Scientists Achieve Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough With Blast of 192 Lasers (nytimes.com) 162
Scientists studying fusion energy at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California announced on Tuesday that they had crossed a major milestone in reproducing the power of the sun in a laboratory. From a report: Scientists for decades have said that fusion, the nuclear reaction that makes stars shine, could provide a future source of bountiful energy. The result announced on Tuesday is the first fusion reaction in a laboratory setting that actually produced more energy than it took to start the reaction.
"This is such a wonderful example of a possibility realized, a scientific milestone achieved, and a road ahead to the possibilities for clean energy," Arati Prabhakar, the White House science adviser, said during a news conference on Tuesday morning at the Department of Energy's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "And even deeper understanding of the scientific principles that are applied here." From an environmental perspective, fusion has always had a strong appeal. Within the sun and stars, fusion continually combines hydrogen atoms into helium, producing sunlight and warmth that bathes the planets.
In experimental reactors and laser labs on Earth, fusion lives up to its reputation as a very clean energy source, devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels and the dangerous long-lived radioactive waste created by current nuclear power plants, which use the splitting of uranium to produce energy. There was always a nagging caveat, however. In all of the efforts by scientists to control the unruly power of fusion, their experiments consumed more energy than the fusion reactions generated. That changed at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 when 192 giant lasers at the laboratory's National Ignition Facility blasted a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond.
"This is such a wonderful example of a possibility realized, a scientific milestone achieved, and a road ahead to the possibilities for clean energy," Arati Prabhakar, the White House science adviser, said during a news conference on Tuesday morning at the Department of Energy's headquarters in Washington, D.C. "And even deeper understanding of the scientific principles that are applied here." From an environmental perspective, fusion has always had a strong appeal. Within the sun and stars, fusion continually combines hydrogen atoms into helium, producing sunlight and warmth that bathes the planets.
In experimental reactors and laser labs on Earth, fusion lives up to its reputation as a very clean energy source, devoid of the pollution and greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels and the dangerous long-lived radioactive waste created by current nuclear power plants, which use the splitting of uranium to produce energy. There was always a nagging caveat, however. In all of the efforts by scientists to control the unruly power of fusion, their experiments consumed more energy than the fusion reactions generated. That changed at 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 when 192 giant lasers at the laboratory's National Ignition Facility blasted a small cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that contained a frozen nubbin of hydrogen encased in diamond.
More fusion hype. (Score:3, Informative)
https://jabberwocking.com/warn... [jabberwocking.com]
Once again, the hype doesn't live up to the reality. The total input power was 422 MJ, with output of 25 MJ. It just so happens that on the last step (after 402 MJ is used up), you've got 20 MJ of lasers that create 25 MJ of energy output.
This is not even close to a cigar.
Re:More fusion hype. (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, here's a non-paywalled article [cnn.com] on the same topic. Dear Slashdot Editors: Please take five minutes to find non-paywalled articles when someone submits a link for one. You do understand that YOU are being gamed by NYT shills, right?
https://jabberwocking.com/warn... [jabberwocking.com]
Once again, the hype doesn't live up to the reality.
Indeed. Sabine Hossenfelder did a great video recently [banana-pi.org] on all the ways the scientific community games the system for fusion research, specificially with the "net energy gain" claims.
You have to love the Slashdot article, though: ...Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough... ... estimated it will take “a few decades” more work before it’s ready for commercial use.
Headline:
From the article: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Kim Budil
It goes without saying that what she means is "a few more decades at the increased funding level that this fundamental breakthrough so richly deserves."
I'd like to see these types of things slapped down for the academic misconduct that they are.
Re:More fusion hype. (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry I am not seeing any misconduct -- they are making progress.
Let's see, in fact we have the definition of Ignition as has been used for decades right here https://www.physics.utoronto.c... [utoronto.ca]
"Ignition occurs when the energy deposited by products of the thermonuclear burn during one confinement time equals the energy required to heat the plasma to thermonuclear burn temperatures. The specific energy (in J/g) required to heat a D-T plasma with equal electron and ion temperatures T (in keV) is
Eheat = 0.1152 xl0^9T= 2.3 xl0^9 J/g at 20 keV "
Also stated clearly in that 1992 paper: "However, ignition alone is insufficient for ICF power production, which must overcome a factor of 10-20 due to implosion efficiency and a factor of 3-20 due to driver efficiency."
