NIF Aims For the Ultimate Green Energy Source 234
theodp writes "Edward Moses and his team of 500 scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility are betting $3.5B in taxpayer money on a tiny pellet they hope could produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. By the fall of 2010, the team aims to start blasting capsules containing deuterium-tritium fuel with 1.4 megajoules of laser power, a first step towards the holy grail of controlled nuclear fusion. Not all are convinced that Moses will lead us to the promised land. 'They're snake-oil salesmen,' says Thomas Cochran, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Moses, for his part, seems unfazed by the skepticism, saying he's confident that his team will succeed."
Re:Deuterium is hardly "endless" (Score:4, Informative)
Um, except that one factory in Norway in the 40s made 12 tons a year of it and one ton fused contains the same energy as 29 BILLION tons of coal. We also seem to have some 10^15 tons of it out in the ocean before we have to go to space to go shopping.
Re:Deuterium is hardly "endless" (Score:5, Informative)
I can't tell if you're joking, but everything you said about deuterium is 100% false. There is more D in the earth's oceans (1/6500th of all the water) than we could ever imagine using for fusion. It's also extracted cheaply and easily.
Re:Deuterium is hardly "endless" (Score:1, Informative)
I think you should look up "quite limited." Deuterium is naturally found at something like every 1 in 10000 hydrogens in the ocean. There is a lot of hydrogen in the ocean - this is a mind boggling huge number. There are plants in existence which can produce over a 100 tons of heavy water (contain deuterium) a year. The article said that a reaction required milligrams.
I am more concerned about the tritium they require - this is rare. Though, it can be produced in fission plants.
Re:Mirror of the mirror (Score:5, Informative)
HiPER (Score:2, Informative)
Worth doing, but kick the military out (Score:3, Informative)
There was a long (~1 hour) plenary talk about this at a recent American Physical Society conference.
The NIF is exciting scientifically for studying both fusion and "extreme" materials science. No, it's not going to turn into a power plant once we get it working, but fusion power is too promising to not take steps toward it. We won't be able to roll out fusion power in time to avert climate change, of course, so it's not a first priority for energy research. But it is certainly worth doing on its scientific merits alone.
Trouble is, the main intent behind the NIF isn't science -- it's "stockpile stewardship" and weapons development. If it were simply a science experiment I imagine that the science goals could be achieved far more cheaply, and with a higher degree of openness. (For instance, some of the other approaches to fusion seem more promising. But the US's flagship fusion project is this one -- just because you can learn about bombs with it.)
Science that is worth doing (which in my opinion the NIF is) should be done completely independent of the military (so it can be done honestly) and it should be done openly (so it can be useful to society).
Re:A better alternative (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A better alternative (Score:5, Informative)
Mainly to "ourselves". The government borrows money from its own companies and citizens (and pension funds, in particular). To a lesser extent, we owe this money to foreign banks, mainly in th efar east.
Clean cheap energy will save the planet (Score:5, Informative)
Recycling and clean manufacturing processes will become economically viable because the energy to do it will be cheap.
Planting in the desert will become economically viable because the energy to desalinate water will be cheap.
People will fight fewer wars over geographically concentrated energy resources.
Wealthy people reproduce less than poor ones, so population growth will be slowed or even reversed.
Cheap clean energy will save the planet.
Re:A better alternative (Score:3, Informative)
The debt is in the form of US Treasury bonds, which are held by many different groups. Chinese investment firms own a very large percentage (somewhere near 60% I believe). The further the US goes in to debt the more risky the investment becomes. Eventually no one will want to buy more bonds, at which point the US will have to print money in order to pay off the old bonds that are maturing. When that time comes, there will be no way of recovering. The dollar's value will rapidly plummet. Everyone will switch to gold, silver, the Imperial Pound, and/or the Euro.
Re:Three points (Score:3, Informative)
What does that matter? It's inner lining for a reactor wall, it doesn't have to withstand hits or bear weight. It doesn't even have to contain the reactant, since that's done by magnetic fields. It simply has to sit there and absorb neutrons.
Re:Deuterium is hardly "endless" (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, my. I do seem to have made a fundamental error on this: I'm afraid I may have to chalk it up partly to age, and partly to thinking of tritium. Note that that their pellets call for both, and _tritium_ is normally produced in plutonium power plants from deuterium.
So it's still limited, but nowhere near so limited as I thought.
Re:Three points (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it's envisioned that there will be a layer of lithium in order to breed tritium. However lithium cannot be the so-called "first wall" material. You would put the lithium behind the first wall.
Re:A better alternative (Score:3, Informative)
Was in $10,000 to $15,000 in profit per SUV or $10,000 to $15,000 in per unit profit per SUV?
Unit Profit is the profit made on production of an initial unit.
Profit is the profit made on the production of a unit with the fixed costs amortized over all of the units produced.
If you really meant unit profit, I stand by my assertion. If you really meant profit: "Okay. Interesting."