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US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved
- mustacheemperor 4y agoI don't know about everyone else, but I'm taking this particular moment just to swell with pride and excitement for this achievement by science and forget about the details of how much more needs to be done to create the first power plant. I'm remembering when I first learned about fusion energy development, how distant and unfeasible it seemed, and regardless of how long the road ahead still is it's incredible how far we've come. Happy Ignition Day everyone. I can hardly believe we really made it here.
- whycome 4y agoI guess December 5th was Ignition Day and we didn't know it?
- mixmastamyk 4y agoAlso Repeal Day for those who want to get lit.
- Buttons840 4y agoWhat about this: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333346-ignition-confirmed-in-a-nuclear-fusion-experiment-for-the-first-time/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2333346-ignition-confir... Allegedly ignition was achieved a year ago. How is this different?
- ceejayoz 4y agohttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04440-7 > In August 2021, NIF scientists announced that they had used their high-powered laser device to achieve a record reaction that crossed a critical threshold on the path to ignition, but efforts to replicate that experiment, or shot, in the following months fell short. Fluke or measurement error, it seems.
- dogma1138 4y agoBecause now it’s reproducible, controllable and consistently net positive in terms of energy output. It’s not a fluke anymore and I assume the engineering behind this is now understood well enough to develop it further and scale it up. Fusion for the most part isn’t a physics problem it’s an engineering problem the difficulty was always in how to implement it in the real world rather than in math at ideal white paper conditions.
- jeffbee 4y agoWhat information available to the public suggests this is reproducible and consistent? They do hundreds of shots every year. Why do we think that this energetic shot wasn't just a result of getting luckier this time than they did a few years ago?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jbverschoor 4y ago
- ceejayoz 4y agoThe B-21 isn't unmanned, the nuclear-capable B-2 already existed, and we've had fusion bombs since the 1950s.
- dotnet00 4y agoThe B-21 is stated to be capable of uncrewed operation.
- ceejayoz 4y agoIt's capable of maybe later on being made uncrewed. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/12/03/air-force-reveals-new-b-21-bomber-keeping-pilot-now.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/12/03/air-force-rev... > The service has not fully delivered on, or explained what, that unmanned concept or capability would look like. Defense experts told Military.com prior to the rollout that it is unlikely we’d see a fully autonomous bomber anywhere in the near future. They also canceled the drone wingman: > In 2021, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall publicly discussed the idea of having a drone counterpart to the B-21 that would essentially act as a wingman alongside the bomber. But Kendall later backtracked, telling Breaking Defense in July that the concept was not as “cost-effective” and “less attractive” than previously thought.
- p1esk 4y agoI thought they said it could fly unmanned.
- ceejayoz 4y agoThey've said it might, someday, be modified to do so. The current iteration of it requires a manned crew.
- tmccrary55 4y ago
- ericmay 4y agoA better question to ask yourself is if this isn't any different, why are the entire scientific community, the Lawrence Livermore lab, the DOE, and others so excited about it? If these are the same thing, why didn't they make a big deal about it before? What's the material difference?
- moloch-hai 4y agoThe hype machine is fully engaged, and may lead to an influx of budget, something of deadly seriousness to DoE. They have had trouble getting funding increases for this kind of weapons work when it was represented as weapons work. Pretend it's not, and people fall all over themselves to praise it. But it is weapons work, first, last, and always.
- anon291 4y agoYeah... this is a great breakthrough and an historic day for physics and engineering and humanity. Every American should swell with pride.
- petilon 4y agoWhen you consider that they laser they used consumed 300 megajoules from the wall plug, in order to send 1.8 megajoules to the target, the fact that they got 2.5 megajoules out looks puny in comparison. Even newer lasers only have 20% wall plug efficiency according to the press conference. So the important point here is, there was no net energy gain. They spent 300 megajoules to get 2.5 out. The scientists only talk about the 1.8 megajoules of laser energy sent to the target, not about the 300 megajoules of electricity needed to send 1.8 megajoules to the target.
- whimsicalism 4y agoEnergy is conserved in the universe so there is never any net energy gain. See how pedantic and not helpful that is?
- MichaelZuo 4y agoThat's a non sequitur. The laser ignition facility is not a smaller version of the entire universe.
- petilon 4y agoIn nuclear fusion, mass is converted into energy according to the famous equation E = mc^2, where E is energy, m is mass, and c is the speed of light.
- whimsicalism 4y agoFair enough. To be extra pedantic, mass-energy is conserved in a fixed inertial frame of reference.
