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Fusion News Ignites Optimism

nature.com

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Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#71

Post by tsimionescu »

motoboi wrote: post #69
tsimionescu wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, is the pellet the highly precise gold holhraum described in the article? If that is the case, then isn't this whole thing obviously doomed to failure, given that the entire advancement described consisted of even more sophisticated methods of producing that holhraum?

The gold thing houses the pellet. It’s needed because the lasers by itself cannot compress the pellet. It’s the heat from the lasers that causes the gold thing to compress the pellet to the infernal pressure needed to trigger fusion.

Ok, but isn't the gold thing also essentially destroyed in the process? As far as I understand, for it to work,it has to be supremely smooth, or ot fails to generate the required patterns. Can it be re-used for a second pulse, after it is exposed to the thermal stress of the millions of kelvins and the mechanical stress of the explosion?

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#72

Post by TeMPOraL »

Someone wrote: post #58
neutronicus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, capital-E Energy is mostly for capital-W Work and thermodynamics. Once you refrigerate your living space and don't walk anywhere and everything you want is brought to your door what else are you going to do?

I’m not sure whether you’re serious, but: Bigger cars? Supersonic city trips to the other side of the world? Weekends in Antarctica? A week in one of SpaceX’s hotels? High-resolution screens on every wall of your home, plus the AC needed to keep your house cool? Reshape a mountain to improve your view? Transform lead into gold? Mine bitcoin? If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. At best, t…

> If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature.

Perhaps the reverse, eventually. If costs of space travel dropped enough, we could push polluting industry out into orbit and further, and start repairing Earth. It's impossible now, but if there were little difference on the margin for the businesses between working on the surface and upwell, then businesses would hesitantly say "ah, what the hell, we'll do our stuff up there, you go ahead with your silly environmental programs if that floats your boat". Social progress happens when the market stops caring about it, and doesn't resist it anymore.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#73

Post by jounker »

myrmidon wrote: post #32
tsimionescu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that i…

Not sure I agree with this; I just don't see the weapon applications of fusion power... Also most participants are either already nuclear powers (US, EU, Russia, China, India) or could just build thermonuclear weapons already if they wanted to (Korea, Japan, etc.) Or maybe you had completely different weapon applications in mind?

Electricity for high power directed energy weapons. (This is my guess as to why Lockheed’s skunkworks has been working on compact fusion reactors.)

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#74

Post by tsimionescu »

Ottolay wrote: post #47
danjac wrote: post #37

Great! Does that mean fusion is going to be here in just 10 years in the future as opposed to the 20 years in the future it's been for the last 50 years?

Who knows. The problem is not getting fusion, but getting fusion to economically produce power. Hopefully one of the startups figure out some way to make it work. I have a hard time seeing the NIF approach becoming economical. It's more of a science experiment.

And very likely a weapons experiment, as has been said by others. This kind of indirect ICF is the closest model of what happens in a thermonuclear weapon.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#75

Post by Someone »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #72
Someone wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure whether you’re serious, but: Bigger cars? Supersonic city trips to the other side of the world? Weekends in Antarctica? A week in one of SpaceX’s hotels? High-resolution screens on every wall of your home, plus the AC needed to keep your house cool? Reshape a mountain to improve your view? Transform lead into gold? Mine bitcoin? If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. At best, t…

> If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. Perhaps the reverse, eventually. If costs of space travel dropped enough, we could push polluting industry out into orbit and further, and start repairing Earth. It's impossible now, but if there were little difference on the margin for the businesses between working on the surface and upwell, then businesses would hesitantly say "ah, what the hell,…

In a world where energy is free, I don’t see polluting industry as a problem. What pollution is there that can’t be prevented if you can spend as much energy as you want in recycling stuff? If you try hard enough, about everything can be taken apart into its chemical elements.