By meeting the criteria of net energy, they have overcome the implosion efficiency issues, because they did generate more energy than the lasers emitted. That's a big deal. They increased energy generation 50x over a period of 4 years in the same facility. Back in 2018 they could only eke out 50kJ and the situation seemed almost hopeless .. they'd been trying for 9 years at that point and thought improving every year they were still far from 2 MEGA joules. They proved that, even outside of a nuclear weapon, the energy used to create and hold the fusion reaction can exceed the energy required to create the reaction.
TL;DNR: There's no misconduct or fraud. This is an important milestone. The next milestone is exceeding energy needed to operate the facility. That may require a new facility (made with bigger and more efficent lasers called DPSSLs) unless they can come up with some genius-level innovations.
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There's no misconduct or fraud. This is an important milestone. The next milestone is exceeding energy needed to operate the facility. That may require a new facility (made with bigger and more efficent lasers called DPSSLs) unless they can come up with some genius-level innovations.
The average schmedlock is going to believe that Fusion power is just a matter of scaling because the fact that we are now achieving more energy out for energy in means we are on the doorstep of clean unlimited power.
I call this the somewhat more subtle misconduct of allowing people to believe something that is not quite true.
Which can all be alleviated by citing Qtot, instead of Qin to Qout.
Why would they not do that? Well, perhaps because we need to think about the Qin to Qout as more like 1in to
Re:More fusion hype. (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, it is, in fact, "just a matter of scaling." The fusion yield percent will go up dramatically if you increase the power of the lasers. Why do you think they use a total 2 MJ of lasers instead of say 1 joule lasers?
We're not on the same wavelength here. It took 422 MJ of power to get 25 MJ out. You don't even start scaling until you get more out than you use to get that output.
If we assume to want x MJ out, it won't be worth much unless we only put a small fraction of that X MJ into it. Qtot is nasty, and the orders of magnitude reduction in total power in to out is nothing short of immense.
And when we're running these things balls to the wall 24/7, the cooling needed is just going to add to the power needed. Can we do it? Maybe, but anyone thinking that this is the breakthrough is hoping pretty hard. ~1 percent power out to power in is the real number of importance, and is going to be every bit as hard to achieve as hitting the total power in to total power out at 1, much less make enough energy to make electrical power from.
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https://thebulletin.org/2017/0... [thebulletin.org]
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Care to cite that? Because there is nothing radioactive coming out of the fusion process. It generates neutrons, and a bit of helium.
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/64... [osti.gov]
It's an older paper, but the physics are good, and it uses pretty plain language.
Here's a bit about what neutrons do https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It might be that they are called neutrons and that people think they are harmless. Anyhow - hope thiis helps.
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Great comment.
All scientific progress began like this. It's literally an explosion in a lab and that's all they were trying to do.
And there's something really cool about tapping into a new unfathomably enormous source of power.
I assume their lab isn't built to harness the power anyway. Any idea if we can drive a turbine with a star?
I'm dismayed by reports of 30 years before it can be used on the grid. It might be a bit late by then.
But am I right to suspect that ITER might just be ready a lot sooner?
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The 30 years number is because fusion budgets were, not only refused the needed funds, but also drastically cut in the late 70s and 80s. Reference: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org] Anyway, yes ITER will likely be ready sooner. But even ITER is not designed to generate electricity. However it should generate at least 10x excess energy and show whether the scaling models of tokamaks are correct and also (hopefully) reveal what, if any, changes to the model are needed. After ITER, the reactor that will actual
Hype but not Misconduct (Score:2)
There's no misconduct or fraud. This is an important milestone.
I agree there is no misconduct or fraud but lets face it it is not really an important milestone. It's more one of those milestones on a long journey that still shows that you are a very long way from your destination but at least heading in the right direction.
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Sorry for the wrong link pasted in. Here is Sabine Hossenfelder's actual video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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You have to love the Slashdot article, though: ...Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough... ... estimated it will take “a few decades” more work before it’s ready for commercial use.
