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Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab

• rcarr 4y ago
  Genuine question: I seem to recall there being some very similar news about how 'ignition' had been achieved not too long ago. Am I imagining things or is this a genuine new development?
  • wolverine876 4y ago
    The story here isn't ignition. It's that they got out more energy than they put in, which is of course necessary to use fusion as an energy source. We'e been able to produce fusion for awhile, but net positive energy hasn't happened before.
    • wolverine876 4y ago
      To correct myself: 'ignition' is getting more energy output then input (if I understan correctly), and that is a first. Sorry for the confusion.
• fusion_for_all 4y ago
  came to HN to post this!! Potentially 2.5 megajoule output from 2.1 input
  • mirekrusin 4y ago
    ...where 2.1 "input" is generated from >400 input.
• JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  Suppose we have a world with working inertial confinement and stellarator fusion. Are there applications where one does better than the other?
• Trouble_007 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/fny0J https://archive.ph/fny0J
• PaulHoule 4y ago
  The efficiency of the lasers is awful though and they will have to get at least 100x that energy yield for it to be a net power source. A lot of heat winds up in the laser glass and it takes it a long time to cool between shots so you are doing very good to make a few shots a day. A real power plant is going to need more like 10 shots per second. Heavy-ion fusion has been talked about since the 1970s and it seems much more practical than lasers for energy production because the efficiency of particle accelerators is pretty good (maybe 30% or more) but it takes a very big machine, the size of a full powerplant, to do do meaningful development. Something like that seems to need about 100 beamlines because otherwise space charge effects prevent you from getting the needed luminosity. Given that you are going to need to protect the wall of the reactor and the beamlines from the blasts and also have a lot of liquid lithium flowing around to absorb neutrons and breed tritium it is hard for me to picture the beam quality being good enough. There hasn't been much work on it since then. If I had $48 billion to spend I'd think a heavy ion fusion lab would be better than some other things I could buy.
  • lambdatronics 4y ago
    Yeah, either heavy-ion beams or electrically-pumped excimer lasers seems like the path forward for the driver. Higher efficiency, higher repetition rate, possibly more robust. They also need to do away with holraums and switch to direct drive, to reduce target cost, ease alignment issues, and increase energy efficiency. I don't hold out much hope for a practical, economical reactor from inertial confinement, but it's certainly exciting to see them achieve ignition & scientific breakeven, even if it's 10 years behind schedule. The one nice thing about ICF is that the energy gain shoots up dramatically once you cross the ignition threshold. That means they're arguably closer than tokamaks, even though both concepts need ~100x the demonstrated gain to get from where they are now to a workable reactor. (Ie, tokamaks have hit Q~0.3, need to get Q~30, vs ICF that has hit Q~1, needs Q~100).
  • Oxidation 4y ago
    It's not worthless research (not that you said it was), as it still validates various aspects of fusion energy and some of the engineering around it. And it's always been ahead of magnetic containment devices because they only have to keep the conditions for nanoseconds. But NIF was never, and is not, designed to be a generating reactor, or even a prototype of a testbed. It's a weapons physics facility that happens to do some energy generating research sometimes. That aside, hitting Q=1 (and be able to use the device again) in any way at all using any equipment is a major milestone that proves humans can get there. From that point, in theory, it's just engineering.
• eqmvii 4y ago
  This would be incredible... very excited for the details in the announcement coming Tuesday.
• jcadam 4y ago
  When can I pick up a Mr Fusion at Home Depot?
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  The 457th "breakthrough" in fusion this year...
  • riffic 4y ago
    good, keep em coming.
    • LatteLazy 4y ago
      10k more and we might actually make some progress. Just 20 more years!
      • motoxpro 4y ago
        From the article. "Although many scientists believe fusion power stations are still decades away, the technology’s potential is hard to ignore. Fusion reactions emit no carbon, produce no long-lived radioactive waste and a small cup of the hydrogen fuel could theoretically power a house for hundreds of years." Not sure if you were expecting things to progress faster. But it it "only" takes 20 years. That would be insanely fast and world changing.
        • LatteLazy 4y ago
          Sorry, I was actually making a joke: fusion power has been described as "a decade away for the last 50 years" which I think sums it up pretty well... https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-always-50-years-away https://www.engineering.com/story/why-is-fusion-power-is-alw... The potential is hard to ignore, but that doesn't mean the potential will ever be achieved. This (like crypto currency) is the realm of vapourware I am afraid. Always just around the corner. :(
          • weberer 4y ago
            >vaporware Have you never heard of ITER? Its set to power on in 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
• lost_tourist 4y ago
  I hope I'm wrong, but this seems like a lot of other "firsts". I'm guessing the total (and I mean -total-, lasers typically aren't that efficient) energy put into this will be much greater than the output.
  • chabad360 4y ago
    At least according to the TFA, it seems that the breakthrough is that they got 2.5 mJ out vs. the 2.1 mJ that was used to power the laser.
    • Oxidation 4y ago
      MJ, not mJ. 2.5mJ is roughly the energy of a single keyboard keypress. 2.5MJ is over half a kilo of TNT. Fun fact that Wolfram alpha just informed me of: a phone uses between 10 and 20 MJ a year: multiple kilos of TNT. 4000mAh * 3.7V * 365: yep, it's about right.
      • chabad360 4y ago
        Oh, oops that's a mistake, thanks for catching that. Also, interesting fun fact indeed.
• mach1ne 4y ago
  Didn't they claim this already in 2013? https://gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-positive-nuclear-fu-1442537401 https://gizmodo.com/breakthrough-the-worlds-first-net-positi...
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • lambdatronics 4y ago
    Last time, they got something like 80% return on the laser energy input, now it's over 100% apparently. And, they had trouble repeating that last record, so people were questioning how meaningful it was if it couldn't be repeated. Now they've been able to repeat it & improve on it.
• jeffbee 4y ago
  I guess I don't really get it. Nobody doubts that you can get a tremendous output of energy from a fusion bomb with modest inputs. This thing they've ignited is a tiny fusion weapon without a fission blanket and with a huge, inconvenient optical primary. I mean I'm all for science but I don't see the road from this to civilian fusion power as people generally understand the term.
  • thehappypm 4y ago
    This is like a version 1.0 steam engine. Miniaturization and optimization can come next.
    • jeffbee 4y ago
      The analogy doesn't really work. The utility of a steam engine was obvious to antiquity, but they did not have the materials technology to build it. They did not need basic science to do steam power. The first practical steam engine predates the understanding by chemists of combustion. It was invented when phlogiston was still the going theory. NIF on the other hand is already a miracle of materials science. An absolute triumph. But you can't enumerate the list of unsolved problems that, if eventually solved, lead to inertial confinement fusion as a civilian energy source. On the other side you can make that list for magnetic confinement. There is a clear path from magnetic confinement research to commercialization, with a known set of major problems.
      • thehappypm 4y ago
        People in antiquity did build a functioning steam-powered engine, but dismissed it as a curiosity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
        • ufmace 4y ago
          This fascinating article goes into more detail on the reasons why: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus... They correctly dismissed it as a curiosity because it was far too inefficient to do anything useful with the amounts of fuel they would have had available. They couldn't have made a more efficient one because they didn't have any idea how to construct reasonably uniform pressure-bearing cylinders. Real innovation didn't happen until much later on, at British coal mines because 1. there was lots of fuel because it's already at a coal mine, 2. there was a useful task for the work in pumping water out of the mine, and 3. materials technology had advanced enough to make it possible to construct an engine that did a useful amount of work from a manageable amount of fuel.
