Fusion breakthrough?

[Tinker Grey]

I'll believe it when someone else replicates it, but still...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html

 

[Hans Blaster]

I'll believe it when someone else replicates it, but still...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html

The NIF (National Ignition Facility) isn't a power source development project. It never was.

The clue is in the funding agency: NNSA (National Nuclear Security Agency) and the location (LLNL).

The purpose is to study how high intensity hard radiation interact with fluids that can be triggered into nuclear fusion to better understand and characterize what Teller called "the Super". It's all about nuclear weapons technology.

(We won't here the specifics until tomorrow, but even if it was a viable energy technology this milestone is almost certainly the "we used 1 MJ of electrical power to get 1.2 MJ of fusion energy released without any means to capture it and even sustain the power needs of our machine" kind of announcement. The Tokamak-type reactors have already achieved this a few years ago and even though they have a proto-type for energy extraction they don't extract enough energy to sustain yet.)

 

[Tinker Grey]

The NIF (National Ignition Facility) isn't a power source development project. It never was.

The clue is in the funding agency: NNSA (National Nuclear Security Agency) and the location (LLNL).

The purpose is to study how high intensity hard radiation interact with fluids that can be triggered into nuclear fusion to better understand and characterize what Teller called "the Super". It's all about nuclear weapons technology.

(We won't here the specifics until tomorrow, but even if it was a viable energy technology this milestone is almost certainly the "we used 1 MJ of electrical power to get 1.2 MJ of fusion energy released without any means to capture it and even sustain the power needs of our machine" kind of announcement. The Tokamak-type reactors have already achieved this a few years ago and even though they have a proto-type for energy extraction they don't extract enough energy to sustain yet.)

I'm puzzled by your response. All I did was post an interesting article. I made no claims.

Second, the article claims that this is the first time a net gain has been achieved. Whatever this is, the claim is that it is more than what has been previously achieved.

Third, at the end of the article, they caution that it is a long way from being useful.

So, it seems like a milestone has been met. It seems that the article is clear-eyed about the claims.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I'm puzzled by your response. All I did was post an interesting article. I made no claims.

I know. It wasn't aimed at you personally, just putting a warning about any hype. (There will be no inertial confinement fusion (ICF) power plant. Tokamak, perhaps.)

Second, the article claims that this is the first time a net gain has been achieved. Whatever this is, the claim is that it is more than what has been previously achieved.

First time for ICF, certainly, but since the article was a bit vague. (No one but NIF is doing ICF it's really expensive.) I was pretty sure they were talking about the same thing at least one magnetic confinement experiment (JET I think) had done a couple years ago.

Here's an analogy I came up with:

Suppose thought we could get power by burning grass clippings. Certainly dry grass will burn, so it is not totally illogical, but freshly cut grass is quite wet (even if there was no dew) and does not readily burn. So,

1. They build a kiln to dry the grass and feed it into the furnace. The energy released in the furnace is equal to that used to dry the grass, "net gain", but it is not yet even practical since all you get is energy used to operate the kiln and then the burned grass energy wasted to the flue. (This is what JET and presumably NIF have accomplished.)

2. The next step is to extract the energy from the furnace to run the kiln. It isn't a power source, but it is a self-sustaining machine to destroy grass. It does demonstrate the rudimentary technology for extracting energy. (This is what ITER is attempting to do.)

3. Finally, the device extracts energy that can be used outside of the machine for unrelated purposes like heating homes or powering cars. (The follow on to ITER is a demonstration power plant.)

The fusion community has gotten to step 1 and it would seem with a second class of devices. The difference between NIF and JET/ITER is that JET/ITER (etc.) are attempts to build that grass-powered energy source and NIF is a kiln that feeds a gunpowder furnace to better understand how gunpowder explodes.

Third, at the end of the article, they caution that it is a long way from being useful.

Oh, it's already useful or they wouldn't still be funding it. It's just not a power plant related project.

So, it seems like a milestone has been met. It seems that the article is clear-eyed about the claims.

I really wish the article was more clear-eyed about the nature of NIF. It's a defense budget project for a reason.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I've now seen a little more and though I wasn't wrong above, it is even further away than I thought...

From sources I've seen, it was 2.1 MJ of laser energy that triggers 2.5 MJ of fusion energy. Not bad, but...

The lasers used are quite inefficient (about 1%) so it took about 200 MJ of *electrical energy* to trigger the 2.5 MJ of fusion. Now, there are more efficient lasers now available, but at the 10-20% level, so that would take 10-20 MJ of electrical energy to generate 2.5 MJ that we don't have a real plan to recover for power generation, nor can these things be burned in rapid succession. (But then again, this is a tool for researching H-bomb technology, not electrical energy sources.)

