and chemical reactions.

it is not in most us areas. only problem is area covered, NOT price of technology. solar with 12 hour of storage was lower price than fission before covid hit. TCO, not one time nonsense. fission has relatively low temperature heat, i.e. no metal reduction, no "concrete" production. you can cook hot dogs with it. also electrification of heat can provide lower losses stemming from regulation or lack thereof. with elec…

I am no fan of fission (I strongly oppose new fission plants). But one problem with solar+storage is that the cost of the storage component increases roughly linearly with the desired storage duration. That's not true of a fueled power plant (fission or fossil).

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#65

Post by aurizon »

UltraSane wrote: post #27
sneak wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the ROI on that versus current and near-term expected pricing for solar+storage? Is fission getting safer/cheaper at the same rate that solar and batteries are?

Solar + days of storage is far more expensive than fission. Grid scale batteries like California has spent billions on only have 4 hour capacity. Fission can also supply heat that is needed for many industrial processes and chemical reactions.

There are a number of flow batteries, where they have large vats where charge is stored in 2 discrete charge state fluids in a redox reaction. They charge a vat through a cell and discharge it in the other direction. Limits are solubility of the charge states in the transport fluid = huge vats for total watt-hours and huge redox cells for rate of charge/discharge. Runs well and vats are cheap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_battery

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#66

Post by willis936 »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #15

I heard that NIF was never intended to be a power plant, not even a prototype of one. It's primarily a nuclear weapon research program. For a power plant you would need much more efficient lasers, you would need a much larger gain in the capsules, you would need lasers that can do many shots per second, some automated reloading system for the capsules, and you would need a heat to electricity conversion system around…

There is no need to ask for speculation. It's the top item in their mission statement.

https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/what-is-nif

>NIF is a key element of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the reliability, security, and safety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#67

Post by cyberax »

pfdietz wrote: post #28
cyberax wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ITER is in development hell. Mind you, it's not useless! It produced a TON of very useful fusion research: neutral beam injectors, divertors, construction techniques for complex vacuum chambers, etc. At this point, I don't think it's going to be complete by the time its competitors arrive. One spinoff of this is high-temperature superconductor research that is now close to producing actually usable high-TC flexib…

ITER doesn't use high temperature superconductors. It uses niobium-tin and niobium-titanium low temperature superconductors in its magnets. ITER has been criticized since early days as a dead end, for example because of its enormous size relative to the power produced. A commercial follow-on would not be much better by that power density metric, certainly far worse than a fission reactor. There is basically no chance…

> ITER doesn't use high temperature superconductors.

It does, for high-current buses that interface with regular resistive power distribution. They are also planned for some auxiliary components (like the neutral beam injectors).

> ITER has been criticized since early days as a dead end, for example because of its enormous size relative to the power produced.

ITER is NOT designed for power generation. It's essentially a lab experiment to see how plasma behaves in magnetic confinement and test various technologies.

That's why ITER was designed with a very conservative approach to reduce the technical risk. We don't need it to be compact, this can come later. We just need it to work.

And yes, it is necessary. Plasma behavior can't be simulated numerically or analytically. It always provides surprises, sometimes even good ones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-confinement_mode

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#68

Post by pfdietz »

cyberax wrote: post #67
pfdietz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ITER doesn't use high temperature superconductors. It uses niobium-tin and niobium-titanium low temperature superconductors in its magnets. ITER has been criticized since early days as a dead end, for example because of its enormous size relative to the power produced. A commercial follow-on would not be much better by that power density metric, certainly far worse than a fission reactor. There is basically no chance…

> ITER doesn't use high temperature superconductors. It does, for high-current buses that interface with regular resistive power distribution. They are also planned for some auxiliary components (like the neutral beam injectors). > ITER has been criticized since early days as a dead end, for example because of its enormous size relative to the power produced. ITER is NOT designed for power generation. It's essentiall…

> ITER is NOT designed for power generation. It's essentially a lab experiment to see how plasma behaves in magnetic confinement and test various technologies.

That's the go-to excuse. But if you look at DEMO, it's power density is not enormously greater. ITER is so far out of the running that DEMO (or PROTO, etc.) will be too.

We're learning a great deal about something that's largely irrelevant.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#69

Post by lotharcable »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #38
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #15

I heard that NIF was never intended to be a power plant, not even a prototype of one. It's primarily a nuclear weapon research program. For a power plant you would need much more efficient lasers, you would need a much larger gain in the capsules, you would need lasers that can do many shots per second, some automated reloading system for the capsules, and you would need a heat to electricity conversion system around…

Nothing about the NIF looks like a power plant to me. It's like the laser weapons guy and the nuclear weapons guy found a way to spend giant piles of money without having to acknowledge the weapons angle.

Yes. The NIF is a weapons research lab, not a power research lab.

The purpose of it is to show that the USA is still capable of producing advanced hydrogen bombs. More advanced then anybody else.

The '2.05 megajoules' is only a estimation of the laser energy actually used to trigger the reaction. It ignores how much power it took to actually run the lasers or reactor. Even if they update the lasers with modern ones there is zero chance of it ever actually breaking even. It is a technological dead end as far as power generation goes.

The point of the 'breakthrough' is really more about ensuring continued Congressional approval for funding then anything else. They are being paid to impress and certainly they succeeded in that.

However I suspect this is true of almost all 'fusion breakthroughs'. They publish updates to ensure continued funding from their respective governments.

People will argue that this is a good thing since it helps ensure that scientists continue to be employed and publishing research papers. That sentiment is likely true in that it does help keep people employed, but if your goal is to have a working and economically viable fusion power plant within your lifetime it isn't a good way to go about things.

If the governments actually cared about CO2 and man-made global warming they would be investing in fusion technology and helping to develop ways to recycle nuclear waste usefully. Got to walk before you can run.

Re: Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

#70

Post by itishappy »

hinkley wrote: post #36
UltraSane wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never intended to be a power plant but it was hoped that it would achieve a net gain fusion reaction for the first time. This turned out to be a lot harder than expected.

NIF has achieved net power, right? But only if you ignore the massive, massive power losses in converting electricity to feed energy into the system.

Correct. They got more bang out than they put in. The electrical-to-bang and bang-to-electrical conversions are not included.
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