4 ms·

Small Lab Makes Big Breakthrough in Nuclear Fusion Tech

27 points by tekacs 6y ago

sambroner 6y ago
I guess it’s good that they reached higher temps? It does not seem like this is quite the breakthrough that will make fusion possible. Will fusion be achieved iteratively? Or will it need key new insights we have not yet discovered?
- tastyfreeze 6y ago
  MIT Sparc/Commonwealth Fusion Systems seem to have a chance at breakeven in a shorter time that the government and international labs. The problem is that now that fusion is commercial research we won't get updates until somebody wants to brag or a public lab make a breakthrough.
- andi999 6y ago
  Might also be that the problem of neutron contamination of the hull turns out so bad that normal nuclear power plants and breeder reactors sound better.
batsy71 6y ago
Misleading headline. No recent breakthrough has been mentioned in this article, except one made in 2016.
Traubenfuchs 6y ago
Misleading title: Not a breakthrough. Nuclear power plants are just as far away as always. (indefinite)
- adrianN 6y ago
  We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't have tremendous risks attached to them. But funding has been insufficient for fast progress. Funding is also insufficient for fast parallel exploration of non-tokamak designs. The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage.
  - lambdatronics 6y ago
    There's still more risk than you'd be lead to believe. (1) There could always be unknown-unknowns related to stability or confinement with a self-heating plasma. ITER is still a science experiment. (2) The disruption problem hasn't be solved. There's an attitude of "it'll get solved because we need it to get solved." You hit the nail on the head with the economics issue, though.
  - hannob 6y ago
    > We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't have tremendous risks attached to them. The costs of ITER have grown to be more than 4x as much as what was planned (and it is still in early stages so that's probably not the end of the story). I would not call that "solid".
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Almost all large construction projects overshoot their costs. Things we built for the first time are even more likely to do so.
  - chpill 6y ago
    > The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage. Could you elaborate on what storage you have in mind? The only effective way we have to store large amounts of electricity right now is [pumped-storage hydroelectricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...), which is interesting but also very sensitive to the geography.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      I'm by no means an expert, but as far as I know a combination of batteries for fluctuations in the dozens-of-hours range and Power-to-{Methane,Hydrogen,Ammonia} for seasonal variations is what experts think feasible.
    - cygx 6y ago
- andi999 6y ago
  Not indefinite but always 40 years from the present.
  - dtech 6y ago
    funding has been basically nonexistent and dwindling. Achieving nuclear fission required $23 billion (today dollars) and 0.1% of the US population to work on it (Manhattan project) Fusion funding is measured in tens of millions and does not have 350.000 people working on it.
    - Arnt 6y ago
      ITER alone "is expected to be in excess of €20 billion" says Wikipedia, so fusion has gotten more funding than those $23b.
      - kaliszad 6y ago
        It costs about the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project though, I would suspect, much of the cost of the Manhattan project was probably never accounted for, because much of the work was done by the military or other personnel paid for either way. You know, war time and such. But I haven't looked for any data on that, it could be it was all accounted for to the penny. ITER is an international, purely scientific, peaceful project that is already going on for many more years than the original Manhattan project. Also fusion doesn't just happen by itself, when you "put the right elements close together". The problem that ITER tries to solve, even considering the advances over last 80 years, is quite a bit harder than nuclear fission in my opinion. Both are very hard, don't get me wrong, but fusion is considered the harder problem of those two. It is good to ask, whether something is effective, efficient or at least has meaning. But with such endeavours, you can only really judge afterwards because it has never been done before. So the whole ITER project, with machinery that redefines the meaning of custom, costs about 4x as much, as the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or 4x times as much as the current Lufthansa bailout. I wouldn't consider both to be very efficient spending of public money, but I am no expert. ITER is financed by most of the developed countries in some capacity, the compared projects are only financed by Germany.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Not just misleading, badly written. This is like what you get when you pit something through Google translate twice just to see what happens...
ganzuul 6y ago
I recently found out atomic nuclei can be bosons. Astonishing but apparently true: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/158070/helium-nucleus-as-boson https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/158070/helium-nu... I wonder if this could be used to lower the temperature needed for fusion?
lambdatronics 6y ago
Ugh. LPP is not credible, this 'journalist' did not do his homework.
- blackcat201 6y ago
  can you elaborate or attach some source why LPP is not credible?
  - rnhmjoj 6y ago
    I did not know about this device so I did a quick research: it's essentially an optimised version of early plasma devices that use instabilities to create a very compact, dense structure that can reach really high ion temperatures. The main problem I see is that this structure is very short-lived: on the order of 10 nanoseconds. These devices existed for a long time and have been used as X rays or neutron sources but not for fusion power. LPP have explained the exact machanism at the basis of the DPF fusion and have optimised the radiation losses and electron heating to reach higher temperatures but from this to claiming viable fusion power is quite a stretch.
  - lambdatronics 6y ago
    Lerner comes across as a bit of a nut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner The board of advisors doesn't have a single physicist on it -- makes me suspicious as well. https://lppfusion.com/investing-in-lppfusion/our-plan-to-net-energy/ https://lppfusion.com/investing-in-lppfusion/our-plan-to-net... Then there's this bit: "switching to pB11 fuel will give us a 100-fold increase in yield" -- compared to deuterium. That's straight-up backwards. pB11 power density is actually more like 100 times less. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion Yes, he's published papers about his experiments, but there's nothing in them about how he's going to get to net energy output -- so that part is not peer reviewed.

