4 ms·

Could someone who understands the science explain how excited I, as someone passionate about clean energy, should be about this, or how big a grain of salt I sh

Could someone who understands the science explain how excited I, as someone passionate about clean energy, should be about this, or how big a grain of salt I should take it with?

dreamcompiler 4y ago
It's yet another "over unity" announcement. The fact that it comes from NIF at LLNL makes it a bit more credible that fusion actually occurred than some of the profit-motivated announcements of late. However it will still take decades (if ever) to turn this into a working electric power system.
- chrsw 4y ago
  I feel like most of these "breakthrough" announcements are just PR for reasearchers, startups and the energy industry in general. I get it, they need the money. Everyone needs money. But they're going about it in a clickbait-y way: appealing to anxiety over losing our comfortable way of living. Nobody wants to hear about deep sacrifices to recover from reckless human development over the last few hundred years. Instead, people are more interested in hearing about a quick fix that isn't going to require them to lift a finger, however unlikely it will be realized.
- MPSimmons 4y ago
  I didn't think _fusion_ was the problem, but rather fusion that generated energy in excess of what was put into the system?
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    Correct. The two hard problems are sustaining a reaction over a period of time and, given that first constraint, having that reaction generate more collectible energy than is being used to sustain it. We solved the problem of using fusion to create vast amounts of energy in a short amount of time half a century ago, but the primary application for that approach is excavation (and all ways that word can be applied euphemistically), not energy production.
  - thereddaikon 4y ago
    Indeed, you can build a fusor in your garage that fuses quite happily. The hard part is making a practical power generation system from this. Net energy is very hard.
  - dreamcompiler 4y ago
    Yes. I should have said "fusion ignition actually occurred" rather than merely "fusion." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition
- ludsan 4y ago
  > It's yet another "over unity" announcement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there haven't been "over unity" announcements before this -- aside from bombs. The Q of 1.5 here is the story. All Qs before have been under 1.
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    You're right up to a delta of maybe some private companies claiming something which was false.
  - AlanSE 4y ago
    Huh, ok. After some quick Googling, Wikipedia paints JET has having tried, and failed, to reach Q=1, only getting 0.67, which was way back in 1997. It's very strange to read that we get Q=0.67 in 1997 in a tokomak, and then Q=1.5 in 2022 with a totally different laser inertial confinement design. That... seems to be the written history. I know Iter would be surpassing the record, but the timelines are long to the point that one loses hope in the project.
jacquesm 4y ago
It's a breakthrough at a fundamental level, but at the higher level of looking at the whole fusion installation as a blackbox with a grid hookup it is still nowhere near a net energy producer. Rather, the amount of energy required to sustain fusion just dropped dramatically, so we're closer but we are still quite far from actually making this useful. Still, an impressive step. To me the major question is if once fusion is viable (assuming we get there) if it can compete on a cost basis with renewables (yes, base load etc).
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  The energy budget alone would naively suggest to me that it can't. Why spend all of the money to create and sustain a fusion reaction in a gravitationally subcritical environment when there is a giant perpetual fusion engine running on gravitational criticality alone a scant 93 million miles away? Just throw down more collectors, improve storage, and call it a day.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Ah, the handwavey "just". It has so many uses, here including the exact opposite. "Just improve this breakthrough a bit and commercialize it and we can bypass all the problems with conventional solar."
    - RajT88 4y ago
      SOOOO handwavey. "Improve Storage" is a thing they've been working on longer than fusion energy. It's proven to be similarly intractable, and prone to bad science reporting ("10-15 years away").
      - shadowgovt 4y ago
        One advantage it has as a goal over fusion-as-energy-production is that gains in storage can be applied to all electrical sources. More meat on those bones for a sustainable future, to my money.
coldpie 4y ago
I'd suggest waiting 4~24 hours (NOT the deluge of breathless 30 minute write-ups that will be coming) for some popular science news outlets to write about it and provide context. Ars Technica is my outlet of choice, but I'd welcome other suggestions.
Robotbeat 4y ago
It’s a big deal because it demonstrates scientific break even for the first time and confirms that the process of achieving ignition is repeatable. Ignition is important because it’s how the process can be scaled in a chain reaction where the heat of the reaction sustains the reaction, not just laser energy alone. To get useful electricity, you usually need an energy gain of 25-50. NIF is a scientific demonstration facility, not in any way designed to be a power plant, nor should it be. it’s wasteful to build a steam turbine and boiler and efficient lasers when you haven’t even demonstrated ignition yet. Now that they have ignition, they can start thinking about the power plant a little bit more. But they still need to increase the gain to like 25-50 by leveraging ignition. Article on an actual power plant demo follow on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy#Mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy#M...
Balgair 4y ago
You should be very excited about this. Fusion promises the energy density of fission (traditional nuclear power) with very-little/none of nuclear waste and dirty bomb problems. Compared to oil/coal, fusion is free and clean energy. Compared to traditional nuclear, fusion is ~99.99% free and clean energy. This is the first little ember of that promise of fusion power. It's going to take a lot more research and time, but they have proved that it is possible. It's all 'just' engineering from here. Think 1-4 decades. It's not a working plant by any means. But if this continues apace, your children are likely to spend most of their lives in a world with free and clean energy for all the nations of the Earth. Energy so abundant and clean that your children will be able to reverse climate change by powering machines to filter out all the excess CO2, for starters. After that, who knows?