The problem would be the demand for resources. Yes, there’s the asteroid belt, but it is far away. Would we get there before we would have dug up the earth? Maybe.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#76

Post by pfdietz »

danpalmer wrote: post #70
pfdietz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost has been the problem with fission. The first nuclear buildout in the US ended because of market forces, not because of TMI. Costs were higher than promised, a constant problem then and now. Electricity demand growth slowed, and with the passage of PURPA in 1978 non-utility sources started to be added to the grid. Nuclear could not compete with them even then. Nuclear's long term prospects are poor, for one big r…

> Nuclear's long term prospects are poor, for one big reason: it has never shown good experience effects. Good point, I hadn't considered this. I would suggest that a possible cause for this is lack of investment though. We had the 1st generation. Most current reactors are gen-2 or gen-3. Gen 4 hasn't really started use, still in R&D I think. There are ideas for Gen 5 but no progress. Each generation seems to bring m…

I think the problem is not lack of investment, but how nuclear power plants are built. Experience effects come from people doing a task over and over, learning to do it faster and modifying it so it can be done faster and better. But there's little opportunity for that in nuclear construction. Most workers will not work on many NPPs, and the designs are not easily changed.

It might be better if a string of smaller but identical NPPs were built with overlapping construction timelines, so groups of workers could specialize on one part of the construction of each and switch to the next in line to repeat the process. This would be a kind of assembly line without a factory. But this would require construction of many reactors, which means they'd have to be small. Renewables benefit from having huge opportunity for this kind of pipelining, because individual units are so small.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#77

Post by motoboi »

tsimionescu wrote: post #71
motoboi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gold thing houses the pellet. It’s needed because the lasers by itself cannot compress the pellet. It’s the heat from the lasers that causes the gold thing to compress the pellet to the infernal pressure needed to trigger fusion.

Ok, but isn't the gold thing also essentially destroyed in the process? As far as I understand, for it to work,it has to be supremely smooth, or ot fails to generate the required patterns. Can it be re-used for a second pulse, after it is exposed to the thermal stress of the millions of kelvins and the mechanical stress of the explosion?

Destroyed.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#78

Post by bjowen »

danpalmer wrote: post #30
tsimionescu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are). One thing to remember is that a major goal of fusion research is also weapons applications, those that i…

I have never heard of fusion weapons research, or what they would even be. My understanding is limited but where I can see fission leading to weapons, I can't see the same for fusion. Could you give some more detail? What form would a fusion weapon take? Is it about the laser technology?

The NIF and some other facilities (eg the Sandia Lab Z machine) are for studying fusion plasmas in order to understand their behaviour in thermonuclear weapons first, and possible application in power generation as a distant second. That’s pretty explicit, it’s a way of keeping up nuclear weapons research and maintenance without detonating actual devices and breaching test ban treaties and causing various other messes.

JET, ITER, Wendelstein and other magnetic confinement facilities on the other hand are investigating fusion as a source of grid energy.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#79

Post by tsimionescu »

motoboi wrote: post #77
tsimionescu wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but isn't the gold thing also essentially destroyed in the process? As far as I understand, for it to work,it has to be supremely smooth, or ot fails to generate the required patterns. Can it be re-used for a second pulse, after it is exposed to the thermal stress of the millions of kelvins and the mechanical stress of the explosion?

Destroyed.

So the extremely precisely machined piece of heavy metal is essentially part of the fuel. That seems like a no-go for commercial energy generation without any firther discussion.

Re: Fusion News Ignites Optimism

#80

Post by eru »

wnkrshm wrote: post #22
danpalmer wrote: post #4

While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability. These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes. Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or…

Use of fusion as an energy source removes a lot of threats our civilizations are facing but it also comes with some caveats rooted in human behavior. Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power me…

> While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power means more consumption and demand for other goods that get used up while using things that consume power.

Eh, we are sitting on a giant ball of matter. Not much worry about using stuff up.

(We might use up any one particular thing. But there are substitutes.)

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