- wahern 4y agoMass is energy. Add energy (in any form, such as heat) to a system and you increase its mass. Thus, in the NIF reaction, the mass lost from the pellet is mass imparted on the surrounding environment. Immediately after the fusion reaction, before the energy can dissipate further as heat, etc, the reaction chamber system has the same mass as before the ignition. There are some nuances regarding the distinction between rest mass vs relativistic mass, but they're not really relevant in this context. I think what trips people up here is confusing mass with matter. Matter is also subject to mass-energy equivalence, of course, but AFAIU in most common types of nuclear reactions little if any matter, per se, is transformed.
- willis936 4y agoI listened to the two hour press conference. NIF leadership made it clear that energy research is not what Ignition Day is about, why the NIF was made, or why the NIF is operated.
- Balgair 4y agoI agree. This is a Big deal. Like, first-lightbulb big, or polio-vaccine big. My kids are likely to spend the majority of their lives living a world where energy is clean, cheap, and available to everyone. Climate change is something that is not only going to be stopped, but can be reversed for them. Energy grids can be made to be smaller and mutually supporting, lessening the impacts of disasters. Oil dependency and all the political problems that come with it are going to be gone by the time they are grandparents. Nations like Nigeria and East Timor can have power generation like everyone else. The deserts and oceans and tundra of their lives will be places dotted with little greenhouses and fresh vegetables. If they get this down to the size of a car, then everything opens up for travel and recreation. The only real baseline I have to use here is Star Trek. Of course, there is a long way to go. There is a lot of work and show-stoppers still out there. And the ideas that I see as their future are just sooooo tiny compared to their reality. I'm thinking of faster horses and they're going to live in a world of supersonic jets. That kind of difference and small thinking of mine. I'm so happy that, assuming the best with fusion, they are going to live such better lives.
- opportune 4y agoI agree. I am thinking of my future children or myself into my old age. Even if we don’t get commercial fusion until the 2040s, imagine nearly limitless energy (of course we still need to pay for likely massive capex, R&D, and transmission) and its repercussions! At the very least we can likely pull carbon out of the air faster than we put it in. No more destructive hydropower, no need for fission plants, radically reduced costs for industrial manufacturing. Cheap energy could make raw resource extraction much cheaper and more easily automated. Fast transportation, vertical farming. With the concurrent innovations in battery tech, robotics/automation, and electric vehicles and ships, the future is looking incredibly bright
- vlovich123 4y agoI think you're hand waving too many of the problems away and letting your imagination run way ahead of reality. > no need for fission plants Not sure why this is a goal in and of itself. Everything you said is available today with fission and yet still too expensive to remove CO2. Fission has a more real shot at getting to the right price point before fusion even gets off the ground so why not push for more arrows behind something that's likely to help in our lifetime?
- already 4y agoIt's a big deal, it will change the way people live. Hopefully it also help to eliminate wars, the war for the natural resources and land.
- bushbaba 4y agoMaybe. Fusion energy might be more expensive than current forms or has undesirable yet to be known side effects. People said the same of nuclear and here we are.
- eastbound 4y agoThe negative effect of nuclear were known in 1927 (Hermann Joseph Meller). It would be surprising if we discovered another form of radiation, given calculations lead us far further without showing new forms of radiations.
- seandoe 4y agoAnd had we continued to develop and improve upon fission we'd probably be in a better place.
- dal 4y agoYou mean like tearing a hole in the fabric of space and time and opening a hell portal to another dimension?
- jrootabega 4y agoThat only happened ONCE.
- sh1mmer 4y agoPeople also said the same thing about wind and solar, and those still have some downsides but they are also rapidly becoming the cheapest current form of peak energy, or with cheaper grid storage, energy period. Sci-if authors have been talking about both solar and fusion for years, and now solar has been industrialized why wouldn’t we be excited to see progression in fusion?
- trilobyte 4y agoAm I reading it correctly that they achieved a ~53% output of energy over input?
- gjsman-1000 4y ago2.05 MJ in, 3.15 MJ out. That's amazing.
- eastbound 4y agoMinus the laser power supply, is it correct?
- maria2 4y agoYes. The lasers are supplied with 400 megajoules, but it's a start.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoPress release states: "meaning it produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it." The 2.05 MJ put into the reaction includes the laser power supply then, it would seem, unless they are bad at press releases. But 2.05 MJ is not a lot of power.
- sidibe 4y ago2.05 MJ is what made it into the system from the laser. It took a lot more to power the laser.
- trilobyte 4y agoThat's what I was trying to figure out. So is it still a net-negative overall?