Could someone who understands the science explain how excited I, as someone passionate about clean energy, should be about this, or how big a grain of salt I should take it with?

dreamcompiler 4y ago

It's yet another "over unity" announcement. The fact that it comes from NIF at LLNL makes it a bit more credible that fusion actually occurred than some of the profit-motivated announcements of late. However it will still take decades (if ever) to turn this into a working electric power system.

chrsw 4y ago
I feel like most of these "breakthrough" announcements are just PR for reasearchers, startups and the energy industry in general. I get it, they need the money. Everyone needs money. But they're going about it in a clickbait-y way: appealing to anxiety over losing our comfortable way of living. Nobody wants to hear about deep sacrifices to recover from reckless human development over the last few hundred years. Instead, people are more interested in hearing about a quick fix that isn't going to require them to lift a finger, however unlikely it will be realized.
MPSimmons 4y ago
I didn't think _fusion_ was the problem, but rather fusion that generated energy in excess of what was put into the system?
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  Correct. The two hard problems are sustaining a reaction over a period of time and, given that first constraint, having that reaction generate more collectible energy than is being used to sustain it. We solved the problem of using fusion to create vast amounts of energy in a short amount of time half a century ago, but the primary application for that approach is excavation (and all ways that word can be applied euphemistically), not energy production.
- thereddaikon 4y ago
  Indeed, you can build a fusor in your garage that fuses quite happily. The hard part is making a practical power generation system from this. Net energy is very hard.
- dreamcompiler 4y ago
  Yes. I should have said "fusion ignition actually occurred" rather than merely "fusion." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_ignition
ludsan 4y ago
> It's yet another "over unity" announcement. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there haven't been "over unity" announcements before this -- aside from bombs. The Q of 1.5 here is the story. All Qs before have been under 1.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  You're right up to a delta of maybe some private companies claiming something which was false.
- AlanSE 4y ago
  Huh, ok. After some quick Googling, Wikipedia paints JET has having tried, and failed, to reach Q=1, only getting 0.67, which was way back in 1997. It's very strange to read that we get Q=0.67 in 1997 in a tokomak, and then Q=1.5 in 2022 with a totally different laser inertial confinement design. That... seems to be the written history. I know Iter would be surpassing the record, but the timelines are long to the point that one loses hope in the project.

jacquesm 4y ago

It's a breakthrough at a fundamental level, but at the higher level of looking at the whole fusion installation as a blackbox with a grid hookup it is still nowhere near a net energy producer. Rather, the amount of energy required to sustain fusion just dropped dramatically, so we're closer but we are still quite far from actually making this useful. Still, an impressive step. To me the major question is if once fusion is viable (assuming we get there) if it can compete on a cost basis with renewables (yes, base load etc).

shadowgovt 4y ago
The energy budget alone would naively suggest to me that it can't. Why spend all of the money to create and sustain a fusion reaction in a gravitationally subcritical environment when there is a giant perpetual fusion engine running on gravitational criticality alone a scant 93 million miles away? Just throw down more collectors, improve storage, and call it a day.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Ah, the handwavey "just". It has so many uses, here including the exact opposite. "Just improve this breakthrough a bit and commercialize it and we can bypass all the problems with conventional solar."
  - RajT88 4y ago
    SOOOO handwavey. "Improve Storage" is a thing they've been working on longer than fusion energy. It's proven to be similarly intractable, and prone to bad science reporting ("10-15 years away").
    - shadowgovt 4y ago
      One advantage it has as a goal over fusion-as-energy-production is that gains in storage can be applied to all electrical sources. More meat on those bones for a sustainable future, to my money.

coldpie 4y ago

I'd suggest waiting 4~24 hours (NOT the deluge of breathless 30 minute write-ups that will be coming) for some popular science news outlets to write about it and provide context. Ars Technica is my outlet of choice, but I'd welcome other suggestions.

Robotbeat 4y ago

It’s a big deal because it demonstrates scientific break even for the first time and confirms that the process of achieving ignition is repeatable. Ignition is important because it’s how the process can be scaled in a chain reaction where the heat of the reaction sustains the reaction, not just laser energy alone. To get useful electricity, you usually need an energy gain of 25-50. NIF is a scientific demonstration facility, not in any way designed to be a power plant, nor should it be. it’s wasteful to build a steam turbine and boiler and efficient lasers when you haven’t even demonstrated ignition yet. Now that they have ignition, they can start thinking about the power plant a little bit more. But they still need to increase the gain to like 25-50 by leveraging ignition. Article on an actual power plant demo follow on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy#Mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy#M...

Balgair 4y ago

You should be very excited about this. Fusion promises the energy density of fission (traditional nuclear power) with very-little/none of nuclear waste and dirty bomb problems. Compared to oil/coal, fusion is free and clean energy. Compared to traditional nuclear, fusion is ~99.99% free and clean energy. This is the first little ember of that promise of fusion power. It's going to take a lot more research and time, but they have proved that it is possible. It's all 'just' engineering from here. Think 1-4 decades. It's not a working plant by any means. But if this continues apace, your children are likely to spend most of their lives in a world with free and clean energy for all the nations of the Earth. Energy so abundant and clean that your children will be able to reverse climate change by powering machines to filter out all the excess CO2, for starters. After that, who knows?