27 points by tekacs 6y ago

I guess it’s good that they reached higher temps? It does not seem like this is quite the breakthrough that will make fusion possible. Will fusion be achieved iteratively? Or will it need key new insights we have not yet discovered?

tastyfreeze 6y ago
MIT Sparc/Commonwealth Fusion Systems seem to have a chance at breakeven in a shorter time that the government and international labs. The problem is that now that fusion is commercial research we won't get updates until somebody wants to brag or a public lab make a breakthrough.
andi999 6y ago
Might also be that the problem of neutron contamination of the hull turns out so bad that normal nuclear power plants and breeder reactors sound better.

batsy71 6y ago

Misleading headline. No recent breakthrough has been mentioned in this article, except one made in 2016.

Traubenfuchs 6y ago

Misleading title: Not a breakthrough. Nuclear power plants are just as far away as always. (indefinite)

adrianN 6y ago
We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't have tremendous risks attached to them. But funding has been insufficient for fast progress. Funding is also insufficient for fast parallel exploration of non-tokamak designs. The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage.
- lambdatronics 6y ago
  There's still more risk than you'd be lead to believe. (1) There could always be unknown-unknowns related to stability or confinement with a self-heating plasma. ITER is still a science experiment. (2) The disruption problem hasn't be solved. There's an attitude of "it'll get solved because we need it to get solved." You hit the nail on the head with the economics issue, though.
- hannob 6y ago
  > We have a pretty solid roadmap to fusion power plants. ITER and DEMO don't have tremendous risks attached to them. The costs of ITER have grown to be more than 4x as much as what was planned (and it is still in early stages so that's probably not the end of the story). I would not call that "solid".
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Almost all large construction projects overshoot their costs. Things we built for the first time are even more likely to do so.
- chpill 6y ago
  > The real question is whether fusion will ever be economically competitive with renewables+storage. Could you elaborate on what storage you have in mind? The only effective way we have to store large amounts of electricity right now is [pumped-storage hydroelectricity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...), which is interesting but also very sensitive to the geography.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    I'm by no means an expert, but as far as I know a combination of batteries for fluctuations in the dozens-of-hours range and Power-to-{Methane,Hydrogen,Ammonia} for seasonal variations is what experts think feasible.
  - cygx 6y ago
andi999 6y ago
Not indefinite but always 40 years from the present.
- dtech 6y ago
  funding has been basically nonexistent and dwindling. Achieving nuclear fission required $23 billion (today dollars) and 0.1% of the US population to work on it (Manhattan project) Fusion funding is measured in tens of millions and does not have 350.000 people working on it.
  - Arnt 6y ago
    ITER alone "is expected to be in excess of €20 billion" says Wikipedia, so fusion has gotten more funding than those $23b.
    - kaliszad 6y ago
      It costs about the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project though, I would suspect, much of the cost of the Manhattan project was probably never accounted for, because much of the work was done by the military or other personnel paid for either way. You know, war time and such. But I haven't looked for any data on that, it could be it was all accounted for to the penny. ITER is an international, purely scientific, peaceful project that is already going on for many more years than the original Manhattan project. Also fusion doesn't just happen by itself, when you "put the right elements close together". The problem that ITER tries to solve, even considering the advances over last 80 years, is quite a bit harder than nuclear fission in my opinion. Both are very hard, don't get me wrong, but fusion is considered the harder problem of those two. It is good to ask, whether something is effective, efficient or at least has meaning. But with such endeavours, you can only really judge afterwards because it has never been done before. So the whole ITER project, with machinery that redefines the meaning of custom, costs about 4x as much, as the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport or 4x times as much as the current Lufthansa bailout. I wouldn't consider both to be very efficient spending of public money, but I am no expert. ITER is financed by most of the developed countries in some capacity, the compared projects are only financed by Germany.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Not just misleading, badly written. This is like what you get when you pit something through Google translate twice just to see what happens...

ganzuul 6y ago

I recently found out atomic nuclei can be bosons. Astonishing but apparently true: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/158070/helium-nucleus-as-boson https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/158070/helium-nu... I wonder if this could be used to lower the temperature needed for fusion?

lambdatronics 6y ago

Ugh. LPP is not credible, this 'journalist' did not do his homework.

blackcat201 6y ago
can you elaborate or attach some source why LPP is not credible?
- rnhmjoj 6y ago
  I did not know about this device so I did a quick research: it's essentially an optimised version of early plasma devices that use instabilities to create a very compact, dense structure that can reach really high ion temperatures. The main problem I see is that this structure is very short-lived: on the order of 10 nanoseconds. These devices existed for a long time and have been used as X rays or neutron sources but not for fusion power. LPP have explained the exact machanism at the basis of the DPF fusion and have optimised the radiation losses and electron heating to reach higher temperatures but from this to claiming viable fusion power is quite a stretch.
- lambdatronics 6y ago
  Lerner comes across as a bit of a nut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lerner The board of advisors doesn't have a single physicist on it -- makes me suspicious as well. https://lppfusion.com/investing-in-lppfusion/our-plan-to-net-energy/ https://lppfusion.com/investing-in-lppfusion/our-plan-to-net... Then there's this bit: "switching to pB11 fuel will give us a 100-fold increase in yield" -- compared to deuterium. That's straight-up backwards. pB11 power density is actually more like 100 times less. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion Yes, he's published papers about his experiments, but there's nothing in them about how he's going to get to net energy output -- so that part is not peer reviewed.