Z-Machine at Sandia Labs Aims for More Power

Vexar writes "Memorable for its Back-to-the-Future room of electric arcs in 1998, Sandia Labs' Z-Machine is getting $61.7 Million in new funding. In addition to more physics textbook-worthy photos, the scientists at this lab intend to hit the all-important, fusion-ready 2.0 million degrees C."

Weapons research

[RobertB-DC]

Amazing research, though when they talk about reaching fusion temperatures, it looks to me like they're talking about modeling the fusion reaction of a Hydrogen Bomb, not creating a safe, clean power source. To wit:

Z's advance in power is expected to make a major contribution to the Department of Energy's (DOE) science-based approach to stockpile stewardship, which must use giant computing and laboratory experiments to provide the basis to sustain the nation's nuclear stockpile without above- or below-ground tests.

There were two milestones in temperature: the first for weapons physics configurations was 100 eV (1.2 million degrees). The achieved value was 140 eV (1.6 million degrees). The second temperature milestone in a configuration suitable for target compression experiments was 150 eV (1.7 million degrees). Sandia has achieved 140 eV (1.6 million degrees).

X-1 will provide laboratory data on the physics of nuclear weapons implosions and their effects. The data are necessary to validate the increasingly sophisticated computational models of weapon performance, without underground testing.

He points out that Sandia's teraflops computer, capable of a trillion operations a second, and the other advanced computers being developed for DOE's science-based stockpile stewardship program "will be needed to reach our goals. We will succeed with creating high-yield fusion when we can fully harness the power of both our teraflops and terawatts."

It's still debatable whether the "stewardship" of nuclear weapons is really a Good Thing. It means that you're keeping the frickin' things around and functional, instead of simply dismantling them. Do we really need a stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction? That said, this research looks to be amazingly cool, and I'd hope it would lead to "consumer" fusion in the same way that nuclear bomb research led to nuclear fission reactors.

Interesting that the scientists are still being allowed to talk about their research... unlike their counterparts doing antimatter research [slashdot.org].

Re:Weapons research

[j_cavera]

Tens of megajoules of energy applied to a small target for a few nanoseconds. How can this not be fun!? That said, this is not being looked at for practical purposes right now. The point is for fundamental research into an ill-understood region of plasma physics. At this point, the best outcome of their experiments would be to identify the plasma instabilities in this regime and correct for them. Future spin-offs would be in terrestrial energy production and plasma or fusion space propulsion, both of w

Re:Weapons research

[charlesbakerharris]

Do we really need a stockpile of Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Actually, it's pretty handy to have a stockpile of them when you want a strategic deterrent against other governments. Like it or not, we're not yet at a point in this world's history when having a massive strategic deterrent isn't useful.

Re:Weapons research

[temojen]

I'd hope it would lead to "consumer" fusion in the same way that nuclear bomb research led to nuclear fission reactors.

Actually, it was the other way around.

Re:Weapons research

[JDevers]

Are you saying that "consumer" nuclear fission reactors lead to nuclear bomb research?

Re:Weapons research

[Mark of THE CITY]

I think they meant that plutonium-based atomic bombs could not exist until reactors that could convert U-238 into Pu-239 existed.

Re:Weapons research

[temojen]

No, I'm saying that nuclear reactors came before nuclear weapons and proved the viability of the fission chain reaction. Electricity generating nuclear reactors came much later.

Re:Weapons research

[merlin_jim]

Amazing research, though when they talk about reaching fusion temperatures, it looks to me like they're talking about modeling the fusion reaction of a Hydrogen Bomb, not creating a safe, clean power source.

They recognize as a side effect that they are refining plasma physics models and if you look at their experimental logs (troll around on their site a little and you'll see it), you can find experiments being run that are definitely designed to measure the physics of fusion temperature plasmas, with the

Re:Weapons research

[deglr6328]

Jim you're on my slashdot friends list but I'm afraid I must completely disagree with you here. :o)

Tokamaks have problems, yes, but I don't think it's known weather these problems will prohibit their utilization as a fusion power source. For instance if a plasma instability forms in a tokamak while running (happens all the time) and the plasma bumps the divertor or the inside of the chamber it most certainly will not be bomb like and won't "result in burn-through" either. The introduction of (relatively) h

Re:Weapons research

[Vexar]

I'm a bit confused now. I thought they were making these experiments to some productive end. I suppose a fusion bomb might be construed as a productive end, in case we ever need to deal with a Hollywood-sized meteor, hurtling through space, with a trajectory precisely aligned with a large population center on earth. I can't imagine it is even en-vogue with the military to use it in war. My guess is tactical nukes are the only strategically useful remnant of that cold war era.

Once the scientists get the

Very cool, indeed.

[ThorGod]

That's awesome.

Don't you think that's overkill?

[Dimwit]

I mean, c'mon, seriously, how much power does it really take to run Zork?

Not Infocom related...

[namekuseijin]

i thought it was about their z-machine for text adventure games from the eighties... :)

Oh goody...

[Ann Elk]

A new unit of measure:

Highly synchronized laser-triggered switches allow the stored energy to be discharged simultaneously through the 36 cables,

each as big around as a horse and 30 feet long, arranged like spokes of a wheel and insulated by water.

Are we talking Shetland, Clydesdale, or Percheron?

Re:Oh goody...

[mdp1173]

These scientists are too much for me with all there fancy-sounding units of measurement. I want measurements in hogsheads and cubits like any other normal person

Re:Oh goody...

[RobertB-DC]

A new unit of measure:
"through the 36 cables, each as big around as a horse and 30 feet long"
Are we talking Shetland, Clydesdale, or Percheron?

I have horses on my land, so measuring diameter in terms of horse-circumference actually seems pretty cool. But then, I have Appaloosas [appaloosa.com]... by contrast, a Throughbred is deep in the front but narrow in the back, and would be better suited to measuring conical volume.

Of course, they used more traditional measurements as well:

Power is measured in house-minutes: Str

All that for weapon simulation ??

[Bazouel]

I read the article and it is mentionned several times that the system is used for nuclear weapon simulations and further improvements are in part to be able to run even better simulations.

Can't they think of something more useful ?! Just how far do they need to go to know that using nuclear weapons is a bad thing (TM) ?! I'm still taken aback by all this ...

Re:All that for weapon simulation ??

[wronskyMan]

Umm... they're simulating nuclear weapons in leiu of actually testing them, which can be a bad thing (z-machine=no radioactive waste, bomb explosion=radioactive waste).