Headline:
From the article: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Director Kim Budil
I just checked, no where in the definition of "breakthrough" is time to commercial production confirmed. Here, let me help you: Breakthrough: "a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development."
And if you don't think that finally achieving a net energy output is an important development in future then you either don't know much about fusion research or the dictionary is too complex for you.
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But they didn't achieve a net gain. They excluded the 10% efficiency of the laser.
So it's a an arbitrary milestone which has been a milestone for 30 odd years because if any field needs arbitrary milestones, it's fusion.
However, as backslashdot said, output has increased 50-fold over 4 years. There's no reason to think it's going to stop at 50-fold. And that's exciting.
It's a shame we have to wait 3-7 years to see what ITER can do.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I'd much rather my taxpayer dollars go to Eggheads wasting time and Labs that might not pay off for 200 years then Jeffrey epsteins Island version 2.0 and the yachts used to travel there
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It goes without saying that what she means is "a few more decades at the increased funding level that this fundamental breakthrough so richly deserves."
Most of the funding NIF (at LLNL) receives is for fusion research that we already know works and we have built working production models of. It's generally called the "Nuclear Deterrent".
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You do understand that YOU are being gamed by NYT shills, right?
dunno, but apparently YOU don't understand slashdot's business model.
fwiw, this particular bullshit is all over the place in the news, someone is investing heavily to circulate it.
Re: More fusion hype. (Score:4, Insightful)
Transmission losses would be killer over the distances you mention. Already rural areas suffer a lot of overhead due to distance of powerlines between energy generation and consumption.
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A great way to bring down those transmission losses is to put solar panels in those rural areas. Generate the energy right where it's used. Add in some wind turbines and storage and they can cover most of their own energy use. Very little energy will need to be brought in from far away.
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Sure, but the discussion point was 'energy storage not needed, just have solar power from transmitted thousands of miles away, over oceans and/or space'.
Solar and wind require energy storage to address that it is not dispatchable. Which isn't necessarily a show stopper, it's just a factor to keep in the discussion.
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The GP said (emphasis added)
then interconnect the grids so that there is always power being generated and/or stored.
Agreed that storage is an essential part.
Re: More fusion hype. (Score:2)
The poster also said "the power you need at night comes from your partner on the other side of the planet". Regardless of what else they might have said, THIS was the point being discussed in the reply.
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Do you REALLY want to be dependent on China and Russia when they have the sun and the wind ?
I'm leaving in Europe, and quite frankly, I've been having second thoughts since February.
Re: More fusion hype. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is complete FUD. Lifecycle analysis [nrel.gov] shows that solar produces about 4% as much CO2 as coal. Lithium is abundant and can be extracted from seawater [acs.org]. The only obstacles are economic ones: how to extract it cheaply enough to make a profit, while having to compete with companies mining it from more concentrated land based sources. But the combination of improving technology and rising demand is changing the economics quickly.
And what do you mean by, "What you propose has been tried and it failed miserably?" That's absurd. Solar is one of the fastest growing energy sources in the world today. That's happening because it's cheap, reliable, and fast to install.
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It would, except that we don't have enough Lithium to do that
Remember when Elon Musk invented the universe's biggest ever battery and there was all that hype? There was already a battery pack 3 times the size in Japan using Sodium-Sulphur batteries. We don't need any lithium for grid scale storage.
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Why are we reinventing the wheel anyway?
There's a perfectly good fusion reactor just 150 million Km down the road. We don't have to build it, fuel it or maintain it either!
This fusion generator is already the source of much of our power. Fossil fuel, solar and wind are all sourced from this wonderful *free* fusion generator.
In fact, if it weren't for this natural fusion generator we wouldn't even be here.
How ungrateful are we? :-D
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Sorry. I'm a capitalist so of course, I meant I want to be the exclusive owner of a reactor. I want to charge people for it. Free energy is worthless.
Indeed, more fusion BULLSHIT. (Score:2, Informative)
The total input power was 422 MJ, with output of 25 MJ. It just so happens that on the last step (after 402 MJ is used up), you've got 20 MJ of lasers that create 25 MJ of energy output.
