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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#721

Post by KingOfCoders »

deng wrote: post #664
jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away". I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion. https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations Getting…

> Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. To be fair, that's not entirely the fault of HN. It's hard to get excited about fusion research when I almost always feel mislead, because it is almost never explicitly stated that we are talking about Q-plasma here. I don't expect much from science journalism, but I feel that the fusion scientists have no problem silently playi…

"but I feel that the fusion scientists have no problem silently playing along this misconception"

That is the way to keep the money flowing.

See

"How close is nuclear fusion power?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

and (different area but about how high investment physics works, "just around the corner")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qqEU1Q-gYE

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#722

Post by icare_1er »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away". I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion. https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations Getting…

HN is generally more excited in a minor release of well-known libraries or of GNOME, than in medical, space, or biology breakthroughs.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#723

Post by [deleted] »

ithkuil wrote: post #509
fundatus wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and fusion reactors will probably be even more expensive (especially the first ones). Looking at the current prices of renewables, I don't see a market for fusion reactors at all to be honest. After all we already have a giant fusion reactor just 12 light-minutes away from us! We just have to harvest that energy. The direction were already going (mostly market-driven nowadays actually!) is generation from renewa…

The distance to the sun is closer to 8 light minutes than to 12 light minutes. Or do you use heavier minutes, imperial minutes perchance?

[deleted]

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#724

Post by upsidesinclude »

jkelleyrtp wrote: post #447

Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away". I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion. https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations Getting…

Here's the thing:

In order to make inertial confinement work, this process needs to occur multiple times per second

All the fancy stuff with the hohlraum, magnetic compression, target cryo cooling must be accomplished accurately and repeatedly, BUT ALSO shot out of an "injector" to fall precisely into alignment with the lasers, in vacuum within a plasma field...

When you write it all out! Yikes!

Then! This has not included any capture of energy, so that part must be implemented as well, which would effectively mean placing all of NIF target chamber inside a thermal heat exchanger.

So, no, inertial confinement is probably the furthest from ever being a suitable arrangement from a power production standpoint.

Physicists have an uncanny ability to ignore engineering.

As a proponent of fusion and fusion research, it's important to keep the focus on what is valuable about the work being done and not mislead the general public about flights of fancy.

If you want to understand radiative pressure and plasma characteristics, this is the place to be, for sure

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#725

Post by mastayoda »

tstrimple wrote: post #604
whiplash451 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your program compiles for the first time is usually when the real trouble starts.

It's also when you can start iterating effectively.

Damn right!! on the path to make actually do what it is supposed to do.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#726

Post by 543g43g43 »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #689
543g43g43 wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the EROI of solar surpassed that of nuclear Where do you get your numbers from? >it would pay back that power in under two years. That's exactly the problem. This is a significant portion of the lifetime output of the panels. >it would still produce more energy in its lifetime than putting the coal in a coal plant. I'm not arguing that solar panels are a net negative, as you seem to be implying. I'm arguing that the…

Crystalline Solar panels have a benchmark lifetime of 30 years and are consistently outperforming predicted degradation rates. None have worn out yet, but the best guess is a median 40 year lifetime. A new panasonic or jinko mono panel installed in india has epbt under 6 months and an eroi around 100. You're the one making the insane claims. You back them up.

>A new panasonic or jinko mono panel installed in india has epbt under 6 months and an eroi around 100.

I certainly haven't made any claims as specific as this without any backup!

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#727

Post by pfdietz »

augusto-moura wrote: post #714
jemmyw wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Well I guess it is because we don't have a working fusion power reactor yet so the likelihood of an accident is zero. However, if we did have a fusion reactor it would be producing a lot more radioactive waste than a fission reactor. I definitely wouldn't want to make any broad sweeping statements about something that hasn't been built yet.

I'm a bit at a lost, can you elaborate on how fusion would produce more radioactive waste than fission? We already have a few fusion generators designs so is not a sweeping statement on something totally unknown. AFAIK, the by-product of fusing Tritium/Hydrogen is Helium, which is far from radioactive. I might imagine that some radioactive isotopes might get produced as well, but I can't imagine it being nowhere near…

More in the sense of a larger mass and volume of activated material. Fission waste has more curies of radioisotopes, but they're concentrated in the fuel rods.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#728

Post by pfdietz »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #646
rawgabbit wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your opinion of ITER? https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/05/world/iter-nucle...

Personally my money is on SPARC as a demo plant and its planned successor ARC as a commercial power plant prototype. Unlike ITER these systems use high field strength superconducting magnets, which directly translates to a much smaller machine for the same energy gain. Because of the smaller machine size, it can be built much faster than ITER. The company building SPARC plans to achieve first fusion around the same t…

ARC's volumetric power density is just 40x worse than a PWR's reactor vessel, vs. 400x worse for ITER. Neither appears to be on a route to an economical power plant.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#729

Post by belorn »

Retric wrote: post #706
belorn wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Oroville Dam in California had a failoure in 2017 leading to the evacuation of 188,000 people. Who paid for that? See for example [0], were a very low estimate ends up around 1 billion with the Federal Emergency Management Agency expecting to pay around 75% of that. Who and what funds that department? When a company files for bankruptcy the result is a legal process where the company seeks relief from debt. PG&E…

The Oroville Dam was built by California Department of Water Resources primarily for water supply and flood control with electricity generation effectively a useful byproduct. As a California government agency it’s self insured by the state government, which is a very different situation than a private company building a power plant exclusively to generate power. As to bankruptcy, insurance is normally required. Wild…

That is just exceptionalism. People view floods and fire as natural events even when they are directly caused by humans. Risk is risk. Insurance and regulations on energy production should be technology neutral. If technology X put $100 risk on society per 1TW/h, and a regulation targeting them reduces that to $1 per 1TW/h, then what technology X is doesn't matter. It is a risk that is carried by society and society has a responsibility to protect itself by balancing the benefit of risk reducing regulations with potential drawbacks.

Who is the primary owners in a power company matter very little. In many countries, especially in EU, the government tend to be the majority owners in power companies operating nuclear power plants. It doesn't change the risk factors.

Also I would never blame victims of flooding or wildfires. People who choose to live downstream of a hydro power dam, or chooses to live in areas with high risk of wild fires, has just as much power as people who choose to live next to a nuclear power station. If operators of dangerous and critical infrastructure do a bad job then the blame tree start with the owners and trickles down to each leaf.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#730

Post by galuggus »

cptaj wrote: post #720
fidelramos wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how this graph describes why nuclear fusion technology always seems to be "just around the corner": https://imgur.com/a/59NO34a

I really hate what hippies did to nuclear energy. We would've long solved the clean energy problem by now if they hadn't violently opposed anything with the word nuclear

nuclear energy is an existential threat to the green movement
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