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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

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Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#811

Post by tsimionescu »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #806
tsimionescu wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is irrelevant - each shot also requires a highly precision engineered piece of metal called a hohlraum to be destroyed. With current technology, running an ICF plant would cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars per hour in hohlraums, since a single one costs millions, and you need to shoot several times per minute to produce energy. That's why ICF is not even close to being a plausible electricity genera…

hohlraums are not expensive because of base materials, but because today we generally produce them as one offs and the process is incredibly man hour intensive. The DOE "roundtable" on the announcement today addressed this. For an actual look at the challenge of ICF i'd say look here: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.p... and also consider that it might be used in combination with MCF for ex…

They are one-offs, but even if they were to be mass-produced, they require extraordinary precision. I very much doubt claims that one can be built in the range of a few dollars that each shot is worth in terms of generated electricity.

The reports you quote actually mention the target costs very clearly. The IAEA one talks about needing 500,000 targets per day, and sets a target of 0.30$ per target. At the time it was written, it says that a target costs 1000$, which is probably before NIF found put just how much more stringent the requirements for the shape of the target were (since the numbers I saw last time NIF achieved ignition were closer to hundreds of thousands of dollars per target, though maybe I am misrembering).

It's also worth noting that that report was expecting NIF to achieve the current milestone within 3-6 years, and it actually took 13. So I feel their numbers can well be considered optimistic.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#812

Post by Schroedingersat »

panick21_ wrote: post #783
fundatus wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sure nuclear is very expensive up front, but a nuclear powerplant can run for 100 years while wind and solar had to be completely replaced every 25 years. Hinkley Point C is currently expected to cost around $31 billion once finished for a measly 3,000 MW. For that money you could build ~2,300 15MW onshore wind turbines - which would add up to roughly 34,500 MW capacity. So even under the assumptions that - you hav…

What if Britain would have simply built 20 Hinkley Point C starting a new one every year at first and then after a couple years multiple every year. The same people moving form project to project, on-boarding new people. Just as France did in 1980s. This would result in very cheap competently green grid for the next 100 years. Wind turbines have to be replaced 3x in that time and you don't have to deal with intermitt…

Remind me what the lifetime EAF of those 80s French nuclear plants is?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#813

Post by bheadmaster »

galuggus wrote: post #730
cptaj wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

green movement is an existential thread to nuclear energy

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#814

Post by voqv »

Brometheus wrote: post #709
voqv wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "All the problems associated with" what? Economic challenges of quickly building grid-scale battery storage , battery production for the entire globe, NIMBY's etc. > Modern batteries don't burst into flame they literally do > the overwhelming bulk of storage is not batteries Well overwhelming bulk is a high bar and storage is geography dependent. Germany f.e. can't build as much pumped storage as Australia and Aust…

Germany can has and will very well be building hydrogen and compressed air storage.

Well they certainly say they will, not sure about the rest.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#815

Post by voqv »

moloch-hai wrote: post #717
voqv wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "All the problems associated with" what? Economic challenges of quickly building grid-scale battery storage , battery production for the entire globe, NIMBY's etc. > Modern batteries don't burst into flame they literally do > the overwhelming bulk of storage is not batteries Well overwhelming bulk is a high bar and storage is geography dependent. Germany f.e. can't build as much pumped storage as Australia and Aust…

Germany has an overabundance of hills. Most places do. But pumped storage is just one of many options Modern batteries do not burn. Teslas do.

> an overabundance of hills.

That's not sufficient for pumped storage at scale, but Germany is mostly focusing on hydrogen for now.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#816

Post by eloff »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #279
eloff wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is laser based fusion, which is super cool, but it might be a stretch to expect 200x more efficient lasers. Still maybe there's other things you could do, like make a bigger fusion reaction. Hydrogen bombs do it, so maybe.