• NN88 4y ago
  do I just wait until this gets walked back or...?
• monocularvision 4y ago
  It’s a real bummer to me that hype around fusion has faded so much because of the false hopes that this sort of thing barely registers on HN anymore.
  • boringg 4y ago
    I think that people are waiting to see the real announcement not the scoop with limited details. Let's see what the Granthom announces tomorrow. Tough to be excited about scoops with limited information and without the level of robustness of the accomplishment.
  • pfdietz 4y ago
    It's gratifying to me that the hype around fusion has been increasingly replaced by a cold and realistic assessment of its actual level of realism.
• Exendroinient00 4y ago
  Still not nearly enough money invested to energy research.
  • simiones 4y ago
    This is not energy research, it's weapons research. Inertial containment fusion is only interesting because it replicates some of the conditions inside a fusion bomb - there is no plausible way to use it to generate electricity with anything approaching cost efficiency.
  • bioemerl 4y ago
    Once you have a viable start the money will explode into the sector. Manhattan project style.
• tempestn 4y ago
  This is an interesting video covering several alternative fusion power initiatives being pursued currently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNP8by6V3RA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNP8by6V3RA The common thread is that they tend to aim directly for an electrical output rather than simply generating energy, and don't necessarily plan to have a self-sustaining reaction.
• amai 4y ago
  Mandatory video by Sabine Hossenfelder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY So they probably are talking again about Q_plasma, not Q_total .
  • willis936 4y ago
    And a mandatory response that highlights how her ignorance only hurts general society's understanding of the shape of the problem. https://youtu.be/KtqC8W0_Ups https://youtu.be/KtqC8W0_Ups
    • amai 4y ago
      The response does not disagree with Hossenfelder. It just points out, that Q_Plasma is a useful metric to track progress for research and science projects on fusion. However for building a useful fusion power plant only Q_Total is relevant in the end. This has been misrepresented very often and Hossenfelders criticism is absolutely justified.
• DrNosferatu 4y ago
  Even if for workable viability Q (Q_? Currently 1.2?) must reach values on the order of 50 to 100, if considering real-world losses and efficiencies. It's absolutely great news! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Engineering_breakeven https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor#Engi...]
• mgoetzke 4y ago
  While I appreciate all the effort in nuclear fusion and do think we should continue to invest a little of each years global R&D budget, it seems these reactors (e.g ITER and this one) still require tritium which is rather hard to come by efficiently. Which means normal nuclear reactors will be needed to make it and minimising any economic viability of the dependent fusion rector for a long long time.
  • atemerev 4y ago
    Normal nuclear reactors are a good thing too, and they alone are enough to solve all of humanity’s energy problems (though we should pursue fusion power too, of course). See Integral Fast Reactor.
    • VaxWithSex 4y ago
      Only if you use the notoriously dangerous breeder reactors – otherwise there isn't enough fuel.
      • atemerev 4y ago
        Breeder reactors are not "notoriously dangerous", they are just a little too expensive to justify their construction when the uranium is cheap (like it is now). Also, there are proliferation risks. However, these are not engineering problems nor scientific problems, breeder reactors are production-ready and safe.
        • OkayPhysicist 4y ago
          I've never really gotten the "proliferation risk" in the context of US power production (or China, Russia, or even France, for that matter). We're talking about existing nuclear powers, they already have the capacity to make nuclear weapons. If they wanted more they would make more, for the simple reason that having nuclear weapons is table stakes for being a serious player in geopolitics.
        • pfdietz 4y ago
• petermcneeley 4y ago
  What is "zero-carbon" in this context? No graphite control rods?
  • elil17 4y ago
    I think it's there for people who may not be familiar with what fusion energy is, so they can understand that it's a potential climate change solution.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • ceejayoz 4y ago
    It means no fossil fuels required to sustain the reaction, and no carbon emissions resulting from it.
  • SuperFine 4y ago
    There are no control rods in fusion reactors.
  • FuckButtons 4y ago
    A fusion rector does not have control rods. It has a magnetic containment field around a plasma which is, something like 10x hotter than the sun. if you put a control rod in there it would instantly vaporize.
    • HillRat 4y ago
      At the risk of being pedantic, if this is the LLNL NIF, then it's ICF, not MCF, though putting a graphite rod at the heart of a laser-driven thermonuclear event probably looks about the same either way.
  • drak0n1c 4y ago
    It’s unnecessary greenwashing hyperbole. Of course there will still be carbon emissions from the production of the reactor parts and the sourcing of fuel ingredients. The potential benefits of working fusion are far greater than carbon worries, and the media sells it short with narrow-minded labeling.
• xyst 4y ago
  This is very promising. Hopefully this can be one of the primary tools used to remove our dependency on dirty fuel sources
• chiefalchemist 4y ago
  I live near Princeton NJ. Approx 4+ years ago years ago I bumped into a friend one evening at a local restaurant / bar. As it turned out, her date was a top guy at the Princeton Plasma Labs. Long to short, Gates assured me (paraphrasing), "We're close. It's doable. All we need is more funding." I hope he's right. p.s. I know PPPL might not be directly involved in this announcement. I was sharing context on the topic. https://www.pppl.gov/ https://www.pppl.gov/
  • giarc 4y ago
    I'd take all of that with a grain of salt. First he was probably trying to impress the girl, and second, every scientist says their work is possible, they just "need more funding". If they didn't think it was possible, they wouldn't be working on it.
    • chiefalchemist 4y ago
  • pfdietz 4y ago
    Exactly what was the meaning of "it" there? Reaching breakeven? Or reaching practicality? These are not the same problem!
• acidburnNSA 4y ago
  After a few more major breakthroughs we'll be where fission was in 1942 after Fermi made the first man made neutron chain reaction. After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like, and see how much people actually care about small amounts of tritium radiation. At the moment fuel costs in fission are like 5-10% of total costs for a fission fleet. In fusion it could be lower, but that will not be any means mean the overall system will be cheaper. We'll have to see the cost tradeoffs: fusion makes much less radioactive material per kWh than fission (but it still makes some) vs. simplicity. Fission is relatively trivial: just put special rocks in a grid and pump water over them as they pour out their star energy. Progress is good and exciting, but I don't see any reason to think this will have major implications for energy systems anytime soon. Would be happy to be wrong though. Disclaimer: I switched from studying fusion energy to advanced fission 16 years ago.
  • SuperFine 4y ago
    >After that, we can see what a practical electricity producing plant looks like I guess we still don't have anything better than boiling water, right?
    • acidburnNSA 4y ago
      Right. But slapping boiling water around the burning plasma is kind of a rube goldberg usually. See LLNL's LIFE design for example [1]. Things like molten salt walls circulating through a steam turbine and all that. There are other ideas too, but it's hard to beat a Rankine cycle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy
      • eternalban 4y ago
        HILIFE-II Inertial Confinement Fusion Power Plant Design: https://web.archive.org/web/20150404075829/https://hifweb.lbl.gov/public/Sharp/HIF_documents/Moir-HYYLIFE%20II%20design.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20150404075829/https://hifweb.lb...
