Fusion - breakthrough or another false dawn
Discussion
Leithen said:
Speculation that they have achieved net energy gain at Livermore.
https://twitter.com/OilSheppard/status/16020029748...
We'll get details tomorrow apparently, this article below sorta sums it up for me - in that 'net' may mean different things than we assume it may mean and this doesn't necessarily herald a new dawn, but is certainly a step in the right direction and something to be celebrated, albeit not too loudly.https://twitter.com/OilSheppard/status/16020029748...
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/202...
Simpo Two said:
hidetheelephants said:
They've done a really neat science experiment, hailing a new dawn of steady funding for more science experiments.
That's no different from claiming you've made a new vaccine or cancer cure, and we all like those.It's "we built this thing to get Q>1 and we managed it, meaning we can actually model fusion properly in the lab".
It's not just "more money for the scientists". It's "now we can actually model various aspects about how aging (and consequently, radioactive decay) affects fusion weapons".
But of course people with an axe to grind are going to be the first to complain that it's pie in the sky and also the first to complain when something doesn't work when it needs to.
You literally cannot win with some folk.
What it isn't is some massive step towards practical fusion power, but that is exactly what the casual observer would conclude from the headlines, i.e. the reporting is misleading.
They've got more energy released than was delivered by the lasers beams used to trigger fusion, but that is a tiny fraction of the total power consumed by the kit.
To make a power plant you need the power plant's output to be above unity (!) and, for it to be anything other than a massive white elephant, it needs to be way, way higher than unity ... and we are nowhere near even achieving power plant unity at the moment.
They've got more energy released than was delivered by the lasers beams used to trigger fusion, but that is a tiny fraction of the total power consumed by the kit.
To make a power plant you need the power plant's output to be above unity (!) and, for it to be anything other than a massive white elephant, it needs to be way, way higher than unity ... and we are nowhere near even achieving power plant unity at the moment.
It's a fantastic achievement, and the first time it's happened in the 75-odd years of fusion development, other than in bombs. Projects such as the NIF require huge amounts of funding, massive collaboration efforts and ground breaking engineering to make them happen. Even when running, they require further years of development, refinement, optimisation and so on.
We're still a long, long way from commercial power generation, but landmarks like this should be savoured.
We're still a long, long way from commercial power generation, but landmarks like this should be savoured.
hidetheelephants said:
I do not begrudge the boffins the funding they have received(and will continue to receive) for fusion research, merely commenting on the brainless media coverage implying some breakthrough toward power generation, which is fatuous in the extreme.
Science reporting in general is pretty poor. It's harder with this sort of thing because even explaining it is not straightforward."we build a death star sized laser, and focus it on a tiny box, which is crushed, and when it crushes it gets to a temperature and pressure where the atoms undergo fusion".
One problem is that the audience varies from people who don't read because it's hard, through to people who want to know the details of how NIF manufactured the lenses, through to people who would quite like to read the raw sensor data to check they aren't being lied to.
I sat through a particularly painful guardian podcast the other day in morbid curiosity at how the (presumably English-majoring) reporter was learning the science topic almost by feel as the episode progressed. It's particularly painful because I know from experience that they have decent science reporters (they run a specific science podcast) -- but who clearly had nothing to do with the one I was listening to.
Putting language people in charge of reporting is okay, but if you want to understand the thing you're reporting on you need to get an expert... which many of these outlets won't pay for all the time. So this.
Oh, and other places don't care. It's just clicks.
Simpo Two said:
hidetheelephants said:
They've done a really neat science experiment, hailing a new dawn of steady funding for more science experiments.
That's no different from claiming you've made a new vaccine or cancer cure, and we all like those.Fusion777 said:
It's a fantastic achievement ... We're still a long, long way from commercial power generation, but landmarks like this should be savoured.
Fair enough, but even the man from Culham on BBC Oxford this afternoon was saying 'pathway to a prototype by .....oh... 2040 or so, but true power design is beyond that. So we are potentially looking at 2050 - 2060 as the optimistic end of the scale.I don't want to be cynical, but I also can't see this as the panacea for a brave new world, at least extremely unlikely in my lifetime.
I can still (vaguely) remember going on a trip from school to Culham when JET was being build and seeing the big D magnets. But the nature of the beast means harnessing the energy to get some output is extremely challenging. Scientifically and perhaps politically, fusion seems very attractive at the moment, but my worry would be it is sucking funds and knowledge (people) out of other programmes that might actually make differences in more realistic timescales.
It will be possible one day, so we've kind of got to just keep working on it. Like putting men on Mars and such like, there are lots of technical challenges that need to be overcome. But we'll get there eventually, even if it ends up being beyond most currently existing peoples life times.
Demonstrating that the physics is correct enables the next stage of development to progress further.
For laser driven fusion, high repetition rate solid state lasers have continued to develop - these will be needed to drive the improvements of efficiency necessary to reduce the energy consumption of the system.