Even the paywalled NYT article above talks about hundreds of megajoules ACTUALLY used.
I.e. The number they were willing to admit. Buried some 30 paragraphs, two photos and a bunch of ads down.
Although the latest experiment produced a net energy gain compared to the energy of the 2.05 megajoules in the incoming laser beams, NIF needed to pull 300 megajoules of energy from the electrical grid in order to generate the brief laser pulse.
But more importantly, they admit that they are using only the energy of the laser to calculate Q - that "energy of the 2.05 megajoules in the incoming laser beams" part.
Which is how all those previous "advances" were achieved.
By redefining Q.
Like this in TFA:
When operations began in 2009, however, the facility hardly generated any fusion at all, an embarrassing disappointment after a $3.5 billion investment from the federal government.
In 2014, Livermore scientists finally reported some success, but the energy produced was minuscule - the equivalent of what a 60-watt light bulb consumes in five minutes. Progress over the next few years was slight and small.
Then, in August last year, the facility produced a much larger burst of energy - 70 percent as much energy as the laser light energy.
Actually being this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Using the traditional definition of Q, Pfus / Pheat, ICF devices have extremely low Q. This is because the laser is extremely inefficient; whereas ETAheat for the heaters used in magnetic systems might be on the order of 70%, lasers are on the order of 1%.
For this reason, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the leader in ICF research, has proposed another modification of Q that defines Pheat as the energy delivered by the driver to the capsule, as opposed to the energy put into the driver by an external power source.
That is, they propose removing the laser's inefficiency from the consideration of gain. This definition produces much higher Q values, and changes the definition of breakeven to be Pfus / Plaser = 1.
On occasion, they referred to this definition as "scientific breakeven".[17][18]
This term was not universally used; other groups adopted the redefinition of Q but continued to refer to Pfus = Plaser simply as breakeven.[19]
On 7 October 2013, LLNL announced that it had achieved scientific breakeven in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on 29 September.[20][21][22]
In this experiment, Pfus was approximately 14 kJ, while the laser output was 1.8 MJ.
By their previous definition, this would be a Q of 0.0077. For this press release, they re-defined Q once again, this time equating Pheat to be only the amount energy delivered to "the hottest portion of the fuel", calculating that only 10 kJ of the original laser energy reached the part of the fuel that was undergoing fusion reactions.
This release has been heavily criticized in the field.[23][24]
On 17 August 2021, the NIF announced that in early August 2021, an experiment had achieved a Q value of 0.7, producing 1.35 MJ of energy from a fuel capsule by focusing 1.9 MJ of laser energy on the capsule.
The result was an eight-fold increase over any prior energy output.[25]
I.e. Th
Re:Indeed, more fusion BULLSHIT. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is some validity to what you're saying, but it's also valid that with each reconfiguration and refinement, the power output is going up. And quite dramatically in some cases. By your own citations, they went from 14kJ output to 2.5MJ output in 9 years. Better than an order of magnitude.
Do you really think they're going to say "well, that's good enough" ? No, they're going to look at what went well with this latest experiment and see what they can do to further increase efficiency. And then keep doing it.
This is called "iterative improvement" and it's basically the only way to accomplish something big and complex unless you just trip over the solution out of blind luck.
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I think these fusion posts, are going to become the new WFH posts. I wonder if there's anything new going on with Tesla or Apple...?
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It is in fact a cigar. We have to appreciate that the NIF has shown:
When you consider that just a few years ago they could only generate kilojoules of energy. From 2009 to 2018, they could only generate up to around 50kJ. Heck the 50 kJ was a milestone. Do you realize the numbers have improved by 50x from just 4 years back?
In the past year they've shown:
1. Alpha heating, to a point which technically meets the definition of Ignition (see my other comment as to how). (achieved prior to this result)
2. Net ener
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Where did anyone ever state otherwise?
Nobody ever said this was net-positive energy output for the totality of energy inputs to make the fuel, etc. You are moving goalposts.
