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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

#741

Post by petilon »

OJFord wrote: post #718
ohyes wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, it depends on how the reaction scales. If the reaction does not scale linearly (as is claimed) you don’t necessarily have to get more efficient, you just have to up the power until the output curve has increased past the input scaling. How big that is is determined by the efficiency of the input device itself, but it isn’t a question of if it will ever happen.

Yes, sure, it's just still a breakthrough or so (or at least work , I don't know how within grasp it is) away from what one may have (as did I) initially assumed. Tangentially, it does seem fairly intuitive that it should be non-linear in that 'jump start' as it were: a fire can be grown arbitrarily large having started from a single match (or flint or whatever).

Right... look at some of the reactions:

"In terms of the physics, we are basically there, and the rest of it, at some level, is just engineering," he said.

[1] https://www.cbs58.com/news/wisconsin-reacts-to-breakthrough-...

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#742

Post by tuatoru »

hackbinary wrote: post #679
w0mbat wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

300 MJ is about 83 KWh. In the UK is 1 KWh is £0.34 So, this costs £28 in electricity to run this experiment. The experiment is a momentary thing. Clearly there is now some work to, but now this is becoming an engineering problem of how to extend, sustain, and scale this process.

To have a hope of supplying grid power, they need to scale up the energy gain by four orders of magnitude and reactor run time by 12 orders of magnitude.

Those are just two of the engineering problems. It'll be a while, and I doubt it will ever compete with solar, wind, and storage.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#743

Post by Retric »

naikrovek wrote: post #681
w0mbat wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

don't you think it's nuts that your arrogance would have you believe that the people on the ground doing the experiment know less about the power consumption and output than you do? Because I do. There's a lot of supporting stuff as well as energy to drive that stuff that goes into leading edge tech development like this, that does not matter in terms of the reaction itself. If they say they achieved more output than…

The paper was very clear what was involved and that information was poorly communicated. The experiment used X energy from a laser pulse to get Y thermal energy. The issue w0mbat referred to is to be self sustaining you need to use the output energy to drive the process. Aka the important number is after all relevant losses including electricity > lasers > fusion > heat > electricity, with each of those stages have losses. The reason they don’t communicate end to end efficiency is from a scientific standpoint it’s meaningless as they aren’t converting any thermal energy into electricity.

For example p + p Fusion releases neutrinos which then escape any practical device without depositing their energy as heat. This isn’t a concern with DT fusion but again the point is we don’t really care about the actual mass to energy conversion but rather the amount of useful energy obtained.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#744

Post by lossolo »

DesiLurker wrote: post #355
jpeter wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if Musk spend 44 Billion fusion

Imagine if we've spent 10% of the current military budget ($600B+) on renewables & fusion. We wouldn't have to fight those wars for resources.

> We wouldn't have to fight those wars for resources.

You mean wars for oil? Fusion would not solve that, that wars were not about energy per se but about control and domination, keeping USD as world reserve currency and US as world hegemon. Look at Taiwan and chips situation, no oil there, there will be always some "oil" out there that you will want to control instead of giving that control to your rivals. It's game theory 101.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#746

Post by [deleted] »

hackbinary wrote: post #679
w0mbat wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

300 MJ is about 83 KWh. In the UK is 1 KWh is £0.34 So, this costs £28 in electricity to run this experiment. The experiment is a momentary thing. Clearly there is now some work to, but now this is becoming an engineering problem of how to extend, sustain, and scale this process.

[deleted]

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#747

Post by davrosthedalek »

saboot wrote: post #474
davrosthedalek wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was: NIF would be funded via DOE whether or not it's relevant for weapon research. Sorry for not have been clearer.

If it was already decided to be funded, yes it would have been under DoE. Though I believe the weapons aspect had a very major contribution in deciding for it to be funded at all. It was proposed shortly after the nuclear testing ban and has been a big part in fulfilling that area. I'm not trying to correct you, but adding context for the weapons aspect.

Yes, you are right, the funding decision was probably influenced by the weapons research.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#748

Post by nrki »

IanCal wrote: post #689
nrki wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

300MJ ~= 83kWh which is like, $2000 in CA

I think you're out by some orders of magnitude. With the current energy issues in the UK it'd be under £100. Other things suggest in California it's more like 20 cents per kWh so were you thinking ~$20?

You're right of course, messing up my units again.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#749

Post by zbobet2012 »

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.

A quick peruse through this wikipedia article will tell you what still needs done, and what this means:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy

Give it a read. Intertial confinement fusion with a Q > 1 may very well point the way towards a realistic powerplant. Fusion is at a point it deserves investment. The NIF cost about the same as a single b-2 bomber.

Re: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

#750

Post by fastball »

oreilles wrote: post #669
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

Cheaper and cleaner energy has never in the history of enery lead to global reduction of pollution, actually pretty much the opposite. Plus, nuclear power is already virtually free and has been available since the 1970s. If stopping climate change was an energy source problem, it would have already been solved then.

Basically the only energy that is cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels is wind and solar, which have only gotten to that point in the last 1-2 decades, so it seems difficult to make claims about what has happened in "history".
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