      • 4y ago
• gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Well... if Nuclear Fusion becomes actually possible in a cost-effective manner, so much for the need to roll out solar and wind-based electricity, which looks very much like a 1st-generation modern green energy technology in retrospect. I'm not complaining. If we do crack the code on Nuclear Fusion, if I was the government, my next step would be to figure out how to build so many reactors that electricity costs go to basically zero. If you can charge your electric car for pennies, even the most diehard gas-car fans won't be able to resist. Offering a better product attracts far more users than, say, trying to shame people for CO2 usage (more flies with honey instead of vinegar).
  • IMTDb 4y ago
    > even the most diehard gas-car fans won't be able to resist They just won't have a choice; if we can provide a real alternative, we can just forbid gas car altogether. Just like we banned CFC to save the ozone when better alternatives were developed. The main issue is that our electricity grids and production facilities aren't ready yet to sustain a mass shift to electric, so we need to ease in the transition. But the moment they are, there is no reason to delay any further.
    • bombcar 4y ago
      You don't even have to ban it outright; you just ban making new ones (though even the CFC ban wasn't 1000% complete; there's been evidence that some companies were 'faking finding old supplies'). People who "really want to" will keep old ones working and most people will slowly start using the new ones. After all you can still get a horse-drawn carriage if you want to, and you can drive a Model T, but few people bother.
    • gjsman-1000 4y ago
      > They just won't have a choice; if we can provide a real alternative, we can just forbid gas car altogether. Just like we banned CFC to save the ozone when better alternatives were developed. Banning gas cars outright, I think, would be a political miscalculation. There is broad mistrust of anything the government does right now in the US (not wholly undeserved), and it is likely to continue getting stronger, so not tainting it with a political ban would be a better solution in my view. Otherwise you risk polarization and failure, because not everyone buys climate change, or banning something because X is determined to be better now. It also would breed widespread resentment from people who aren't ready to switch (because, let me tell you, outside of cities, "reduces climate change" is something nobody cares about as a selling point). Just let electric vehicles naturally become better at everything and let gas cars slowly die naturally. The "invisible hand" will take care of the rest - just like it did with the horse and buggy.
• rapsey 4y ago
  Even if fusion ends up producing more power than consuming in the real world, it still has to compete on cost. People too enthusiastic about fusion tend to ignore that it might not actually be a cost effective source of power. Solar panels are cheap and batteries are easier to build and there are lots of ways of making them.
  • coldpie 4y ago
    Unfortunately, energy storage is still an unsolved problem. Research on batteries may get us there soon, but today they aren't feasible. It's very much worth putting effort into both approaches. IMO the best outcome is a wide variety of clean energy sources and storage solutions, so the best solution can be chosen for a given geographical/political/etc situation.
    • toomuchtodo 4y ago
      Solar and batteries are already cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets. Nuclear isn’t competing with renewables, it’s competing against batteries and almost free renewables that charge them. Nuclear is still possibly a great fit for niche locales where renewables aren’t feasible at all. Not a nuclear hater by any means (we need every innovation we can get), just show your math. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.365.6449.108 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.365.6449.108
      • Matticus_Rex 4y ago
        "Places where sun availability makes solar inefficient" is still a niche so massive that "niche" seems like a bad descriptor.
        • Gwypaas 4y ago
          Keep in mind HVDC. 3300 KM north of the Sahara desert, and you are relatively close to the Arctic circle. North of that is still a "niche," but now we're talking about a million people living hugely spread out. Most of those people living in Russia, Norway, and Sweden with easy access to an abundance of hydro, to the level that energy flows north to south in the Scandinavian countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
• rvalue 4y ago
  Donate the technology to the world after X number of years.
• e1g 4y ago
  Good write-up to temper expectations at https://twitter.com/wilson_ricks/status/1602088153577246721 https://twitter.com/wilson_ricks/status/1602088153577246721 My TLDR (from a layman): * The output is greater than the energy *in the lasers*, but the lasers deliver 1% of the energy required to power them. Need 100x improvement to break even. * Converting the generated energy into electricity would cut the output in half. We need a further 2x improvement here, so it's ~200x to break even end-to-end. * The scientific equipment requires immense & expensive maintenance. * Plus the $3B facility around the equipment, that theoretically could deliver just 2.5 MW. So we might be as close as 10-20 years away, as always!
  • bombcar 4y ago
    The thing that would be surprising is if they discovered something new to do; but this seems like more refinement of what they already know how to do. Continual refinement may finally get us where we need to be, but it's going to take a long time.
  • yuuu 4y ago
    temper
    • e1g 4y ago
      What if my expectations are tamper-proof, can you still temper them? Thanks, edited ;)
  • carabiner 4y ago
    Probably 5-10 years if this turns out to be the key unlocking it. If it is, the floodgates will open for funding, public and private, and we'll see a race to build the first reactor. Similar to how the first COVID vaccine was predicted to take 2-3 years and it took 8 months instead because it was a priority.
    • ShivShankaran 4y ago
      It took only 8 months because covid has been in existence for decades. Covid 19 strain was new and the vaccines had to be adjusted to new strains not created from ground up
• greybox 4y ago
  I don't yet understand why this is better than Fission. Surely Fission provides us with unlimited carbon free energy (given enough fissionable material). What will Fusion give us that Fission can't already? Is it safer perhaps?
  • acidburnNSA 4y ago
    I think it's just like thorium molten salt reactors. It's a new awesomer kind of nuclear energy that doesn't have any of the baggage of fission! Certainly, fusion does have the big advantage that it makes far fewer Curies of radioactive material per kWh as it operates. That has been the main driver of nuclear fission safety and waste issues. On the other hand, there are good arguments suggesting that conventional fission has been reasonably good at containing and controlling the radiation, such that it's among the safest and cleanest forms of energy known already. But the PR issue is a hard one, and people don't think like actuaries.
  • justsocrateasin 4y ago
    I think the main difference is safety. Simplifying / IAMAPhysicist, but you can't get a runaway chain reaction with Fusion, and the reaction tends to just burn itself out if you shut it off. That being said, fission is already pretty darn safe. But the public perception of it is not good.
  • usrbinbash 4y ago
    Issues of potential output and safety considerations aside: > Surely Fission provides us with unlimited carbon free energy (given enough fissionable material). The crux of the problem is, there is a limited supply of fissionable material. If we manage to survive as a species, our energy demand will continue to grow, and one day we would meet a hard cap, limiting what humanity as a species, is able to do. As a very very rough estimate, if we burnt through all the fissionable material that we have available on earth, it would be about enough energy to launch the mass of Mt. Everest into orbit. Long term (as in, many generations from now) we will need more energy than that.
  • 93po 4y ago
    > I don't yet understand why this is better than Fission Realistically, today, it's only better because of decades of lobbying and propaganda for fear mongering around fission. There is no reason why nuclear energy couldn't be the vast majority producer of all electricity in the world while massively lowering environmental damage and loss of human life. Long term, fusion might be better because it can produce a lot more energy and be safer. I feel like the safety improvement is negligible however compared to modern fission reactors that are properly maintained and governed.
