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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

#701

Post by TMWNN »

panick21_ wrote: post #599
p_j_w wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

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

I was told that Twitter would collapse and die any day now a month ago.

It seems to be holding up well enough during the current mega world event known as the FIFA World Cup.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#702

Post by jboy55 »

tgflynn wrote: post #673
metal_am wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular research is literally built off of weapons research (National Ignition Facility).

Yes but, as far as I know, research into achieving laser induced fusion hasn't itself run into many classification hurdles. I suspect that may not be the case with the scaling phase.

It is interesting that there hasn't been many classification hurdles on something that is pretty explicitly weapons research. My guess is that they achieved high Q values a long time ago in classified research using mechanisms that would give away some secrets.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#703

Post by blibble »

eklitzke wrote: post #262
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…

Tangentially related, but I think this is an interesting fact, all the atoms in our universe/galaxy/solar system with a mass up to that of iron are formed in the core of stars in stellar fusion. Hydrogen fuses into helium, and as a star nears the end of its lifetime you get heavier elements like lithium, carbon, and so on. Under normal stellar fusion no elements heavier than iron will be produced, and iron is only el…

> all the atoms in our universe/galaxy/solar system with a mass up to that of iron are formed in the core of stars in stellar fusion.

all is a strong word

for example: the nuclear fusion experiment in the article, that would have produced a few atoms heaver that hydrogen

(not to mention all the nuclear bombs that had a fusion stage)

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#704

Post by jboy55 »

azinman2 wrote: post #238
pfdietz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a circular argument. It's big because the people doing it call it big. Why should I, an outsider, care about their internal goals, their egoes, or their status in their field? What does it do or imply for me?

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…

The issue is, we've been able to get more energy out of a fusion reaction than put in for 60-70 years now. The H-Bomb is very good at doing that. You will say, yeah, but an H-Bomb is a one time use thing, and it has a habit of destroying everything. If you look into how the second stage of an hbomb is speculated to work, its pretty much identical to this experiment, that is by design, not by accident.

From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7

Herrmann acknowledges as much, saying that there are many steps on the path to laser fusion energy. “NIF was not designed to be efficient,” he says. “It was designed to be the biggest laser we could possibly build to give us the data we need for the [nuclear] stockpile research programme.”

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#705

Post by jboy55 »

davedx wrote: post #520
TeeMassive wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H-bombs use the hydrogen to produce more neutrons which boosts the fission process. It still is a fission bomb.

Nope... "thermonuclear bomb, also called hydrogen bomb, or H-bomb, weapon whose enormous explosive power results from an uncontrolled self-sustaining chain reaction in which isotopes of hydrogen combine under extremely high temperatures to form helium in a process known as nuclear fusion."

Yes, but if you get into the details... The second stage of a bomb is the fusion in which a cylinder of hydrogen and/or lithium is encased by U-238. The primary stage, a trinity-like a-bomb, forces the cylinder to compress by its x-rays. The fusion reaction creates a bunch of energy, but more importantly a huge amount of neutrons. These neutrons cause the u-238 to undergo fission, which is responsible for a majority of the energy and pretty much all of the fallout.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#706

Post by jboy55 »

jasonhansel wrote: post #624
jboy55 wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its actually pretty good, since this is primarily weapons testing. The real money is being spent in the EU, where there is at least a chance of getting a sustainable fusion reaction.

Not really. IIRC the NIF needs to pretend that it's about nuclear weapons to secure DoE funding; they (like us) know that it's really about developing fusion as an energy source.

Or it needs to pretend its about fusion as an energy source, to mask its really about creating and maintaining a stockpile of h-bombs that could destroy every city on earth.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#707

Post by carabiner »

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.

They put 2.05 MJ in and got 3.15 MJ out. The 300MJ comes from equipment inefficiency- remember this is a research facility to prove plasma physics and ignition itself, mainly designed for weapons research. The fact they got definite fusion at 1.53x input energy is not just breakeven, but net gain. This is the first time ever we've gotten net gain, in any fusion device. A lot of people in gov leadership thought fusion was impossible, the fact they can said they did it, despite 1980s era technology and a shoestring budget for decades, really says something. ICF is just one fusion technology, and probably not the best one, but fusion in general will probably see a massive budget increase worldwide now that it's been proven it can be done.

I fully expect a working fusion plant of some kind by 2030, assuming funding increases. Once we get them commercialized; coal, wind, solar and other power production will be obsolete for the most part. We can also use fusion heat to separate waste into it's base elements (you can recycle anything!), and help make any process needing a lot of thermal or electrical energy more efficient.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#708

Post by binkHN »

dublin wrote: post #585
yonaguska wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tritium is very popular on gun sights as well- as it's a glow in the dark sight that doesn't need to be charged. I'm now questioning the practice of appendix carrying with tritium sights.

Well, it lasts for several years, but considerably less than even a human lifetime: Tritium's half-life is only about 11 years, so gun sights, dark-proof glow-in-the-dark signage (usually reserved for critical industrial plants, ships and offshore platforms due to expense), etc, will become seriously degraded in just a few years. (Since the glow is directly proportional to the remaining low-level beta radioactivity,…

> Tritium's half-life is only about 11 years, so gun sights ... will become seriously degraded in just a few years.

We'll all be using RDSs by then ;) ?

> ...I've been told that Trijicon will replace their tritium gun sights for the lifetime of the original owner.

I didn't know this, thanks.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#709

Post by rtsil »

jmartrican wrote: post #443
eklitzke wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related, but I think this is an interesting fact, all the atoms in our universe/galaxy/solar system with a mass up to that of iron are formed in the core of stars in stellar fusion. Hydrogen fuses into helium, and as a star nears the end of its lifetime you get heavier elements like lithium, carbon, and so on. Under normal stellar fusion no elements heavier than iron will be produced, and iron is only el…

So that means that for life to form, we probably need a star to die so that the heavier atoms used in complicated life forming chemical reactions (correct me if i am wrong here as what I'm about to say depends on it), hence it could be the case that if the universe is 13.5 billion years old, then we humans are appearing in the universe at the earliest possible time. 13.5 billion years seems like the time required to…

That assumes that life as we know it is the only possible form of life.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#710

Post by dqpb »

julienreszka wrote: post #662
dqpb wrote: post #627

> maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing What is meant by this?

Since the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water was signed in 1963, all nuclear weapons tests must be performed underground. This is typically done by digging a deep shaft or tunnel in the earth and detonating the weapon at the bottom of the shaft or tunnel. The explosion is monitored by a variety of equipment, such as seismographs, radiation detectors, and air sample…

Is this ChatGPT? It doesn't answer the question.

When I ask ChatGPT it says:

"fusion is not directly related to nuclear weapons or the maintenance of a nuclear deterrent"

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