They achieved ignition. It's what this facility was built to do, it's what the team at that facility has been trying to do for years, and they did it. And what they learned from doing it will advance the state-of-the-art, allowing other scientists to adjust their own research appropriately so that they can continue advancing the state
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Hot damn! Only a few decades away! (Score:3)
...Wait... what?
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Conclusion was that scientists need billions of new dollars to "for sure" make fusion energy... in 10 years... or 20.
Huge Breakthrough!!
Re:Hot damn! Only a few decades away! (Score:5, Funny)
Let's take bets on what arrives first:
1. Efficient fusion energy
2. Practical flying cars
3. Cancer cure
4. Living to 500 years
5. Alzheimer's cure
6. Bots that do most housework without help
6. Slashdot ability to correct typos
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I can't say which comes first... but I can say living to 500 years will come last... or never.
Somebody will figure out how to get to 150 years, and then conclude, "Fuck that. Nobody needs that."
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I believe
Re:Hot damn! Only a few decades away! (Score:5, Informative)
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We;; played
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All of those will be reality long before Slashdot supports Unicode.
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Well, maybe "practical flying cars" but that's only if you have a loose definition of "practical," "flying," and "car."
If I drive off a cliff, I'll have a practically flying car. Is that close enough for you?
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How do you target runaway mutations without damaging organs etc? What's mutated to make it a runaway mutation? How does the mutation stop the immune system from dealing with it?
For example, a nano-probe that destroys cells with a given mutation would be a general cure
We can probably do this with mRNA vaccines. Moderna announced today they've finished Stage II. They & Biontech think they'll be able to do personalised 6-week turnaround treatments by the end of the decade.
https://www.ft.com/content/455... [ft.com]
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"Some of these things have already been accomplished"
Really? Which ones? Unless you drop a few words, such as "practical" and "most", I don't know that you can say that.
"unfunny joke"
Okay, I'll grant your knowledge in this space. You win the point.
Second fusion breakthrough in a row (Score:2)
The result announced on Tuesday, and previously discussed here yesterday [slashdot.org]. Oh, and the comments were quite sceptic about its practicability.
Re:Second fusion breakthrough in a row (Score:5, Insightful)
It's essentially fundamental research. The are still experimenting with different types of materials and types of lasers. Sometimes the materials respond matching the hypothesis, sometimes they don't. That is how we learn with science.
The news media always wants to hear about "practical results", but sometimes it's just scientists figuring things out.
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It's essentially fundamental research. The are still experimenting with different types of materials and types of lasers. Sometimes the materials respond matching the hypothesis, sometimes they don't. That is how we learn with science.
The news media always wants to hear about "practical results", but sometimes it's just scientists figuring things out.
So maybe this is the media making up the clean and almost unlimited power stuff?
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Lets say, scientists tell the media what they want to hear.
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Lets say, scientists tell the media what they want to hear.
None I ever worked with. Even when we ask for money, it never goes this way.
I'll grant that I do think we are in a new era of constant promises, and people want to believe them so badly that they don't want to hear the shivering truth.
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I am quite certain when you write grants, you say what you think the grantmaker wants to hear. You try to keep it true, of course, but it's what they want to hear.
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I am quite certain when you write grants, you say what you think the grantmaker wants to hear. You try to keep it true, of course, but it's what they want to hear.
If if it turns out you lied though, you're not likely to get too many more grants.
Some researchers take caution to another level. My favorite one I reviewed was a guy who wrote "there appears to be a possibility of a potential correlation.
Really going out on a limb, he was.
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Making a claim that fusion will be clean and nearly unlimited is certainly not lying in a hypothetical sense.
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To be fair, no one ever wanted to pay for basic research. That is not a new thing.
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Single-shot triggering of fusion isn't needed in a bomb.
Re: Second fusion breakthrough in a row (Score:2)
Are you kidding? It's the definition of a bomb.
May not necessarily always be laser triggered, though. But then again, who knows what type of bombs they're currently conceiving and how fundamental research for those needs to look like.
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All known fusion bombs have two stages, a fission bomb that sets of the fusion bomb. If it's a single shot fusion bomb, then it only needs one stage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
192 Lasers ought to be enough for anybody (Score:2)
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A complete marketing lie (Score:4, Informative)
This is complete bullshit. They have not generated more power than was needed for the reason. They normally only only ever give a breakeven as a Q=1, but this does not include any of the power needed to charge the system.