• throw1234651234 4y ago
  Could someone break down the costs of realistic fusion for me like I am 12 please? For example, for fission, my 12 year old understanding is: Stack uranium plates until the reaction is self-sustaining, boil water to spin turbine, if reaction gets too fast, cover it with lead / cool it with water. Circulated water is slightly radioactive. Main costs are keeping reaction container / need power to circulate water cooling, disposing of spent fuel is a problem. Power output is 100s or 1000s times more effective than coal / oil once running. In addition to meltdown risk, public opinion is concerned about radioactive cooling water near their community. What's the same tldr for fusion? (and feel free to correct my tldr)
  • Robotbeat 4y ago
    Tiny H-bomb except pure fusion, and instead of a fission bomb as the trigger, you have huge lasers. You’d produce energy the same way, with heat being captured by some sort of spherical shield around the tiny bomb (which could also be breeding some of the fusion fuel out of lithium) and used to produce steam to run turbines. This is the first time that the laser’s photon energy was exceeded by the energy produced by fusion. But this machine isn’t optimized as a power plant, just to demonstrate fusion (mostly to improve modeling of H-bombs, actually). The shots take hours to do, the tiny bombs are currently expensive to make, the chamber for the tiny bombs isn’t designed to capture heat, breed fuel, or even withstand damage from higher yield fusion. Another machine would be needed to demonstrate like 10-100 tiny bombs per second, and the efficiency (and repetition rate) of the lasers would need to be higher and the energy gain also needs to be much higher (but if they got “ignition” where the fusion heat helps sustain the reaction, this may be doable). And need to find a way to make these tiny bombs cheaper.
  • jokteur 4y ago
    Realistic fusion (with the best understood technology): build powerful magnets around a donut shaped chamber, which allows to contain a plasma comprised of Deuterium and Tritium (both Hydrogen isotops) which is then heated by externals sources. Reach very high temperatures such that fusion reactions occur frequently. Some of this energy stays inside the plasma, and some of it escapes under the form of neutrons. Capture these energetic neutrons in a blanket around the chamber, creating fuel (tritium) and heating water pipes that then drive a normal steam turbine. Tritium is radioactive (but has a very short shell life; just wait a couple of decades), and the chamber may be slightly radioactive after decades of neutron bombardment. There are no problems of long term radioactive waste, and the reactor can't do a chain-reaction, so no Fukushima or Tchernobyl. I need to explain what Q is in the context of fusion. Basically, you heat the plasma with some energy (Energy In), and the fusion reactions produces some energy (Energy out). Q is basically the ratio (Energy out)/(Energy In). When Q is bigger than 1, we call it break-even. However, (Energy In) is not the actual cost of energy you need to run the whole facility, it is only the Energy that reaches the plasma. The same goes for (Energy out): this energy cannot be captured 100% efficiently. Some of it will heat the plasma itself, some of it will escape but the conversion back to electricity is not 100% efficient. So in a sense, Q > 1, aka break-even, does not mean commercial fusion, it is only a kind of a psychological barrier to achieve (so this is what the NIF announced; still a major breakthrough). We need at least to achieve (Total Electrical Energy out)/(Total Electrical Energy In) > 1 to achieve commercial fusion. But physicists consider the rest as engineering problems, not physics problems. And great news, there is no theoretical limit on how big Q can be: for example, the sun has a Q of infinity, as there is no required energy input. Current estimates put Q at least 30-40 to achieve commercial fusion (again: there is no physical limit to achieve that, only engineering difficulties). Main costs are: difficult to define, because we haven't commercialized a reactor yet. I would say, for now, everything around it is expensive (magnets, the blanket, the fuel (tritium)). However, once we have sufficiently understood the optimal parameters on how to produce net gain energy, there is no reason why the design of the reactor can't then be simplified to be mass-produced. Note: the technology used by the NIF is very different from what I described for a realistic fusion device: what I described is called magnetic confinement, and what the NIF did is called inertial confinement.
• dicroce 4y ago
  One thing to consider: Even if you prefer solar, you still need to initially make those solar panels and that is an energy intensive process. I think we're still probably 20 years away from commercialization of this, but I still think this is a very big deal.
  • Blue111 4y ago
    > you still need to initially make those solar panels Can't you use energy produced from existing solar panels to create more of them?
    • notacop31337 4y ago
      Yes, Solar Breeder Factories, I believe they're called.
• cartoonfoxes 4y ago
  NIF is still doing fusion research? I thought they pivoted to materials research in support of stockpile stewardship years ago.
  • zaph0d_ 4y ago
    They are still doing plenty shots for the national ignition campaign and figuring out the target manufacturing process. The official purpose of NIF has just been shifted to support security research.
• VaxWithSex 4y ago
  The net energy gain is very slim and has to be converted to electricity to power the lasers – in doing so, there's so much loss, it is again NEGATIVE. It's always the same…
  • Robotbeat 4y ago
    This isn’t the same; this hasn’t been done before. New things are hard. Nothing truly worthwhile is easy.
    • VaxWithSex 4y ago
      Presenting the progress of fusion in such a way to give the impression that commercialisation is right around the corner has been done before.
      • Robotbeat 4y ago
        Nothing like commercialization happens without an insane amount of work. It’s easy to criticize, hard to actually help.
        • VaxWithSex 4y ago
          Yes because it's hard to make fusion viable since 50 years my guy... Am I talking to a ChatGPT instance or what is happening here. Let's find out :D \\\vig-128 ?{/subject unlink;;;
    • deleted 4y ago
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• flowersjeff 4y ago
  I just hope it isn't another ( there's been more than one ) NASA level "announcement" on astrobiology that's going to rewrite the "book". These sorts of headline grabs do nothing to help in the end. This is feeling like another one of these, and I'm hoping to be proven wrong - as who wouldn't love a mr. fusion in their future.
• Ruq 4y ago
  The pessimist in me says that some building(s) are going to burn down, one or more persons will be found with two bullet wounds as "obvious suicide", and that any and all supporting documents will be "lost". Because we simply cannot live in a world where we are independent from the current power structure. They won't allow it. Hopefully I'm wrong, I'd love to see progress in energy production that is actually sustainable.
  • megaman821 4y ago
    This is like the "great-man" theory applied to scientific research. Even if this were to happen, I don't think it would matter much in the long term. The scientific community seems to independently come up with the same or similar solutions to the problems being concentrated on.
  • 93po 4y ago
    We'll see the same thing we see around fission. Lobbying and fear mongering. Politicians lining their pockets in exchange for delaying and blocking and refusing to fund fusion.
  • msla 4y ago
    That isn't how They would do it were They to set Their face against fusion. They'd just make people afraid: Focus on how it's nuclear, how it's dangerous, and get the people to want it banned. A few laws in some key jurisdictions and it's over, and the scientists can rant as much as they want, it'll never be a problem again. Of course, all of that partakes of the comforting illusion there even is a Them in the world.
• ThomPete 4y ago
  By now everyone knows that Fusion, if we succeed, is going to provide us with abundant clean energy. But Fusion is not just another way to power your lightbulbs, fusion is a completely new type of energy. With fusion we can in principle reach 10% of the speed of light which would be revolutionary for space travel. But even wilder, because it's technically a sun we would over time be able to create basic materials like, Gold, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Silicon, Nickel, Copper, Zinc, Gallium, Germanium. It would also mean abundant energy to create synthetic materials that could even replace use of fossil fuels in our materials.