- anfilt 4y agoYea very curious as well would need to dig a little deeper. If it's the beam energy it means we need more efficient lasers or to scale larger to overcome the energy losses from making a laser beam. Still even if it's just the beam we are at an energy positive which is still great news because it mean the fundamentals are working. Still other issues though, the biggest in my opinion are an effective way to produce Tritium and energy extraction.
- Kukumber 4y agoEvery breakthroughs starts from government (people) funded initiatives, congrats to everyone involved, a future without the need to generate selfish profit is at reach!
- coliveira 4y agoWell, they'll clearly give the government-backed science to some "visionary" who will promptly monopolize the tech and hail himself as super-genius who brought energy to the masses!
- hardnose 4y agoEvery breakthrough starts from government funded initiatives? Wilbur and Orville Wright disagree.
- Kukumber 4y agoWithout the accessibility of their public library, and public workers to guide them, they would have never been able to acquire the required knowledge in aeronautics
- hardnose 4y agoIsn't that a bit like saying that every innovation depends upon milk? I guess, technically, every innovation does begin with a baby drinking milk, but it seems like a stretch to attribute the innovation to the milk, rather than to the mind of the individual who may or may not have been fueled by milk?
- Kukumber 4y ago> it seems like a stretch to attribute the innovation to the milk, rather than to the mind of the individual who may or may not have been fueled by milk? What ever it been fueled with, knowledge wasn't created at an individual's birth, it's an accumulation of a collective and shared effort The point i was trying to make in my post is; it always starts from the people, for the people to continue, for the people to achieve a civilizational ascension If we build the means to generate infinite energy for free, then we'll have to ask ourselves if giving that much power to the individual a safe endeavor, or if we should make sure the prospect is for the collective to ascend Thanks to this achievement, many will learn from it and acquire knowledge to pursue that goal, would it be the case if it was a solo for profit effort? i doubt it greatly The open source tech industry thrives because it's a collective and shared effort, funding issue persists but that's due to us, individuals, living civilization's transition, it'll be a solved problem shortly
- teeray 4y agoCan someone ELI5 why this is significant over previous fusion experiments?
- gjsman-1000 4y agoPrevious Fusion experiments, even though we could get Fusion reactions to occur, required more energy to start and sustain the reaction than was generated from it. For the first time, more was generated from the reaction than put in.
- micromacrofoot 4y agoNote that while this is important progress, it's a bit of specific accounting. The entire system still requires more energy input than output, but this isolated piece can now output a little more than input. > This is indeed a promising and exciting result, but we need to remember that this does not take into account the energy required to run the lasers that confine the reaction and other inefficiencies and losses. https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-fusion-announcement-from-the-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory/ https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-fusion... It's still entirely possible that we will not see a fusion reactor in production within our lifetimes.
- prvc 4y agoSince there will necessarily be overhead in any kind of finished design, this "threshold" is an arbitrary one to pass, no more significant that 90% or 125%, or any other round number.
- Ancapistani 4y agoSort of. We don't have a commercially viable technology here yet, but we've proven that it's at least viable for the part that needs to produce energy actually can produce energy. As I understand it, now we start down the road of improving the ratio and optimizing the process. FWIW, from my lay perspective it seems like the research NIF is doing is significantly smaller scale than the work being done elsewhere. That's a good thing in this case, because the output:input ration - the Q - seems to increase exponentially relative to input power.
- johnlk 4y ago"...a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy". That's the best outcome you can think of as a result of possible free energy?
- typeofhuman 4y ago10% for the Big Guy.
- seanw444 4y agoThank you, Saint Biden, for doing the bare minimum for the ability to slap your name on it.
- endisneigh 4y agoI’d love to hear the pros and cons of fusion vs micro molten salt fission reactors.
- thehappypm 4y agoFission requires material that can be used in nuclear weapons. Fission can always melt down.
- loeg 4y agoBoth are decades away from being viable power plant technology, which is either a con or a pro depending on your point of view.
- bioemerl 4y agoHere's your most exciting paragraph > LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE). Many advanced science and technology developments are still needed to achieve simple, affordable IFE to power homes and businesses, and DOE is currently restarting a broad-based, coordinated IFE program in the United States. Combined with private-sector investment, there is a lot of momentum to drive rapid progress toward fusion commercialization. It's fusion Manhattan project time.
- rllearneratwork 4y agoI would love to see "fusion Manhattan project", this planet is well overdue for new gigantic R&D projects such as Manhattan and Apollo.
- Victerius 4y agoWho are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam?