I think the most difficult problem to resolve for this style of fusion will be how to accurately deliver the fuel pellets to the precise focus of the lasers, repeatedly, at 10Hz.. At NIF the pellet is held still, and it's taken 10+ years to get that to ignition.
Demonstrating that the physics is correct enables the next stage of development to progress further.
For laser driven fusion, high repetition rate solid state lasers have continued to develop - these will be needed to drive the improvements of efficiency necessary to reduce the energy consumption of the system.
I think the most difficult problem to resolve for this style of fusion will be how to accurately deliver the fuel pellets to the precise focus of the lasers, repeatedly, at 10Hz.. At NIF the pellet is held still, and it's taken 10+ years to get that to ignition.
llewop said:
Fusion777 said:
It's a fantastic achievement ... We're still a long, long way from commercial power generation, but landmarks like this should be savoured.
Fair enough, but even the man from Culham on BBC Oxford this afternoon was saying 'pathway to a prototype by .....oh... 2040 or so, but true power design is beyond that. So we are potentially looking at 2050 - 2060 as the optimistic end of the scale.I don't want to be cynical, but I also can't see this as the panacea for a brave new world, at least extremely unlikely in my lifetime.
I can still (vaguely) remember going on a trip from school to Culham when JET was being build and seeing the big D magnets. But the nature of the beast means harnessing the energy to get some output is extremely challenging. Scientifically and perhaps politically, fusion seems very attractive at the moment, but my worry would be it is sucking funds and knowledge (people) out of other programmes that might actually make differences in more realistic timescales.
Cool stuff but it's interesting to speculate who is actually going to make use of fusion reactors in the end.
I think fusion has missed the boat for general power generation as storage, interconnection and renewables are scaleable and currently on an impressively steep curve in production cost. Of course this is based on the assumption (makes an ass of u and me) that some technological breakthrough doesn't enable rapid industrialisation and production of fusion reactors. Such a breakthrough is of course impossible to forecast.
The obvious user of high cost high density independant power is the military. I could well imagine the USN has pencilled in fusion powered carriers and subs for ~2050 to meet the needs of fully electric boats with all the fancy directed energy and magnetic driven toys in the grim dimness of the near future.
Speculatively fusion power could compete with fission reactors by being truly able to be shut down (quiet state) while having huge maximum capacity. There's also potentially far greater public appetite for "clean" driven fusion boats (and especially anything autonomous) when compared to fission.
And it follows that if the military want it, then funding will never dry up.
Although it's far nicer to imagine fusion powering people out to Europa one day.
I think fusion has missed the boat for general power generation as storage, interconnection and renewables are scaleable and currently on an impressively steep curve in production cost. Of course this is based on the assumption (makes an ass of u and me) that some technological breakthrough doesn't enable rapid industrialisation and production of fusion reactors. Such a breakthrough is of course impossible to forecast.
The obvious user of high cost high density independant power is the military. I could well imagine the USN has pencilled in fusion powered carriers and subs for ~2050 to meet the needs of fully electric boats with all the fancy directed energy and magnetic driven toys in the grim dimness of the near future.
Speculatively fusion power could compete with fission reactors by being truly able to be shut down (quiet state) while having huge maximum capacity. There's also potentially far greater public appetite for "clean" driven fusion boats (and especially anything autonomous) when compared to fission.
And it follows that if the military want it, then funding will never dry up.
Although it's far nicer to imagine fusion powering people out to Europa one day.
I always think the interesting thing in fusion is how to get the heat from the reaction to turn into electricity. Molten salts (600C) say some (inc US). That from an engineering point of view, I don't think we will see that in my lifetime.
We in the UK seem to have gone back to PWR steam circuit conditions (320C) coupled to fusion and steam and 30-40% efficient turbines (meaning fusion has to put out 300% the power put in to get a full gain of electricity over the whole electric generation cycle). It is almost like the days of the CEGB and their disparate reactor programmes of high temperature and fusion and steam generating and novel fuels from the 1970s. Mad how we have lost 40 years including marginal gains on improving steam cycle efficiency, yet seem to be here again hanging on fusion when we should have built extra fission in the 1990s.
We in the UK seem to have gone back to PWR steam circuit conditions (320C) coupled to fusion and steam and 30-40% efficient turbines (meaning fusion has to put out 300% the power put in to get a full gain of electricity over the whole electric generation cycle). It is almost like the days of the CEGB and their disparate reactor programmes of high temperature and fusion and steam generating and novel fuels from the 1970s. Mad how we have lost 40 years including marginal gains on improving steam cycle efficiency, yet seem to be here again hanging on fusion when we should have built extra fission in the 1990s.
Good Timing for this video from the Real Engineering channel.
https://youtu.be/BzK0ydOF0oU
Will be fascinting to see what the Helion design does.
https://youtu.be/BzK0ydOF0oU
Will be fascinting to see what the Helion design does.
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