The lasers they use today are 20x less efficient than state of the art. The capacitors are also massively less efficient. So they only "need" to drive the Q factor of the reaction up by ~5x to be positioned to build something with a net energy gain. Because of the physics of fusion (or ICF) returns on power are non linear. It's very much possible research here results in a path to a "net gain facility".

I wasn't aware actually. I was under the mistaken impression that their progress has only been possible because they were using state of the art lasers. This could actually be possible then, and far sooner than magnetic containment fusion.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#817

Post by upsidesinclude »

zbobet2012 wrote: post #751
upsidesinclude wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 in…

All of the problems you just described are solved for in EUV lightsources for lithography on chips at 100khz or more. These are less hard then you make them sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw Probably the hardest part is making sure the droplet is cost effective enough that we care. Again, to op's point, this is an incredibly shallow analysis. The question I would be pushing towards is: What are the h…

These processes are not similar.

The laser does not hit the target, it hits the interior of the hohlraum. Generating x-rays, this creates radiation pressure on the cryogenically cooled target, which is inadequate for fusion without also pulsing a high magnetic field to confine the plasma (this is now inertial/magnetic confinement fusion).

The energy output is not sustained for any duration, but rather is nearly instantaneous. The plasma and debris must be cleared of the beam path for the next laser pulse and target injection.

These are the hardest remaining engineering problems if you discount the fact that energy must then be absorbed and put to use with constant material degradation of the target chamber and the necessary high output production of tritium filled beryllium capsules.

We are unlikely to overcome these challenges for substantially longer than the time period required to generate a functioning EUV machine.

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#818

Post by inanutshellus »

jeffparsons wrote: post #527
inanutshellus wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your conversation with your neighbor has no meta-conversation going on. Online discussions "between two people" merely mimic a conversation so the audience (of potentially thousands+ of people) can learn and be swayed. Online conversations are inherently broadcast so the stakes are too high to acquiesce or make concessions for whomever's willing to actually take the bait and engage on "important" topics.

That's a good point. I guess I hadn't really thought about how performative discussions on public forums are. Maybe embracing that more deliberately somehow could produce a worthwhile difference?

Being able to bring the audience "in" on the broadcast nature of these (presumably authentic) conversations on X contentious topic would be an intriguing problem to solve. With AI coming more mainstream, an AI analysis of conversations might be where you could shine, including calling out astroturfing (like spam is detected today).

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#819

Post by simne »

pfdietz wrote: post #803
simne wrote: post #799

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand. ITER will RESEARCH, how existing materials withstand in real fusion reactor, and gather parameters of real fusion reactor, so other science facilities will have benchmarks.

ITER is fundamentally unable to replicate the conditions that materials will be subjected to in an actual commercial fusion reactor. It cannot achieve the same cumulative neutrons dose that a real reactor can experience. It will not be able to answer the questions that need to be answered to prove out the materials for first walls or blankets, and it will not be able to establish reliability metrics for these structu…

> ITER is fundamentally unable to replicate the conditions that materials will be subjected to in an actual commercial fusion reactor

Are You joking? Or You just don't know physics?

What REALLY differ ITER (DEMO) from real commercial reactor?

Re: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

#820

Post by simne »

pfdietz wrote: post #748
simne wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With D-He3 process, most energy generates as neutrons (about two magnitudes more than in fission reactors) and as break x-ray. Each will be converted to heat in walls and in shielding blanket, which cooled by water.

No, D-3He produces rather little energy in neutrons, especially if the D ions can be kept less energetic than the 3He ions to suppress the DD reaction. The D+3He reaction itself produces 4He and a proton. NIF uses DT, not D3He, btw.

> The D+3He reaction itself produces 4He and a proton

Yes, I made mistake. Thank You.

But this is not making much difference from neutrons from D+T reaction, particles are not too convenient to got energy from their moving.

Much better pure Boron+Carbon reaction, from which energy will go just as photons, for example could be used to feed laser/maser and then convert to electricity by photovoltaic or high frequency power diodes.

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