- chasd00 4y ago> Who are our modern J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Richard Feynman, Edward Teller, John Von Neumann, and Stanislaw Ulam? they're working on getting you to click on an ad
- rllearneratwork 4y agoyeah. But some are apparently working at Livermore Nat. Lab still. Also, I feel like there is a bunch at SpaceX, Tesla, NASA, DeepMind and OpenAI
- Firmwarrior 4y ago
- puttycat 4y ago2022, not ordered by importance: Dall.E 2, Chat-GPT, Fusion Ignition. Can't wait for 2023.
- freediver 4y agoPutting these in the same basket is hardly justified.
- zhrvoj 4y agoNo, first two will use third. Nikola Tesla dreamed of free energy for the world. I don't think they dream the same... So entropy will go down now?
- hoten 4y agoCan you elaborate? Someone with no context can read your comment either way.
- alasdair_ 4y agoTrue. AI will have a much bigger impact on humanity in the next two decades than fusion will.
- low_tech_punk 4y agoAI can be quite useful in real-time computation for magnetic confinement. But sure, that's beyond GPT-3's current capability.
- low_tech_punk 4y agoAnd at some time point in the future, the fusion generated energy will be used for training the power-hungry AI to improve the efficiency of fusion.
- brofallon 4y agoI'm still a little unclear on the benefits that fusion offers compared to things like wind and solar. I understand that we need to develop better storage technologies for the energy produced by wind and solar, but that seems so much easier than the challenges currently facing fusion. Wind and solar just seem so far ahead of fusion already - they're pretty cheap and very widely deployed on a global scale. In comparison fusion seems very expensive and unproven and even when we get everything to work it might not be much better than a solar farm with a big battery pack. But maybe I'm missing something important about the economics?
- galuano1 4y agoPredictable and abundant supply of fuel, and hopefully greener to produce the powerplant itself.
- thehappypm 4y agoIt’s potentially just a much better version of fission. Fusion won’t cause a runaway reaction — in fact it’s brutally difficult to get it to react at all, hence why this is an achievement. It also doesn’t use materials that can be used for a bomb, again unlike fission. As a result it has the potential to be cheaper to implement, cheaper to fuel, with no meltdown risk.
- dogma1138 4y agoDepending on the scale and reactor design, we have really good examples of run away fusion reactions. Run away reactions are easy, controlled ones are hard. And whilst I won’t doubt that if fusion ever becomes commercially viable the reactors would be walk away safe it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to account for that in your design.
- willis936 4y agoWhat is an example of a run away fusion reaction?
- 4y ago
- jkelleyrtp 4y ago> LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE) Yesterday, everyone was complaining about the 2.2:2.0 ratio, but now we're working with 3.15:2.05. With modern lasers, that'd be a total Q of 0.375 assuming 100% efficiency through direct-energy-capture. The jumps to get here included - 40% with the new targets - 60% with magnetic confinement - 35% with crycooling of the target The recent NIF experiments have jumped up in power. The first shot that started this new chain of research was about 1.7 MJ of energy delivered. Now, 2.15 MJ. However, the output has jumped non-linearly, demonstrating the scaling laws at work. > I’ve helped to secure the highest ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF program to build on this amazing breakthrough.” It's nice to see this milestone recognized, even if the funding it still rather small.
- pfdietz 4y agoThe Q needs to be something like 500 to 1000, not because of energy breakeven, but to produce enough energy that the shot is financially positive. The amount of fusion energy produced in this shot is worth a penny or two. (And even then, it's dubious a laser fusion scheme will be competitive with other energy sources.)
- echelon 4y agoIt will get there. It's just a matter of time and resources. The destination will be a milestone for humanity, so we should not give up.
- pfdietz 4y agoWhy should I agree with this article of faith? The obstacles appear quite grave to me. Moreover, even reaching that Q doesn't mean we're there. That's a necessary, not sufficient, condition. A large, complex machine that explodes the equivalent of 500 lb. bombs to generate heat to drive a turbine sounds like an engineering nightmare.
- sergiotapia 4y agoThe future just got a whole lot brighter for my children. This is going to save our planet, not funky wind farms.
- adamvalve 4y agoNo need to pit them against each other. This achievement wasn't certain. Multiple paths towards a more sustainable future is better for everyone.
- lostmsu 4y ago> Multiple paths towards a more sustainable future is better for everyone. That is debatable.
- loeg 4y agoThis a commercially viable power source ain't.
- JoeAltmaier 4y agoHuge! So much left to do. Capture that output energy. Streamline the machinery that produced the result. Do it at scale and efficiently. But that's just engineering, as they say. Which is one thing we are pretty good at!!
