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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#611

Post by imchillyb »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #49

After a few more major breakthroughs we'll be where fission was in 1942 after Fermi made the first man made neutron chain reaction. After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like, and see how much people actually care about small amounts of tritium radiation. At the moment fuel costs in fission are like 5-10% of total costs for a fission fleet. In fusion it could be lower, but that wil…

> ...put special rocks in a grid and pump water over them as they pour out their star energy.

I'm pretty sure I saw that in a 'goop' sales pitch.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#612

Post by moloch-hai »

kelnos wrote: post #338
dylan604 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep telling me the same thing with the same lack of results, I could say the same to you as being boring and repetitive. Just because you say 2+2=5 and someone tells you you're wrong every time doesn't mean they are boring and repetitive.

How is this "lack of results"? This particular announcement is a huge result! Maybe it's not the result you think it should be ("with all they hype over decades, we should have fusion power by now"), but... too bad. It is what it is, and this particular announcement is indeed impressive.

It is not, in fact, a huge result, except insofar as it is convenient for further weapons research. It does not bring civil fusion power even a single day nearer.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#613

Post by donquixote25 »

moloch-hai wrote: post #599
donquixote25 wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vacuum is supposed to increase arcing. People who want to prevent arcing flood the cavity with sulfur hexafluoride. Fun fact, it has 25,000 times the "greenhouse potential" of CO2. Dunno if that includes lifetime in the atmosphere, or just instantaneous opacity to IR. All the wind turbines are pumped full of it. There is an effort on to switch to something else of proprietary composition.

That is only true to a certain point. Look up Paschen's law. After you go lower than a certain point, around 10 Torr cm depending on the gas, decreasing pressure increases the breakdown voltage.

It's probably not feasible to pump to such low pressures in wind turbines, so they probably don't even try. But for NIF, it's common.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#614

Post by headsoup »

Very disappointed with the disappointment comments in this thread. People without relevant experience commenting about others without relevant experience commenting on the topic at hand.

Please reserve commenting for the experts who are specifically familiar with NIF.

Oh no now I shouldn't have commented /error

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#615

Post by shostack »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #537
floxy wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Is it possible to leverage these power gains to feed back in via increased laser power?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#616

Post by moloch-hai »

543g43g43 wrote: post #33
entropicgravity wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately large fusion is unlikely to ever be economic because the cost of solar/battery is coming down so quickly and is already in the 1-2 cents per kilowatt hour for the solar component. And costs will continue to drop. Small scale fusion on the other hand would have a viable niche application at the poles, in the sea or underground or any other environment that is without sun or space.

We won't know what the cost of solar/battery will be in a sustainable energy economy, until someone builds a solar-powered solar panel and battery factory. At the moment, productions costs are heavily (as in, entirely) subsidised by fossil fuels (mostly coal).

Cost of current production is an upper bound. As power costs fall, production costs that depend on that will fall, in lockstep.

Production is not subsidized: factories pay full price for their power.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#617

Post by batrastard »

Retric wrote: post #175
acidburnNSA wrote: post #49

After a few more major breakthroughs we'll be where fission was in 1942 after Fermi made the first man made neutron chain reaction. After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like, and see how much people actually care about small amounts of tritium radiation. At the moment fuel costs in fission are like 5-10% of total costs for a fission fleet. In fusion it could be lower, but that wil…

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…

The most expensive before or after taking greenhouse emissions into effect?

Seems like power generation still counts on externalities being external.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#618

Post by moloch-hai »

pfdietz wrote: post #546
moloch-hai wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the only one with a ghost of a chance. Still only a ghost, and the 3He supply problem looms.

They'd make their own 3He by also doing DD fusion. It's properly a DD+D3He concept.

I would like to see a demonstration that the synthesis method would exceed consumption. It should be possible with current tech, if at all.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#620

Post by tsimionescu »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #402
tsimionescu wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICF works for its purpose - research into thermo-nuclear weapons (fusion bombs). It has nothing to do with energy generation though, and never has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#As... That's utterly incorrect: "Fast ignition and similar approaches changed the situation. In this approach gains of 100 are predicted in the first experimental device, HiPER. Given a gain of about 100 and a laser efficiency of about 1%, HiPER produces about the same amount of fusion energy as electrical energy was needed to create it (and thus will require…

This is irrelevant - each shot also requires a highly precision engineered piece of metal called a hohlraum to be destroyed.

With current technology, running an ICF plant would cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars per hour in hohlraums, since a single one costs millions, and you need to shoot several times per minute to produce energy.

That's why ICF is not even close to being a plausible electricity generation technology, so it is only being researched by nuclear weapons research labs like LLNL.

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