Laser Fusion Passes Major Hurdle 354
chill writes "The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has performed their first controlled fusion experiments using all 192 lasers. While still not ramped up to full power, the first experiments proved very fruitful. The lasers create a lot of plasma in the target container and researchers worried that the plasma would interfere with the ability of the target to absorb enough energy to ignite. These experiments show that not only does enough energy make it through, the plasma can be manipulated to increase the uniformity of compression. Ramping up of power is due to start in May." The project lead, Dr. Sigfried Glenzer, is "confident that with everything in place, ignition is on the horizon. He added, quite simply, 'It's going to happen this year.'"
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Terminology ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
fusion has radioactive waste (Score:5, Insightful)
but its low powered and has quick half-lives. additionally, there are no geopolitical overtones concerning fuel sources: you just need sea water. no climate changing pollution/ city-choking smog for that matter. no peak oil this or that, no bubbles and spikes in supply or pricing
additionally, if everyone had electric cars, there would be no petrodollars funding saudi arabia, a backwards fundamentalist regime that funds wahhabi madrassas in places like pakistan, that give rise to all of these well-funded (from saudi "charities") militant assholes in the muslim world
no funding of gas bag chavez in venezuela, no funding of neoimperial russia and putin, no funding for nigerian graft and corruption...
it will take a long time, but if we can remove the reason for the world to have any vested interests in backwards regimes, propping them up and preserving them unnaturally, and we instead let these regimes instead rise and fall on their own intrinsic value in governing fair societies, then we will have taken a mighty step forward in terms of progress in this world
of course, it will be decades before we're all driving electric cars powered by fusion plants. but one can dream, cant' they?
Ignition not economical (Score:3, Insightful)
The 15 to 20 years estimate is always for energy-positive, viable power plant. The one year date is just when this particular device will be fully operational. There are already many operational fusion devices that exist for research, and this adds another that may or may not give us a breakthrough.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
You think the interstate system was a failure?
Well... given that the existence of the interstate infrastructure created the incentives that destroyed the locomotive as the main means of in-land shipping in America, and in other ways promoted the reliance on the automobile that's ended public transit in most areas and greatly exacerbated global warming... possibly yes. : p
But I think the parent's point was actually the same as yours -- cynicism about Everybody Else's willingness to do something that'll have a profit after the next quarterly earnings report.
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please calm down... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yes, but is it REALLY working? (Score:5, Insightful)
And can it sustain power generation?
You're talking about zapping a very small, supercooled, gold-uranium alloy target with a beryllium sphere containing about 1mg of DT fuel, about 10 times a second.
Have a thought experiment about the engineering involved
what quantity of nuclear waste will such a machine produce?
DT fusion produces fast neutrons, so some. You're looking at much shorter half-lives ; the reactor core will have the same activity as coal ash after about 300 years.
And will ITER be quickly refactored to take this into account?
ITER is a totally different design, so no. I think ITER is a far more credible design than laser-fusion, given that the engineering challenges seem some orders of magnitude easier.
NIF is just a testbed for nuclear fusion, without the inconveniently illegal use of real nuclear weapons.
[1]
If you're firing at 1mg of fuel, by mass, 3/5 of it is Tritium or 0.6mg so (60 * 60 * 24) seconds in day * 10 per second * 0.0006 g = 518.4 g of tritium per day.
The total production in the USA between 1955 and 1996 was 225kg ; the stockpile in 1996 stood at 75kg
Re:Ignition = net positive energy (Score:5, Insightful)
AFAIK, this method of fusion is not nor will ever be self-sustained -- it simply doesn't work that way. You have to repeatedly fire the laser, once per fuel pellet. Once the pellet ignites, energy is released. After it's released, the pellet is exhausted. To release more energy, you have to insert a new pellet and repeat. It's not like there's a lot of fuel at the focus of the lasers that just needs one firing to ignite the fuel and it will chain-react. The only way to have a chain-reaction sustain itself with no input of energy would be to have the fuel at the high pressure and high temperature that's found at the core of a star. The laser temporarily creates a tiny spot of such pressure and temperature, but there's no way the reaction can sustain itself without repeated firing of the lasers.
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
They can still fight over the rare earth elements you need to build stuff like this.
</pessimist>
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ignition = net positive energy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
***Don't you think that companies like BP and such will embrace this to make oil cheaper ? Oil is not just used for energy, there are other major uses :***
By the time this results in practical generation facilities, oil will almost certainly be both scarce compared to the number of people that "need" (i.e. want) it and expensive.
BP, Esso, et al know that. Unlike our politicians, auto makers, economists and planners, the oil companies deal in long term realities. Probably BP will own large chunks of the engineering, construction, operating and distribution companies that handle fusion power. ... assuming that fusion power ever turns out to be commercially viable.
I'm fine with that BTW. All I really want to see is enough rational conduct in the system to ensure stability.
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
There is really no such thing as a metric mile. What was once the "one mile" race (~1.6km) was turned into a 1500m race for the Olympics. And some stupid bitches that can't speak properly call it the "metric mile". There is no suck thing as a metric mile. There's a proper name for that: 1.5km.
Interstate Hwys: A Government Program that Worked (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the interstate highway system did kill trains, especially the interurban trains surrounding urban areas. But that isn't the point. The building of the interstate system, a massive government project, succeeded in reaching its goal of allowing the utilization of vast swaths of under-utilized land, allowing commensurate increases in economic capacity. This was the real goal of pushing automobile transportation. Unfortunately, implicit in this goal was a massive surge in urban sprawl, pollution, and most importantly a huge surge in the production of greenhouse gasses.
I am arguing here that the assumption that government programs always fail and are almost always fundamentally flawed is incorrect, and is not born out by historical evidence. Government CAN achieve constructive goals in society, IF those in government are wise rulers.
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
Your comment + your signature gave me a laugh.
It's perfect! It's a fact that we're going 88mph. No wait, it's just an interpretation!
Re:as a physicsist... (Score:3, Insightful)
The line of "getting more power out than we put in" for fusion in the lab was crossed decades ago..
Care to back that up. Other than nuclear bombs, there is no fusion device that has achieved ignition (which is not the same as getting more power out than you put in) that i am aware of, and i keep up with the field.
Ignition can be described as fusion energy output is higher than losses from the plasma.
"self-sustained" meaning positive net energy (Score:3, Insightful)
The point of a "self-sustained" laser fusion device is that it produces more power from each fusion blast than is needed to power the lasers.
The idea is that each fusion blast produces enough energy to fire the lasers for the next blast, plus some additional amount that can be used to do useful work.
Sure, it takes a constant stream of pellets as input, but a fission reactor uses fuel rods the same wayl.
Re:So... (Score:1, Insightful)
And those of us smart enough to realize that language suffers when idiots dumb it down, will continue to resist changes made by morons.