  • VaxWithSex 4y ago
    It's a different environment than the sun and other isotopes are fused. The plasma is a lot less dense, with a lot less pressure but much higher temperatures. The current technology will not generate other elements. And Gold etc are not created in the sun via fusion. they are generated by a different process involving stellar catastrophies.
    • ThomPete 4y ago
      It's a different environment which is in principle possible to recreate. First step is to get basic fusion working.
• deleted 4y ago
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• skrowl 4y ago
  Good news! FTL travel when?
  • carabiner 4y ago
    Right after the reusable fusion rockets.
• coolspot 4y ago
  Anyone remembers Lockheed Martin container-sized fusion reactors announced couple (edit: 8) years ago? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8458339
  • pfdietz 4y ago
    They discovered that it actually had a power density 100x lower than what they had said, if it could even work at all. Last I heard the group there was disbanded in 2019.
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• MattPalmer1086 4y ago
  If this is the laser inertial fusion for the National Ignition Facility, the purpose is not to generate energy. It is to study fusion in the laboratory in order to maintain the nuclear weapon stockpile.
• chaps 4y ago
  “The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory experiment shows that scientists can get more energy out than put in by the laser itself. This is great progress indeed, but still more is needed: first we need to get much more out that is put in so to account for losses in generating the laser light etc (although the technology for creating efficient lasers has also leapt forward in recent years). Secondly, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could in principle produce this sort of result about once a day – a fusion power plant would need to do it ten times per second. However, the important takeaway point is that the basic science is now clearly well understood, and this should spur further investment. It is encouraging to see that the private sector is starting to wake up to the possibilities, although still long term, of these important emerging technologies.” emphasis, etc
  • JStanton617 4y ago
    The loss just on the lasers is 100x (i.e. delivered power is 1% of the input energy). Add in a combined cycle effeciency of only 50%, you're looking at needing a 200x improvement to have commercially relevant "net gain"
    • DennisP 4y ago
      Yes but NIF's lasers date back to the 1990s, and laser technology has improved a lot since then. NIF-class lasers with over 20% efficiency are available now. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.2.20211020a/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.2.2021102... Same article mentions that some petawatt lasers can fire more than once per second now.
    • sbierwagen 4y ago
      >Add in a combined cycle effeciency of only 50% Some reactor designs let you harvest electricity directly from charged ions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion
  • zbobet2012 4y ago
    Yes, _but_ the problem of generating laser light efficiently has and is being solved for elsewhere. Which is why the NIF didn't focus on, or update their lasers. This is a major problem for semiconductor lithography for example, and receives literally tens of billions in investment every year and one which has lasers that are already 20x more efficient than the ones used by the NIF. The real question in the experiments here at NIF was about whether inertial confinement fusion would work. This is very promising progress. Also NIF spends a good portion of its time on weapons research, not fusion power so it's only been a recent focus.
• hannob 4y ago
  Usual caveat about all fusion "got more energy out than we put in" stories: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nuclear-fusion-power.html https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/10/how-close-is-nucle... From a quick skimming it seems only one of the experts quoted here even mentions that (Tony Roulstone). (Update: i wrote this comment in response to another story and the comment got moved here, so it lost a bit of context https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958678&ref=upstract.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33958678&ref=upstract.c... - the press release indeed does mention this caveat, but many news stories missed it)
  • whimsicalism 4y ago
    > all fusion "got more energy out than we put in" I'm curious - given that this is the first time we have ever done this (even with the constrained definition as discussed in this article), how there can be a '"usual caveat" about all of the "got more energy out than we put in" stories'? AFAICT, this is the first such "story" to have ever happened artificially in history.
    • guelo 4y ago
      The caveat still applied when experiments reported energy gains below 1.0.
    • idlewords 4y ago
      Because all the interest of these stories is in fusion as a source of energy, and there's a long history of declaring we're near to break-even by leaving the most energy intensive part of the apparatus out of the equation. With no disrespect to the researchers in this experiment, it's not like we're surprised that fusion works or that a pellet can generate more power than is put in.
    • kelnos 4y ago
      Because people like to shit on fusion, sometimes understandably so, after decades of over-promising and under-delivering. It's annoying and tiring, but there we have it. Yes, it's true that in this case we didn't actually "get more energy out than we put in" when considering the full closed system, but the point of this research was to see if they could get more energy out of the reaction itself than was put into it by the lasers themselves. Presumably the next step is to see how far they can push this, still without bothering to think about the energy needed to power the lasers themselves, because, again, that is not the purpose of this research. There are other people working on making lasers more efficient, and the overall project will benefit from that research (and so will the NIF, if they decide it's worthwhile to upgrade their 90s-era lasers to something modern). I think a lot of people here are having knee-jerk reactions and didn't read the article where they very clearly explain the caveat and what the researchers actually did.
• stevespang 4y ago
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• zaking17 4y ago
  Would anyone knowledgeable about the field update their priors about whether we’ll see commercial fusion in the next 30 years, after seeing these results? If not, is there a big milestone we’re waiting for? Or will fusion advancement be a slow grind with many small improvements over decades?
  • ak217 4y ago
    I'm not an expert but I've been following the field for a while. It's telling that negligible venture capital is pursuing this route to commercial fusion, and the only cheerleading for it comes from DOE lab press releases. That's because the NIF is a thermonuclear bomb simulator developed by a lab tasked with both thermonuclear bomb development and also developing a portfolio of civilian applications for its technologies. Even if the NIF were to break even on the entire power plant package in theory, harvesting energy from fast fusion neutrons is hard enough in magnetic confinement designs without them pulsing like a bomb as they do in ignition designs. Meanwhile the VC money is quietly piling into tokamak and stellarator magnetic confinement designs, driven by high expectations from real breakthroughs in ReBCO tape manufacturing technology. These superconducting tapes can be manufactured like semiconductors and can develop magnetic fields that were previously impossible, which is a key manufacturability enabler in a design whose path to commercialization is far better de-risked overall. There are still concerns with the durability of equipment needed to capture the neutrons in these designs too, but ReBCO tapes were the real prior changer.
    • zaking17 4y ago
      Thank you - exactly what I was curious to learn more about!!
    • DennisP 4y ago
      Funding is starting to kick in for private laser fusion attempts. Over the past couple decades, lasers have advanced even more dramatically than superconductors. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.2.20211020a/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.2.2021102...
    • 4y ago
• cratermoon 4y ago
  just like this time in 2013, https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-breakthrough- https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-breakthrough-..., and this one in 2021 https://www.sciencealert.com/for-the-first-time-a-fusion-rea https://www.sciencealert.com/for-the-first-time-a-fusion-rea... Which definition of breakeven are they using this time? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U&t
• boc 4y ago
  It’s insane how much cynicism I’m seeing here. I know people who are nuclear scientists at LLNL - if they’re excited about this then it’s a big deal. The experiment actually created more energy than expected and damaged the sensors. This website is seriously infested with reflexive contrarians and it’s a not healthy.
  • dundarious 4y ago
    "Exciting" for individuals within the field often does not translate to "exciting" for everyone else. It's quite reasonable to think there's a good chance this is not the beginning of a "practical for energy generation" fusion revolution. It is very interesting, but in the same way that advances in particle physics are interesting.
