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No, not as always. The laser confinement mechanism works, it has been shown, lasers that are more than 20 times as efficient as these NID lasers are now availab

No, not as always. The laser confinement mechanism works, it has been shown, lasers that are more than 20 times as efficient as these NID lasers are now available, so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. For one thing, perhaps a lot of the research money will move to lasers now.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
I mean, you nail it on the head. It's not "congrats on limitless free energy" but more "looks we might still get value in the future if we keep pouring money into this." Positive indicators at milestones are good. Onward.
- zamalek 4y ago
  > looks we might still get value in the future if we keep pouring money into this. Maybe this could also open up more avenues for money.
naasking 4y ago
> so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. Yes it's good progress, but an order of magnitude is not nothing. Squeezing another order of magnitude efficiency out of the lasers will be very difficult. It took 30 years or so to go from 1% efficiency to 20%, and law of diminishing returns applies.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  It's still probably about 100x, given efficiency losses all around, even on the highest-efficiency lasers.
- janalsncm 4y ago
  Why does the law of diminishing returns apply? A lot of things aren’t diminishing returns.
  - naasking 4y ago
    Literally everything has diminishing returns because nothing is infinite. Edit: to clarify, lasers will have some maximum efficiency that is less than 100% and approaching that maximum is subject to diminishing returns.
    - nchi3 4y ago
      Diminishing returns usually applies if you assume there are no major breakthroughs. Can we assume that there won't be any major breakthroughs in this field?
      - naasking 4y ago
        Diminishing returns describes a trend. A breakthrough describes a single data point that bucks the trend. I'm not sure these are mutually exclusive, as after any breakthrough the diminishing returns trend is reestablished. I wouldn't bet on no breakthroughs happening in laser efficiency, but more efficient lasers doesn't look like it will be enough to get to net energy given other inefficiencies in the system.
    - janalsncm 4y ago
      That is trivially true at the extremes of energy input. If you input an infinite amount of energy you will not get an infinite amount out. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This is a physical process which is known to be exothermic for the energy ranges we care about. As another example, raising the temperature of a flammable material 1 degree from room temperature will probably not light. Ditto with 2 degrees. But eventually, if you raise the temperature high enough, you’ll get more energy out than you put in. That’s the type of process we’re talking about now.
tsimionescu 4y ago
ICF works for its purpose - research into thermo-nuclear weapons (fusion bombs). It has nothing to do with energy generation though, and never has.
- zbobet2012 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#As_an_energy_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#As... That's utterly incorrect: "Fast ignition and similar approaches changed the situation. In this approach gains of 100 are predicted in the first experimental device, HiPER. Given a gain of about 100 and a laser efficiency of about 1%, HiPER produces about the same amount of fusion energy as electrical energy was needed to create it (and thus will require more gain to produce electricity after considering losses). It also appears that an order of magnitude improvement in laser efficiency may be possible through the use of newer designs that replace flash lamps with laser diodes that are tuned to produce most of their energy in a frequency range that is strongly absorbed. Initial experimental devices offer efficiencies of about 10%, and it is suggested that 20% is possible."
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    This is irrelevant - each shot also requires a highly precision engineered piece of metal called a hohlraum to be destroyed. With current technology, running an ICF plant would cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars per hour in hohlraums, since a single one costs millions, and you need to shoot several times per minute to produce energy. That's why ICF is not even close to being a plausible electricity generation technology, so it is only being researched by nuclear weapons research labs like LLNL.
    - zbobet2012 4y ago
      hohlraums are not expensive because of base materials, but because today we generally produce them as one offs and the process is incredibly man hour intensive. The DOE "roundtable" on the announcement today addressed this. For an actual look at the challenge of ICF i'd say look here: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.p... and also consider that it might be used in combination with MCF for example: https://medium.com/fusion-energy-league/the-fundamental-parameter-space-of-controlled-thermonuclear-fusion-1c1e34206ed8 https://medium.com/fusion-energy-league/the-fundamental-para...

toomuchtodo 4y ago

I mean, you nail it on the head. It's not "congrats on limitless free energy" but more "looks we might still get value in the future if we keep pouring money into this." Positive indicators at milestones are good. Onward.

zamalek 4y ago
> looks we might still get value in the future if we keep pouring money into this. Maybe this could also open up more avenues for money.

naasking 4y ago

> so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress. Yes it's good progress, but an order of magnitude is not nothing. Squeezing another order of magnitude efficiency out of the lasers will be very difficult. It took 30 years or so to go from 1% efficiency to 20%, and law of diminishing returns applies.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
It's still probably about 100x, given efficiency losses all around, even on the highest-efficiency lasers.
janalsncm 4y ago
Why does the law of diminishing returns apply? A lot of things aren’t diminishing returns.
- naasking 4y ago
  Literally everything has diminishing returns because nothing is infinite. Edit: to clarify, lasers will have some maximum efficiency that is less than 100% and approaching that maximum is subject to diminishing returns.
  - nchi3 4y ago
    Diminishing returns usually applies if you assume there are no major breakthroughs. Can we assume that there won't be any major breakthroughs in this field?
    - naasking 4y ago
      Diminishing returns describes a trend. A breakthrough describes a single data point that bucks the trend. I'm not sure these are mutually exclusive, as after any breakthrough the diminishing returns trend is reestablished. I wouldn't bet on no breakthroughs happening in laser efficiency, but more efficient lasers doesn't look like it will be enough to get to net energy given other inefficiencies in the system.
  - janalsncm 4y ago
    That is trivially true at the extremes of energy input. If you input an infinite amount of energy you will not get an infinite amount out. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This is a physical process which is known to be exothermic for the energy ranges we care about. As another example, raising the temperature of a flammable material 1 degree from room temperature will probably not light. Ditto with 2 degrees. But eventually, if you raise the temperature high enough, you’ll get more energy out than you put in. That’s the type of process we’re talking about now.

tsimionescu 4y ago

ICF works for its purpose - research into thermo-nuclear weapons (fusion bombs). It has nothing to do with energy generation though, and never has.

zbobet2012 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#As_an_energy_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion#As... That's utterly incorrect: "Fast ignition and similar approaches changed the situation. In this approach gains of 100 are predicted in the first experimental device, HiPER. Given a gain of about 100 and a laser efficiency of about 1%, HiPER produces about the same amount of fusion energy as electrical energy was needed to create it (and thus will require more gain to produce electricity after considering losses). It also appears that an order of magnitude improvement in laser efficiency may be possible through the use of newer designs that replace flash lamps with laser diodes that are tuned to produce most of their energy in a frequency range that is strongly absorbed. Initial experimental devices offer efficiencies of about 10%, and it is suggested that 20% is possible."
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  This is irrelevant - each shot also requires a highly precision engineered piece of metal called a hohlraum to be destroyed. With current technology, running an ICF plant would cost literally hundreds of millions of dollars per hour in hohlraums, since a single one costs millions, and you need to shoot several times per minute to produce energy. That's why ICF is not even close to being a plausible electricity generation technology, so it is only being researched by nuclear weapons research labs like LLNL.
  - zbobet2012 4y ago
    hohlraums are not expensive because of base materials, but because today we generally produce them as one offs and the process is incredibly man hour intensive. The DOE "roundtable" on the announcement today addressed this. For an actual look at the challenge of ICF i'd say look here: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1704_web.p... and also consider that it might be used in combination with MCF for example: https://medium.com/fusion-energy-league/the-fundamental-parameter-space-of-controlled-thermonuclear-fusion-1c1e34206ed8 https://medium.com/fusion-energy-league/the-fundamental-para...