In reality, a q of around 10 is needed, and this is nowhere near that.
Re:A complete marketing lie (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A complete marketing lie (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's a complicated story being reported largely by ignoramuses, so they report it as if every advance brings us nearer to the goal. That's not necessarily the case. Since inertial containment is generally considered less promising than magnetic containment, this simply narrows the discrepancy between inertial and magnetic containment. For now inertial is not on the critical path, so advances in inertial don't count as bringing us closer until it surpasses magnetic containment.
This media problem is exacerbated by "Q=1" sounding like it's something important. It's not. There's nothing special about Q=1 other than 1.0 being a nice sounding round number. We passed Q=1 years ago with magnetic containment and still have no clear path to practical fusion power. A "clear path" would be one where it's just a matter of putting more money in to achieve engineering breakeven: getting as much useful energy out as useful energy consumed.
The problem with the records set in both magnetic and inertial containment is that they were made with deuterium-tritium fuel, which produces 80% of its "output" as worse-than-useless waste neutrons that turn a working reactor into radioactive scrap without generating a watt of electricity. That's the point of ITER. One of the major research objectives is to demonstrate doing something useful with neutrons. Since the initial process is bound to be inefficient, you need to scale the reactor to huge size to achieve your demonstration.
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The problem with the records set in both magnetic and inertial containment is that they were made with deuterium-tritium fuel, which produces 80% of its "output" as worse-than-useless waste neutrons that turn a working reactor into radioactive scrap without generating a watt of electricity. That's the point of ITER. One of the major research objectives is to demonstrate doing something useful with neutrons. Since the initial process is bound to be inefficient, you need to scale the reactor to huge size to achieve your demonstration.
Oh, it is worse than that. ITER's plan is to heat up the metal walls of the containment torus and then extract heat from that metal which has heated due to it absorption of neutrons (which will change the metal to another element as often the neutron will decay to a proton once it has joined a nucleus). And if somehow the cooling system slows down or fails, the walls of the containment system will heat rapidly, well take a guess what might happen next. The entire thing is a bit absurd. The physicist in c
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And if somehow the cooling system slows down or fails, the walls of the containment system will heat rapidly, well take a guess what might happen next.
The hard bit about fusion is sustaining the reaction and in a tokamak, stopping the plasma from disrupting. What happens next is they shut it down and the fusion stops instantly. There are about a million ways of rapidly shutting down. There are about 4g of plasma in the reactor.
Wish I had mod points (Score:2)
I didn't want to believe it but you're right. ITER's walls are going to be going through alchemical transformation!
So I guess part of the experiment is how often these need to be replaced to be safe. If we go this route, there's going to be tens of thousands of tons of radioactive material.
https://thebulletin.org/2017/0... [thebulletin.org]
I'd guess any failure of the cooling system can automatically shut down the firing quite easily.
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There were probably people that told Enrico Fermi that the Chicago Pile was a waste of time because it wasn't instantly a commercial pressurized water reactor capable of generation 1200MWe as well.
Those people are similarly idiotic.
Re:A complete marketing lie (Score:4, Informative)
the Chicago Pile
That pile didn't require input energy. It was made by hand by a few people without significant government funding. It produced massive heat quite quickly and needed to be cooled when it ran. Nuclear fission was only theoretically identified 2 years before the pile was built (it was the first controlled fission reaction). There is quite a bit of difference between that pile and modern fusion research. Within a decade of the Chicago pile (as in 8 years I believe), there were working commercial powerplants based upon nuclear fission. And that is despite the fact that 3 of those years were during WWII when almost all the funding was going to make a weapon, not a powerplant. There are interesting parallels between the two, they don't say what you seem to think they do. Fusion has a commercial purpose, it isn't to make power.
so (Score:2)
what sort of unit is a nubbin
and if it has to be encased in diamond, its not going to be cheap energy
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and if it has to be encased in diamond, its not going to be cheap energy
That depends on how much diamond, and how reusable it is, wouldn't you say?