    • deleted 4y ago
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    • dundarious 4y ago
      An example of the context in which I want to tamper excitement comes from a post by a journalist writing for the FT, an outlet that is (relative to its peers) usually quite matter-of-fact: https://twitter.com/thomas_m_wilson/status/1602011888652632064 https://twitter.com/thomas_m_wilson/status/16020118886526320... > SCOOP: Net energy gain in a fusion reaction has been a holy grail in science for decades. Now I’m told US scientists have done it. A massive breakthrough with revolutionary potential for clean power. US Energy Secretary to hold a press conference Tuesday: https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589dc7?shareType=nongift https://www.ft.com/content/4b6f0fab-66ef-4e33-adec-cfc345589... Instead of particle physics, perhaps a better comparison would be to quantum computing "breakthroughs" that come out from time to time. Within the field I'm sure there are breakthroughs that inch us closer to something useful (useful in the way it is described in these articles, solving currently unsolvable problems, etc.), sure, but we are so far away from something useful that these inches are ultimately quite underwhelming to the general public (people like me). By all means, I will occasionally read and enjoy great science reporting on these topics, but I have been conditioned to massively downplay the general significance of such news, and I think it's quite well justified, and not mere cynicism (cast as a negative).
• nostromo 4y ago
  2.1 megajoules of energy in lasers to make 2.5 megajoules of heat energy. If you turned that heat energy into electricity (our ultimate goal here) you'd have: (2.5 megajoules produced * 50% loss in conversion to electricity) - 2.1 megajoules input = negative 0.85 megajoules generated This is still cool of course, but we're still way off from making this anywhere near feasible.
  • dahfizz 4y ago
    This is science lab, not a power plant. The point is to create and prove new technologies. They could easily buy a newer, more efficient laser for example. That would increase the overall efficiency, but would ultimately be a waste of money. It wouldn't change the science at all, and the point is the science.
• steve_avery 4y ago
  I have personally taken a tour of the NIF at Livermore. The guide was an old hand, who constantly remarked about the efforts of NIF towards "stockpile stewardship," ie the maintenance of the US arsenal of nuclear weapons. It seemed like NIF was all about the stockpile stewardship first, and fusion research was a secondary consideration. The capability of the NIF to get positive energy from the energy that they impart on the Hohlraum itself is neat, but I constantly discount any milestones that Livermore/NIF report, because the inertial confinement approach has such higher barriers to commercialization than tokamak style approaches, that I just consign it to "boondoggle" in my head. Yeah, the lasers could be 20x more efficient, and yeah, they probably could figure out how to pump 10s of targets into the chamber per second, but the energy extraction is just completely missing from the considerations. The engineering challenges are a whole 'nother level for NIF, a big barrier to usability.
  • DennisP 4y ago
    Seems like energy extraction would be similar to other D-T designs: surround the reaction chamber with molten FLiBe or lead-lithium and run some coolant pipes through it.
    • uplifter 4y ago
      > surround the reaction chamber with molten FLiBe or lead-lithium So manufacturing fusion reactors would use a lot of lithium, which is already in short supply. That would be an interesting complication with the demand of lithium for electric vehicle batteries. Maybe the Li supply situation will be eased by then.
      • Schroedingersat 4y ago
        The quantity of lithium required is miniscule, but would require a fair bit of enrichment to eliminate the Li-6. The limiting resource is the inner wall for which no known material other than double the annual world production beryllium is even close to sufficient
  • rawgabbit 4y ago
• gigel82 4y ago
  This is no different than the hundreds of "fusion breakthroughs" we've been reading about over the past 20+ years. Progress is good, sure, but we're tired of celebrating small incremental gains. A leap forward or two might be worth celebrating along the way, sure, but we're at least 3 orders of magnitude away from actually generating net power here.
• kumarski 4y ago
  Solves no problem. Fusion plants have exorbitant feedstock price volatility and are only marginally smaller than a fission planet, despite square footage not being the scope of the worlds' energy problems today.
• low_tech_punk 4y ago
  Asking as a layman, are there any hybrid solutions between inertial and magnetic, or are they mutually exclusive? I'm imagining using magnetic field for macro-control and laser for micro-adjustment. Kind of like SOC designs that have separate cores optimized for different workloads.
  • DennisP 4y ago
    NIF recently started experimenting with adding a magnetic field: https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-implosion-performance https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-im... I don't think they used that for this recent event, so if it works out that's potentially a significant improvement.
• PeterCorless 4y ago
  They'll get greater efficiencies at scale with a hydrogen-helium target around 1.989 × 10^30 kg. [Nice science joke for those who get it.]
• melling 4y ago
  Any opinions on the book mentioned: Star Builders by Arthur Turrel https://aeturrell.com/ https://aeturrell.com/
• foota 4y ago
  How does something like this produce power? With tomamoks etc., it seems like they draw out some of the heat (somehow) but how does this work with a pellet that has to be hit by a laser? I'm confused about what the working fluid is, if you will. Is there some kind of plasma chamber that the laser has to go through, that heat is then extracted from?
  • DennisP 4y ago
    The energy output is 80% neutron radiation. Surround the reaction chamber with a mix of molten lead (for neutron multiplication) and lithium (for tritium breeding) and run some cooling pipes through it.
• di456 4y ago
  First flight 1903 Moon landing 1969 It took 63 years of progress in flight technology. Not counting earlier experiments and R&D time. First fusion experiment was 1933 Fusion seems a lot more complex to a layman (me) than spaceflight. Excited for what's to come
• bnjemian 4y ago
  I'd be very interested to see the breakdown of input energy costs. Most notable is the raw energy cost required to power the lasers and control machinery in the experiment. But then there are other costs, all of which must be amortized over time for any real-world use case to exist. I say this because the journalists in this piece imply that net gain is simply based off of the amount of energy pumped into the experiment while it operated, but the total input energy would clearly be more than that. On the extreme end, there's the energy cost of building the machine and engineering its components. For the vast majority of these, we can probably all agree that were a fusion power plant to be built, the net gain would fully eclipse these initial inputs fairly quickly. This may sound silly, but remember that the economic context where fusion so often sits is one that centers on renewable energy and sustainability. These costs do have to be accounted for. On the other end, there's the energy cost consumables. For example, the deuterium and tritium fuel input into the device, which need to be purified (deuterium from water, possibly tritium from the atmosphere) or otherwise isolated (from what I understand, tritium is a byproduct from fission reactors and they serve as its primary source in scientific applications). It may well be that the energy cost of acquiring these consumables is fractions to fractions of a fraction of the energy cost of running the device, effectively constituting a rounding error. But I think when we're talking about net gain, a clear definition and accounting of the input energy required to run the experiment would be useful to communicate to the public. I hope we see disclosure of these details with all the expected caveats when the peer-reviewed article goes to print and journalists have another feeding frenzy.
  • teilo 4y ago
    Early reports are are not good. For every joule delivered to the chamber, it takes 100 joules of electrical power. Heat to electricity is 50% efficient at best. Reports are that with 2.1mj of input, they generated 2.5 mj of output. Taking inputs and electrical production into account, this means 0.6% is all they are getting out vs. what they put in. These over-unity reports are meaningless, because every damn one of them only measures Q-plasma, not Q-total.
