4 ms·

Hmm. It looks more like it exploded with no ignition. But they think they are close! A decade and 3,000 failures and they are probably spinning some PR so they

Hmm. It looks more like it exploded with no ignition. But they think they are close! A decade and 3,000 failures and they are probably spinning some PR so they don’t get defunded

goda90 6y ago
"I Have Not Failed. I Have Just Found 10,000 Things That Do Not Work." - Edison, supposedly.
- bnt 6y ago
  Apparently most people think stuff just happens on the first run. I write code for a living and in most cases it doesn’t run as intended on the first run, I can’t imagine making a fucking fusion reactor “just work” by assembling it and pressing “start”.
  - chadwittman 6y ago
    And then your results are published online (either because you need funding or someone reports on them) and people criticize you for not accomplishing your goals. Humans... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
willis936 6y ago
NIF is funded alright, just not by the DoE. The energy research has always been a facade for the facility’s actual purpose.
- vilhelm_s 6y ago
  From the NIF website, > The facility is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and is a key element of NNSA’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the reliability and safety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing. Most of the Department of Energy budget goes towards nuclear weapons, although they also do some work on civilian nuclear power and pure science. The name was always a bit of a euphemism.
- rsfern 6y ago
  Stockpile stewardship is explicitly one of DOEs purposes, and has been since the Manhattan project really. Weapons research is one of the top level missions of LLNL [0], where the NIF is located. I guess it’s controversial to some, but it’s not like it’s supposed to be a secret or anything. [0]: https://www.llnl.gov/missions https://www.llnl.gov/missions
SiempreViernes 6y ago
Four decades, ICF has been predicted to reach break even at one kilojoule (kJ) of energy in 1972, then 5 kJ, 10kJ, 100kJ, 200kJ, and finally 1.8 MJ by 1979 and the construction of three generation of lasers that all proved the predictions wrong. The NIF is the fourth shot at this, and has a target performance about an order of magnitude less power that what experimental tests (using nuclear weapons) indicate is needed to be directly supplied to the fuel.

Hmm. It looks more like it exploded with no ignition. But they think they are close! A decade and 3,000 failures and they are probably spinning some PR so they don’t get defunded

goda90 6y ago

"I Have Not Failed. I Have Just Found 10,000 Things That Do Not Work." - Edison, supposedly.

bnt 6y ago
Apparently most people think stuff just happens on the first run. I write code for a living and in most cases it doesn’t run as intended on the first run, I can’t imagine making a fucking fusion reactor “just work” by assembling it and pressing “start”.
- chadwittman 6y ago
  And then your results are published online (either because you need funding or someone reports on them) and people criticize you for not accomplishing your goals. Humans... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

willis936 6y ago

NIF is funded alright, just not by the DoE. The energy research has always been a facade for the facility’s actual purpose.

vilhelm_s 6y ago
From the NIF website, > The facility is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and is a key element of NNSA’s science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program to maintain the reliability and safety of the U.S. nuclear deterrent without full-scale testing. Most of the Department of Energy budget goes towards nuclear weapons, although they also do some work on civilian nuclear power and pure science. The name was always a bit of a euphemism.
rsfern 6y ago
Stockpile stewardship is explicitly one of DOEs purposes, and has been since the Manhattan project really. Weapons research is one of the top level missions of LLNL [0], where the NIF is located. I guess it’s controversial to some, but it’s not like it’s supposed to be a secret or anything. [0]: https://www.llnl.gov/missions https://www.llnl.gov/missions

SiempreViernes 6y ago

Four decades, ICF has been predicted to reach break even at one kilojoule (kJ) of energy in 1972, then 5 kJ, 10kJ, 100kJ, 200kJ, and finally 1.8 MJ by 1979 and the construction of three generation of lasers that all proved the predictions wrong. The NIF is the fourth shot at this, and has a target performance about an order of magnitude less power that what experimental tests (using nuclear weapons) indicate is needed to be directly supplied to the fuel.