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That depends on how much diamond, and how reusable it is, wouldn't you say?
The diamond is adjacent to material undergoing fusion. After taking the brunt of the incoming optical energy required to initiate said fusion. The carbon is vaporized and splattered all over the walls of the target area, with such high energy that it bonds itself to said walls and can't even be scraped off.
I thought it went without saying, the diamond is not reusable, but apparently it must be said.
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Carbon is hardly expensive.
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Found the guy that thinks diamonds are actually expensive, due to market manipulation and artificial scarcity created by a de facto monopoly.
Diamond jewelry is expensive. Diamond saw blades and drill bits are not. Reconcile the difference.
There are better sources of limitless energy (Score:2)
Just send msmash and EditorDave into the reactor and they can sit there duping energy all day https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
And a slide trombone (Score:2, Redundant)
Remember, it's still 20 years in the future, just as it was at the 1963 World's Fair
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Re:And a slide trombone (Score:4, Insightful)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Practical Nuclear Fusion Power (Score:2)
Practical nuclear fusion power have been 10 years away for the last 60 years.
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So, you cut its funding, and then ask "why didn't it happen?" Proof: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
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Practical nuclear fusion power have been 10 years away
Not that I've ever heard.
Hyping and Greenwashing (Score:2)
First, this is an advance over their previous high point set in August 2021 of 70% of the laser bean energy being returned as fusion energy, so it is not like this is nothing at all. But it has nothing to do with producing energy at any time in the future.
The National Ignition Facility was designed to conduct weapons related research, and some open basic physics (equation of state) research in the side, and the vast majority of shots fired are for classified programs as intended. It is notable that in C. Br
so what? (Score:2)
OK... Yes, the NIF was not designed to produce energy, it is called the National Ignition Facility because it is for doing research into fusion ignition. If your congressman wanted a power production facility maybe she/he should have funded that?
This should be hyped, they generated energy in excess of the laser output. How is that not important? How is it not a big deal?
Wow, a triple post (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this site have editors? Are the asleep? A triple post?
Have you looked at the Firehose lately? It's absolutely overrun with garbage. There's maybe 2 real article submissions in the first three pages. The spammers have completely buried the editors. It's going to require software filtering to be usable. It's a wonder Slashdot's front page is getting any new stories at all.
I've got another idea (Score:2)
Can we point all those lasers at my noisy neighbour now?
Direct Interest (Score:2)
When are the anti nuclear nazi's going to weigh in and tell how bad fusion is?
Turns out they are all laser salesmen.
Re:Fusion is a Nuclear process (Score:4, Funny)
When are the anti nuclear nazi's going to weigh in and tell how bad fusion is?
Shortly after they realize sunlight is radiation.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody needs to rail against fusion power because it is still decades away from viability. By the time they could get it ready we could already have converted entirely to renewables. Probably won't, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, for one thing, they might know the difference between fission and fusion.
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Well, for one thing, they might know the difference between fission and fusion.
Possible, but then we are talking about the same group of people that protested nuclear medicine.
Re: (Score:3)
When are the anti nuclear nazi's going to weigh in and tell how bad fusion is? how the nuclear waste will over run us, the cost will be out of our reach, or how the eventual melt down will destroy the planet.
Heh. I love it when people are criticized for not living up to a shallow stereotype.
Re: (Score:2)
Reading through these comments, I'm kind of amazed at how many degenerates are on Slashdot.
It's weird that you created an account so long ago, but never read any comments until now.
Re: (Score:2)
In his defence, aside form some classic trolls a shitton of degenerates have very high UID numbers. The quality of Slashdot discord has utterly nosedived past around a UID of 4million.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, gone are the days of the cool, intelligent nerds who brought us goatse and hot grits.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep.
Get off my lawn... hot grits and all that.
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Nah it nosedived at 664417 and never recovered.
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Plenty of existing, non-fusion technologies are capable of being scaled up, economically, to replace fossil fuels as the backbone of our energy needs.
And by plenty you mean one. Off course that one is nuclear fission.
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Make that 384 sharks, "because dupe".
Only if you pay the licensing fee to enable the 2nd set of 192 sharks...