 

[mindlight]

I'll believe it when someone else replicates it, but still...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html

The exciting possibility is that in the future creation will produce more energy than destruction. That we will no longer be using up resources to create energy.

 

[Whyayeman]

I'll believe it when someone else replicates it...

There is an announcement about it every so often - when the project is applying for renewed funding, I think. In the UK we had Zeta. The European collaboration JET (Joint European Torus) near Oxford has made similar claims; NIF is not alone.

Nonetheless, fusion is a possible way forward - clean and green. (Apart from all those flying neutrons.)

 

[Mountainmike]

Out of curiosity, what do people make of the Helion process?
Deuterium plus Helium 3?
It looks to me far better designed as an extraction process.

 

[Whyayeman]

I can see that - if it can be done commercially - it could be as good or maybe better than the other fusion projects. All I have found is put on the web by the company.

I would appreciate any independent views.

 

[Mountainmike]

I can see that - if it can be done commercially - it could be as good or maybe better than the other fusion projects. All I have found is put on the web by the company.

I would appreciate any independent views.

One view is noticing who is backing it.
Capricorn are serious energy investors. Not blue sky research investors.

I have a simplistic view of fusion projects. Magnetic fields and superconductors are on a "moores law" type exponential growth.
Since much of fusion is about confining under extreme pressures - sooner or later the fields will be big enough.

Then the old joke will disappear overnight- "i know fusion is 30 years away, its always been 30 years away , and always will be!"

Because energy extraction process is one of the hardest problems, as is avoiding "solar" type flares in such as a tokamak - I think small scale will win, in which the "surface area to volume" ratio makes energy transfer easiest. I also think it will end up done on an almost quantum by quantum basis. One or a few at a time, to allow perfect control.

 

[Whyayeman]

I also think it will end up done on an almost quantum by quantum basis. One or a few at a time, to allow perfect control.

That would be clever!

 

[Ophiolite]

What it seems to boil down to is that instead of commercial nuclear fusion always being 35 years away in the future, it will now always be 34 years away in the future!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I know. It wasn't aimed at you personally, just putting a warning about any hype. (There will be no inertial confinement fusion (ICF) power plant. Tokamak, perhaps.)


First time for ICF, certainly, but since the article was a bit vague. (No one but NIF is doing ICF it's really expensive.) I was pretty sure they were talking about the same thing at least one magnetic confinement experiment (JET I think) had done a couple years ago.

Here's an analogy I came up with:

Suppose thought we could get power by burning grass clippings. Certainly dry grass will burn, so it is not totally illogical, but freshly cut grass is quite wet (even if there was no dew) and does not readily burn. So,

1. They build a kiln to dry the grass and feed it into the furnace. The energy released in the furnace is equal to that used to dry the grass, "net gain", but it is not yet even practical since all you get is energy used to operate the kiln and then the burned grass energy wasted to the flue. (This is what JET and presumably NIF have accomplished.)

2. The next step is to extract the energy from the furnace to run the kiln. It isn't a power source, but it is a self-sustaining machine to destroy grass. It does demonstrate the rudimentary technology for extracting energy. (This is what ITER is attempting to do.)

3. Finally, the device extracts energy that can be used outside of the machine for unrelated purposes like heating homes or powering cars. (The follow on to ITER is a demonstration power plant.)

The fusion community has gotten to step 1 and it would seem with a second class of devices. The difference between NIF and JET/ITER is that JET/ITER (etc.) are attempts to build that grass-powered energy source and NIF is a kiln that feeds a gunpowder furnace to better understand how gunpowder explodes.



Oh, it's already useful or they wouldn't still be funding it. It's just not a power plant related project.


I really wish the article was more clear-eyed about the nature of NIF. It's a defense budget project for a reason.

I saw one of the scientists involved saying that, as a 'proof of principle', it was a necessary step to obtain a new round of funding for further fusion research and development...

I have the sinking feeling that fusion power is like the self-driving car - the more progress one makes, the more difficult further progress becomes. But with self-driving cars, there's some utility even at level 3 or 4, OTOH commercial fusion is rather all-or-nothing...

 

[Mountainmike]

I saw one of the scientists involved saying that, as a 'proof of principle', it was a necessary step to obtain a new round of funding for further fusion research and development...

I have the sinking feeling that fusion power is like the self-driving car - the more progress one makes, the more difficult further progress becomes. But with self-driving cars, there's some utility even at level 3 or 4, OTOH commercial fusion is rather all-or-nothing...

I liken fusion more to for example Holography

Gabor struggled to prove it for decades using holes in gold foil for coherent light.
Along came the laser and it happened same day.

With magnetic fields on exponential growth. One day it will simply happen.
The intellectual leap will be in a radical new way to extract the energy so created

 

[Tinker Grey]

As per @Hans Blaster, here's Sabine Hossenfelder basically agreeing in the first 2-3 mins of this video: