US scientists boost clean power hopes with fusion energy breakthrough
Net energy gain indicates technology could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels
www.ft.com
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I'm looking forward to the announcement, but was having similar thoughts to you.Wouldn't be the first time they teased some "breakthrough" that was never repeated to amp up their funding.
Cool anecdote:I'm looking forward to the announcement, but was having similar thoughts to you.
Whatever it is, they've kept it under wraps pretty well, which is also really interesting. I usually get wind of major news. Not usually a ton of details, I'm far from the inner loop of NIF. But I do know some people that are, and I usually hear things. Could just be the holidays or something, but I've heard absolutely nothing about this before the public.I'm looking forward to the announcement, but was having similar thoughts to you.
Rippin said he’ll try to explain it to you.Following and looking forward to people much smarter than myself breaking down the press release into language I can understand .
That's a thermonuclear temp. The Livermore site, and several other scientific sites stated it the same way. That's 4 or 5 times the temperature of the center of the sun. I'm thinking that temperature dissipates rather quickly though.100 million degrees sounds rather warm to this science layman.
We usually don't use Kelvin/Celsius for thermonuclear temps. We usually use eV (electron-Volts). Ten million Kelvin is about 850 eV, which is pretty high even for that scale.100 million degrees sounds rather warm to this science layman.
That's a big deal, that makes it headline news. Now if it can be duplicated. Wow.They've been working on this for literally decades. The number I've read is that they got 120% out of it. If so, that is a huge step. They didn't just inch over the line at 100.1%, they blew past it in a way that they have been unable to do for the last 15 years. I'd be really interested to read that report.
3.15 MJ. That's even better than the rumors, and is nearly 3 times more energy then they have ever gotten out of it before. It's about 150% of the energy in the lasers.That's a big deal, that makes it headline news. Now if it can be duplicated. Wow.
At least now they are saying it's between 20 and 40 years away, rather than 50-60 yrs.3.15 MJ. That's even better than the rumors, and is nearly 3 times more energy then they have ever gotten out of it before. It's about 150% of the energy in the lasers.
For reference, I last worked at Livermore in 2006, and they were sure that NIF was going to be making exactly these headlines within a year. It took 16.
The number is important to report and it is great they actually led with that. There is about 2.1 MJ of energy in the lasers when they are fully utilized. In the past, Livermore has obfuscated by claiming they got more than 100% energy without giving the hard numbers right away. They didn't outright lie, but they only got more than 100% by changing what they considered "energy in" to something far less than what the broad scientific definition of that meant and from their own previously stated intentions. They first claimed to have gotten over a 100% return about ten years ago, when in fact they had about a 1% return. In short, they've lost a lot of credibility and by leading with the hard number of 3.15 MJ, they are gunning to get it back.
It's a huge leap. Their biggest reported shot prior to this was only about 1.2 MJ. The question I have now is about repeatability, but that will come in time. At least we know now that it is possible with such a procedure, which was something still hotly debated.
For the record, ITER and MCF designs in Europe have never produced a positive yield either. They are a bit ahead on engineering the next gen devices, but they still haven't even proved the concept yet.
All that said, what I said upthread still stands. This is a proof of concept machine and there is no way this machine or this design can reliably produce any energy for harnessing whatsoever. The lasers themselves are only about 1% efficient in generating their beams, so in essence they are still using 200 MJ to fire the machine and getting 3.15 out. That much is an engineering problem and a next gen device will be better and get better yield to boot. But we have a very very long way to go.
Another way of putting that I read somewhere is that this isn't so much a "Kitty Hawk" moment so much as it is that someone put an airfoil into a wind tunnel and was able to measure a very very very small amount of lift. Not enough lift to lift up a human or fuselage or even a motor big enough to power the fan required. But now that we now that powered flight is at least theoretically possible, we can set about trying to engineer to it and maybe someday eventually get a plane. It's a good analogy.
LOL. Yeah, this is one of those things that knocks 10 years off those estimates, but in general you can add a zero to any projections involving fusion power.At least now they are saying it's between 20 and 40 years away, rather than 50-60 yrs.
Yeah, I figure it's 40 years down the road. Which means I'll probably be dead. Unless I'm still alive at 94. If it happens in 30 years I might have a chance, but I doubt it will.LOL. Yeah, this is one of those things that knocks 10 years off those estimates, but in general you can add a zero to any projections involving fusion power.
It will be several years more of learning with what we have at NIF before we can intelligently design a "next gen" machine. And a decade before it gets the green light to get built, and probably 20 before it is actually built and active and we are learning more. People that say it is 20 years away from commercial viability are hopelessly optimistic. We are 20 years away from the next set of advanced experiments that might enable a small non-commercially viable demonstration plant in another 20 years after that. Unlike Kitty Hawk and early days of flight, each of these experiments takes billions of dollars, years of careful planning, and a state sponsor. It'll be awhile.
Yes, well there are a ton of applications that this can be applied to presently, including stockpile stewardship as mentioned in the video. But I didn't get the sense from the video that they were claiming commercially viable fusion was coming soon so much as that this is a really important milestone in that decades long effort.US Dept of Energy is making commercial applications appear a lot nearer than they are imo
I wouldn’t understand it anywayYes, well there are a ton of applications that this can be applied to presently, including stockpile stewardship as mentioned in the video. But I didn't get the sense from the video that they were claiming commercially viable fusion was coming soon so much as that this is a really important milestone in that decades long effort.
Edit: Having this capability for the stockpile stewardship program was actually the whole point of NIF in the first place and why the DOE tolerated spending billions on it. It serving as a groundbreaking public physics experiment was a nice bonus. I hope you'll forgive me if I don't go into the details of how exactly it helps for those purposes or respond to direct questions on that front.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/milestone-shot-enhances-future-stockpile-stewardship-fusion-energy-scienceI wouldn’t understand it anyway
Seems like we're really talking 50-60 years to me before it's a production ready, and globally extensible alternative to any other energy source.... at which time we get to fight some more wars regarding who's going to control the resources needed to produce the energy itself, or the raw materials used to construct the machine / facility used to produce the energy.... not to mention we get to have some economic meltdowns as all other forms of energy production begin to fall by the wayside and certain business sectors begin to lose value completely.LOL. Yeah, this is one of those things that knocks 10 years off those estimates, but in general you can add a zero to any projections involving fusion power.
It will be several years more of learning with what we have at NIF before we can intelligently design a "next gen" machine. And a decade before it gets the green light to get built, and probably 20 before it is actually built and active and we are learning more. People that say it is 20 years away from commercial viability are hopelessly optimistic. We are 20 years away from the next set of advanced experiments that might enable a small non-commercially viable demonstration plant in another 20 years after that. Unlike Kitty Hawk and early days of flight, each of these experiments takes billions of dollars, years of careful planning, and a state sponsor. It'll be awhile.