US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved • Hacker News Board

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by geysersam » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

LarryMullins wrote: post #559

boc wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Your "honest feedback" is nothing more than naked insults. Sillysaurusx is right. The "impossibly complex" matter is actually quite simple, Q=1 is little more than a psychological milestone, not some sort of technical tipping point where further progress becomes easier. And they haven't even gotten to Q=1 unless you buy into the justifications they give for dodgy accounting of the energy they put into it. The "imposs…

You are entirely correct. I'll just add that it's not only about the energy put in, but ultimately about the cost. Net positive energy output is the absolute basic requirement. We're not there, we're not close, and even if we were, the hurdle would be to make it economically viable.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by hibbelig » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

emmelaich wrote: post #510

pishpash wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star stuff sounds like some German element.

Exactly what I thought! I checked with google translate. star stuff = sternzeug. stern stoff = star fabric

Stoff had more than one translation into English. One is cloth. Another refers to substances. Eg hydrogen is called Wasserstoff in German: water-stuff

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by zardo » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 10:59 PM UTC

Analog24 wrote: post #588

zardo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But maybe I'm missing something important about the economics? I think you've understood it. Imo fusion is never going to be able to compete with renewables+storage with the energy being captured from neutrons. Maybe reactions that release energy in charged particles or photons could, but they're even harder to do.

Could you elaborate on your point a bit more? If you're talking about utilizing the weak force vs. the residual strong force then I'm not sure this argument holds up. Also, when comparing to renewable+storage you have to consider how much land has to be dedicated to energy use in these scenarios. Wind and solar require orders of magnitude more than a potential fusion reactor (or an existing fission reactor).

Just referring to what particles the released energy is carried in.

The easiest fusion reactions to make happen release most energy as neutrons. But neutrons are, from a practical standpoint, a huge pain in the ass to deal with. They just fly off until they hit another atomic nucleus.

They irradiate the structure of reactor, making it radioactive and weakening it, neccesating periodic replacement. This means handling radioactive materials, which as the existing nuclear power industry demonstrates, is hard to make cheap.

Reactions that release excess energy as charged particles, though all harder to actually do, leave you with charged particles that can be directed by electric or magnetic fields and can be used for direct enerergy conversion.

Yes solar requires a lot of surface area, but fusion power is just not looking like it will be anywhere near cheap enough for the real estate savings to matter.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by postingawayonhn » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

w0mbat wrote: post #577

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #33

> LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE) Yesterday, everyone was complaining about the 2.2:2.0 ratio, but now we're working with 3.15:2.05. With modern lasers, that'd be a total Q of 0.375 assuming 100% ef…

Their total power draw from the grid was 300 megajoules and they got back about 3 megajoules, so don't start celebrating yet. Source: New York Times.

As I understand it that's largely because some of their equipment is outdated or not optimised. Building a new facility from scratch would result in a much lower power consumption from the grid.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by nonethewiser » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:02 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #190

JohnBerea wrote: post #100

Let's say this all works out and over the next few decades fusion replaces all other electricity generation, and we're past the point where all the initial infrastructure costs have been paid for. How much will my electric bill be reduced?

> How much will my electric bill be reduced? Your bill will be the same, or higher. But you'll be doing so much more with electricity. Push a button, and your clothes are clean in seconds. Push a button, and your beard is shaved in seconds. Push a button, and four of your five senses are entertained for hours.

Why cant you currently do those things then?

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by alchemyromcom » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:04 PM UTC

gretch wrote: post #480

steam_raven wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I understand this is a poem that is focused on artistic expression and not scientific accuracy, but I find the line about “carbon in our souls” to be out of place. I guess the rest of the poem is incidentally correct (when not abstract)

>Carbon in our souls

I think it might be an allusion to alchemy. Basically, the alchemists believed that ash (what was left after burning something) was the soul of all things...And-- this is where my complete lack of understanding about science shows-- I'm pretty sure Ash has lots of carbon? It's, you know, poetic. Many have claimed that poems are the "language of paradox" so it's okay for it to be a little non-literal. My interpretation of it, though, is that the soul is something impure that you must burn away, or maybe that the soul is polluted by our own words and behavior. It's definitely not meant to be scientifically accurate.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by vlovich123 » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:05 PM UTC

opportune wrote: post #636

markasoftware wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will not be a silver bullet, electricity production contributes less than half of global CO2 emissions. Still need other solutions for transport, industrial processes, agriculture, etc. Further, it's possible that fusion plants might be prohibitively expensive to build and maintain, even if their fuel is cheap.

I’m not thinking about just replacing grid energy, but carbon removal. If we can get fusion scaled up and efficient it should be no sweat to use it to just remove carbon from the air In fact carbon removal might be a great way to subsidize fusion at the outset so that it can be overprovisioned/have a guaranteed minimum price

$600 per ton of CO2. The industry is trying to get to $100 per ton of CO2.

Energy estimated is 1,200 kilowatt-hours per ton of CO2 removed.

Nuclear fission energy averages 0.4 cents/kWh. That's $480 in energy costs alone (ignoring profit margins for removal, etc).

Why would bleeding edge fusion that requires cutting edge lasers, magnets, and various other containment stuff have a cheaper energy generation cost? I could be wrong, but I don't think nuclear waste (which is the primary difference with fusion) is the primary cost contributor. So why would you want to invest in more expensive fusion to remove all this carbon instead of cheaper fission? Nuclear waste by the way isn't waste. It can be reused in breeder reactors and it's used a lot in medicine (I could be wrong but one of the reasons nuclear imaging has gotten more expensive is because radioactive materials are more difficult to obtain due to reduction in global fission energy).

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by nonethewiser » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:06 PM UTC

brianyu8 wrote: post #198

What an amazing achievement. I was curious, so I looked up the open software roles at LLNL[0]. I'm very curious how the salary compares to your average bay area tech salary. [0]: https://www.llnl.gov/join-our-team/careers/find-your-job/0d6...

See for yourself https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Lawrence-Livermore-National...

145k TC for Software Engineer. Better than I'd expect from a government job, although a qualified applicant could obviously make so much more elsewhere. And supporting the needs of a bunch of PhD's doesn't really sound fun.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by postingawayonhn » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:06 PM UTC

markasoftware wrote: post #625

opportune wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree. We should be dumping as much as we can in getting fusion up and running ASAP. It could be a silver bullet to stop climate change alone, and by driving energy costs lower, enable huge innovations in AI/automation and increasing material wealth. $1T to move fusion forward just 5 years from eg 2040 to 2035 could alone have a huge ROI in terms of climate mitigation and decarbonization

Will not be a silver bullet, electricity production contributes less than half of global CO2 emissions. Still need other solutions for transport, industrial processes, agriculture, etc. Further, it's possible that fusion plants might be prohibitively expensive to build and maintain, even if their fuel is cheap.

Most of those other things you mention can be electrified with current technology. Once that happens we'll need the electricity to power them.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

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Post by chrisbaker98 » Tue, Dec 13, 2022, 11:07 PM UTC

antonfire wrote: post #568

phtrivier wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't exist any more for structural reason. This generation was classically educated, without TV or social media in their childhood. They spent the time we're wasting on HN reading _books_ and following the discipline their elders learned in WWI. They had plenty of occasions to tinker. I claim the brains of those generation was structurally different from ours, and we're talking about the best minds of this gene…

> It's a trope to say that our "best minds are working on ads". "The last generation was better because they read _books_ and had _discipline_ and didn't waste their time on frivolous garbage" is also a trope.

Doesn't mean it's wrong.