    • leephillips 4y ago
      NIF people like to call this the “target gain”, but someone there has been whispering “net gain” to the journalists, in their ongoing campaign of deliberately deceptive hype. But “target gain” isn’t even (pellet output)/(laser output). The denominator is laser energy deposited in the hohlraum; the rest of it doesn’t count. And this deposited laser energy is estimated based on a model of laser deposition—it’s not measured. (At least, this is the way it was the last time I bothered reading a paper from NIF. I got bored with it a while ago.) The modeling codes are classified; no one without a need to know gets to examine them, and they are not well benchmarked. So the actual target gain is likely < 1 in any case.
• lucidguppy 4y ago
  Is overcoming fission's political problems harder than fusions technical problems?
• eagsalazar2 4y ago
  When you consider the power that big oil and gas have worldwide, and all they've already done to sabotage adoption of clean energy, it just seems improbable to me that one day tech will arrive that provides unlimited clean energy without some kind of big ugly fight. Big. Like I can see these guys doing everything from run of the mill regulatory capture to kill it all the way up to supporting right wing (or communist) conspiracy theories or movements to destabilize democracies (all things that have been done in the past). I seriously wouldn't put anything past them. Maybe I'm being too paranoid but I have a hard time believing in any future that involves yanking away trillions of $$ in power from a small group of unscrupulous people.
  • DesiLurker 4y ago
    this is the reason I've been saying that we will have fusion within a decade of when markets start to price in the decline of fossil fuels because of renewable & other factors. its not an impossible problem, it just needs more research funding/focus.
• Doorstep2077 4y ago
  I keep seeing lots of talks of nuclear energy being the next greatest form of energy, but ever since Chernobyl, it seems like people are afraid even though Chernobyl was a one-off incident that wasn't regulated well.
• ibejoeb 4y ago
  Very encouraging to see at least some enthusiasm for this. This is the real way forward. We can't just stop using energy. We can't buy our way forward with "carbon offset" fees. And, most importantly, we can't just redirect all of our environmental conservation efforts to eliminating energy use. Remember when we were going to save the rainforests? Don't forget why we called these "green" initiatives in the first place.
  • leaving 4y ago
    You are correct. We need to control our own numbers at a sustainable level.
    • DarmokJalad1701 4y ago
      > We need to control our own numbers at a sustainable level. That's not at all what GP said IMO
  • willis936 4y ago
    Sure we can. Nothing is given. We are very likely on a path of contraction over the next century. Humans are resilient, we probably won't have a full societal collapse, but we might. If we could pick a World 3 track to be on, which one would it be? Now, what can we do to try to push ourselves onto that track? That's what gets me up in the morning. https://youtu.be/kVOTPAxrrP4 https://youtu.be/kVOTPAxrrP4
• alfiedotwtf 4y ago
  If this were hosted on a science website, I would be more inclined to believe it. But because it's on FT, it smells like the Stein had their "free energy breakthrough" on the Economist - i.e yet not another science website buy a website for investors.
• ashurbanipal 4y ago
  Is this cold fusion? The article contrasts this experiment with a plasma tokamak in the UK. I suppose the lasers require a lot of energy but it doesn't sound like there is a plasma is there?
  • bufferoverflow 4y ago
    Definitely not cold fusion. Using powerful lasers to heat up and pressurize the target.
• ChuckMcM 4y ago
  This is great! Why is this great? It is great because between magnetic confinement and inertial confinement approaches to fusion generation it is the FIRST one to demonstrate energy gain. If you are programmer, think of it like your program compiled successfully for the first time. It means that all of the bits between you designing the program, the program being compiled, and the operating system recognizing it as a program, all did what they were supposed to. Of course your program probably doesn't do what you want it to yet, but you have validated a huge chunk of the "pipeline" between what you are trying to do, and doing it with the equipment you have. That is what this is, "hello world" for Fusion Physicists. And the reason they are so pumped is that they have literally been told for DECADES that why they proposed to do "wasn't possible" (and by that I mean creating actual fusion through inertial confinement.) Steps 2 - n look a LOT more like engineering steps than "can this even work" steps, okay?
  • whiplash451 4y ago
    When your program compiles for the first time is usually when the real trouble starts.
    • tstrimple 4y ago
      It's also when you can start iterating effectively.
      • mastayoda 4y ago
        Damn right!! on the path to make actually do what it is supposed to do.
  • tuatoru 4y ago
    For certain values of engineering steps. Scaling up Qplasma from 1 to ~1000, and scaling up operating time from a microsecond to a megasecond are just two of them. I have a feeling there is still some science to do.
• jkelleyrtp 4y ago
  Very disappointed by the discourse in this HN thread. The same old quips over and over. "NIF is just a nuclear stewardship program", "it's not actually generating power", "fusion still 30 years away". I think it's very clear, given the past year that NIF has had, that they are very rapidly approaching a point where we have the tech to "solve" inertial fusion. https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/papers-presentations Getting fusion right is done a magnitude at a time. Right now NIF is within 1 magnitude if they built it with modern laser tech. Many fusion designs are 10 magnitudes away or more. Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps: https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-implosion-performance https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/magnetized-targets-boost-nif-im... This includes - Cryo-cooling the main target - New alloys - Magnetic compression of targets The recent advancement that helped reach ignition (in the last article) boosted performance 40%. The advancement between then and now: nearly 60%. Within the past 6 months, NIF has nearly doubled energy output of the reaction. Plus, if you know anything about fusion research, you'd know that energy outputs tend to scale non-linearly with energy input and size. This tends to be on the order of the power 3 or 4. Hence the existence of ITER. NIF has uncovered some new science, closed the magnitude gap, and made it actually realistic for inertial confinement to be a feasible tech for a power producing plant.
  • zackees 4y ago
  • devin 4y ago
    I am not a physicist. Most here aren’t but fancy themselves experts on things they know precious little about. I’m not surprised but I agree it’s disappointing.
  • floxy 4y ago
    >Their most recent article has a ton of great data and next steps: That device in the photo is great. Looks to be about 16AWG magnet wire. Guessing a 10mm ID of the coil, and about 25mm in length. To get to 26 Tesla, looks like you'd need to push about 33,000 A through that coil. Coil inductance might be about 1uH, and if the test lasts ~1us, then you'd need 33kV to push that 33kA through the coil. 30kV/inch insulation resistance, might not get arcing between the wires in air. Probably running the thing in vacuum? Looks like things check out. https://www.eeweb.com/tools/magnetic-field-calculator/ https://www.eeweb.com/tools/magnetic-field-calculator/ >NIF has uncovered some new science What is the new science? Seems like they are working on making the fuel pellets closer to perfect, which makes sense if you are trying to use the implosion shock wave inside the fuel to be the source of heat and pressure needed for further fusion. I'm imagining that the laser initiates the surface fusion, and then you want that fusion to propagate inward, and need thing perfect, so the fuel doesn't go squirting out the sides (so to speak) stopping the chain reaction.
• rolenthedeep 4y ago
  To everyone whining about the lasers: who cares? It's an engineering problem, and there are already clear solutions and paths forward. Efficiency of the plant isn't what's being discussed in the announcement. Plant efficiency is an entirely separate problem that we already know about. The exciting thing is that they've shown a fusion reaction in lab conditions which produces more energy than it takes to start it. Yes, the gain is small. It's nearly irrelevant to the amount of energy used to run the reactor, yes. But it clearly shows that what we're trying to do is possible, and we've identified one mechanism that can initiate these reactions. It's exciting. This is a great result that shows the science is progressing and beginning to finally show results.
  • pfdietz 4y ago
    Engineering problems are perfectly capable of dooming a technology. Fission's problems are all engineering problems.
• Axsuul 4y ago
  Can anyone recommend a good podcast episode that dives deeper into the implications of this?
• Octokiddie 4y ago
  Some perspective from cnet: > But, as with all science, it's good to be cautious and not overhype results yet to be fully analyzed. We have been here before, after all. In 2013, reports swirled the NIF had achieved this exact feat. It wasn't the case. https://www.cnet.com/science/climate/a-fusion-energy-breakthrough-major-announcement-expected-from-us-scientists/ https://www.cnet.com/science/climate/a-fusion-energy-breakth... AFAICT, the only thing that's been publicly confirmed is that announcement will be made tomorrow.
• dghughes 4y ago
  What I found impressive was the failure or rather why it couldn't keep going wasn't due to the fusion process it was due to overheated magnets. Generating 59 MJ (11MW) in five seconds was impressive too although I didn't see what the amount of energy that was input. I'm also curious how are they going to heat water for the steam generators? Water can't be heated to 150 million degrees C something has to moderate it down to X degrees. That seems to be incredibly wasteful.
  • simne 4y ago
    With D-He3 process, most energy generates as neutrons (about two magnitudes more than in fission reactors) and as break x-ray. Each will be converted to heat in walls and in shielding blanket, which cooled by water.
    • pfdietz 4y ago
      No, D-3He produces rather little energy in neutrons, especially if the D ions can be kept less energetic than the 3He ions to suppress the DD reaction. The D+3He reaction itself produces 4He and a proton. NIF uses DT, not D3He, btw.
      • simne 4y ago
        > The D+3He reaction itself produces 4He and a proton Yes, I made mistake. Thank You. But this is not making much difference from neutrons from D+T reaction, particles are not too convenient to got energy from their moving. Much better pure Boron+Carbon reaction, from which energy will go just as photons, for example could be used to feed laser/maser and then convert to electricity by photovoltaic or high frequency power diodes.
• pontifier 4y ago
  I see I'm a little late to the discussion, but this is very similar to the patented Fusion device I've been proposing for several years here. http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com The main idea behind my reactor is to contain NIF like explosions in magnetic fields. I've been trying to get a test reactor built for a long time, and my plans have been hampered by a theft earlier this year. A huge difference between the current NIF device and my proposed device is the speed of implosions and the strength of the field. While the NIF device must be re-built before every implosion, my device creates an environment where the implosions form as part of a harmonic oscillation. The ions are allowed to travel their entire individual cyclotron trajectories before they return to the implosion site... my target frequency was 2.4GHz, which is a useful frequency for direct conversion and COTS components.
  • TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    I thought I would let you know that you misspell "inertial" on your website as "innertial". Normally I don't point out spelling mistakes, but I think it may be more noticeable when pitching a nuclear fusion reactor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion
    • pontifier 4y ago
      Thanks, I always try to do my best, but I can only see through my own eyes. I had one of the main videos on the site set to private for a few years until someone told me they couldn't see it. I had only tested on my own devices which were all logged in to my Google account so I never saw the problem. I felt so stupid, but very thankful for the feedback. How many people went to the site and immediately dismissed it because such a central piece was missing? Probably a lot. I'm sure there are scientists who will never take a second look at the idea because of stupid errors like that. So truly, I value the feedback.
      • TaylorAlexander 4y ago
        Happy to help. Best of luck!
• pictureofabear 4y ago
  We're still on track for fusion power in 2050. Simcity2000 nailed it. https://sonatano1.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/retrospective-simcity-2000-or-why-the-worlds-energy-problems-will-be-solved-by-2050/#:~:text=But%2C%20of%20course%2C%20SimCity%202000,plant%2C%20made%20available%20in%202050 https://sonatano1.wordpress.com/2014/08/20/retrospective-sim....
• headsoup 4y ago
  Very disappointed with the disappointment comments in this thread. People without relevant experience commenting about others without relevant experience commenting on the topic at hand. Please reserve commenting for the experts who are specifically familiar with NIF. Oh no now I shouldn't have commented /error
• cryptonector 4y ago
  TFA is devoid of details with which one might even categorize the breakthrough, let alone judge it.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  This is the opposite of a breakthrough. It's a marginal change. To a system that doesn't fulfil the requirements of the rest of the article (requires tritium and the world's most powerful laser). And it might not have even actually happened, the measurements are still being assessed. People are so desperate for an easy, technical answer. But that doesn't mean the is one.
• nawwal 4y ago
  The power of the sun… in the palm of my hand…
• uvesten 4y ago
  666 comments, I won’t fall for it.
• OhNoNotAgain_99 4y ago
• TheDudeMan 4y ago
  There is a difference between a breakthrough and a milestone. This is a milestone.
  • poopbutt6 4y ago
    I agree! - Breakthrough: a sudden, dramatic, and important discovery or development - Milestone: a significant point in development This is clearly neither 'sudden' nor 'dramatic' and should NOT be celebrated or acknowledged as a 'breakthrough'. This level of journalistic malpractice is worth noting, and I have contacted the author on Twitter to voice my disapproval.
• mclightning 4y ago
  Welcome to armchair fusion engineering discussions of HN. Remember to wear your hard hat safety helmet.
• sabujp 4y ago
  Here are the numbers from the current live discussion : https://www.youtube.com/c/EnergyGov/live https://www.youtube.com/c/EnergyGov/live 300MJ in at the wall, 2MJ produced at lasers (using 1980's laser tech), 3MJ out from reaction
  • jokteur 4y ago
    As they said in the press conference, the lasers weren’t designed with efficiency in mind, because it is not the goal of the experiment.
• panick21_ 4y ago
  Technically many of the issues with fusion might be solvable. However, I see no reason what so ever why fusion would ever be cheaper then a GenIV fission reactor. I guess the advantage fusion has is that states actually invest serious money in fusion while fission is struggling to get funding. The reason why I think fission will remain cheaper. - Capital cost is less. A GenIV fission reactor is pretty low tech overall, in a non water based reactor the containment is mostly just a steel tub. Everything around the reactor, the heat loops, the turbine and so on will be mostly the same. - Fuel cost. Fuel cost is already a small part of reactor cost, if we switch to a breeder the fuel cost is basically nothing. For Fusion, in the long term this is an issue and you likely have to breed new tritium. - Operation cost. Seems to me that self regulating GenIV reactor should be easier to operate overall and there is much less complex technology involved that could break. - Safty. A GenIV reactor that is passivly safe is already incredibly safe. Specially with a molten salt reactor, the radioactive chemical that get blown into the air, will just remain in the fuel salt and will remain in the reactor safety zone. A fusion reactor does actually contain radioactive material that could be dispersed into the air. A fusion reactor might still be safer, but the difference doesn't seem that big. So really I don't get it, why would fusion ever be cheaper then fission? That said, I'm not against research of fusion. I just wish more money was spent on actually getting GenIV fission reactors into real world uses. That would actually be a more viable solution to energy problems on the plant.
• Haga 4y ago
• dang 4y ago
  Current thread, about the actual announcement: US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377