- e1g 4y agoRecently discussed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945863 [740 comments]
- twarge 4y agoRemarkable. It's still nuclear energy, and the sobering part for me is that fusion neutrons are an order of magnitude more energetic than fission neutrons. Add the fact that fusion plants are an order of magnitude larger, and you get orders of magnitude more nuclear waste with order of magnitude higher activation/radioactivity. If you don't like nuclear for these reasons, you'll probably hate fusion.
- fastneutron 4y agoActivation products are of a different nature than the fission products and minor actinides you get in fission reactors, and are not necessarily as fearsome to handle, nor is the total activity comparable at all to what you get in spent fuel. However, those high energy neutrons do a ridiculous amount of damage to the structural materials, and if there are constant outages to swap and repair components, I don’t see an easy way of making energy economically.
- floxy 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneutronic_fusion
- blackbear_ 4y agoFurthermore, fusion does not produce highly radioactive, long lived nuclear waste. “Fusion produces only low level radioactive waste — more than fission does — but this low level waste does not pose any serious danger,” said González de Vicente. Contaminated items, such as protective clothing, cleaning supplies and even medical tubes or swabs, are short lived, low level radioactive waste that can be safely handled with basic precautions. From https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/safety-in-fusion https://www.iaea.org/bulletin/safety-in-fusion
- twarge 4y agoPerhaps Dr. dr Vicente is talking about ITER, but surely not a real fusion reactor. Here's something talking about an actual fusion reactor: "While the radioactivity level per kilogram of waste would be much smaller than for fission-reactor wastes, the volume and mass of wastes would be many times larger." and "To reduce the radiation exposure of plant workers, biological shielding is needed even when the reactor is not operating. In the intensely radioactive environment, remote handling equipment and robots would be required for all maintenance work on reactor components as well as for their replacement because of radiation damage, particle erosion, or melting." https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-theyre-cracked-up-to-be/ https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...
- panosfilianos 4y agoI tried to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations on what this means in regards to energy costs being saved, because I couldn't find a direct source (maybe GPT could help actually). Anyway, based on ITER [1] to equate the energy production of a 1000MW coal plant you would need 2.7t of coal for that plant or 250kg of deuterium and tritium for the fusion reactor (split equally). Based on [2] deuetrium costs about ~$15k a kg. But tritium is ridiculously expensive, at $30k per gram (!) [3]. This leads to a calculation of ~$700M for the coal plant and ~$3.75B for the fusion plant (of which only ~$1.5M is deuterium) I have a few questions and I wonder if any can help: 1. Is the above fusion fuel correct? 2. What measures are expected to bring these prices down to price efficiency? Of course, I am not calculating the cost it would take for the reactor, storage, delivery etc. Nevertheless, this is an absolutely incredible development and the people working for this progress should be definitely proud of their work. My generation and the ones following will hail this as a breakthrough moment. Thanks! [1]: https://www.iter.org/sci/FusionFuels https://www.iter.org/sci/FusionFuels [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prices_of_chemical_elements [3]: https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run-fuel-even-gets-started https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run...
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> tritium is ridiculously expensive, at $30k per gram D-T fusion almost always breeds tritium in the blanket.
- panosfilianos 4y agoWould that mean that you wouldn't need titium to start with? Or that tritium deposits would replenish? How would it affect the rough calculations above?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> Would that mean that you wouldn't need titium to start with? Tritium decays in a decade. To start, you'd need the expensive stuff harvested from the heavy water of spent fuel pools. After that, you'd let your neutrons breed it in lithium (or boron, if you're fancy).
- psychoslave 4y agoIs that a different approach than the Tokamak, some piece to make it works, or some other relationship? What does it mean for existing projects such as ITER? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
- readams 4y agoThis works in a totally different way, by heating a tiny target fuel pellet with a laser to cause it to collapse and trigger fusion through basically heating and squeezing: more like how a bomb works. It's not easy to see a direct path from this approach to a power plant, but it might involve lining up a steady stream of fuel targets and doing this in a sort of pulsed mode. Other approaches attempt to create a continuous plasma where fusion can occur confined in a powerful magnetic field, and heated by radio waves to get it going. So there's always fusion happening rather than in short bursts.
- lostmsu 4y agoIn principle inertial confinement is not much different from internal combustion engines where piston compresses the mix, and the explosion energy is harvested. Here lasers compress the mix, and the explosion energy is not yet harvested (but measured). Tokamaks (the other approach) are more like jet engines in that they sustain burning. But currently the burning in tokamaks requires more energy than it generates.
- jasonhansel 4y agoCould it be argued that we should invest more in ICF and less in tokamaks, given this result? I don't know enough about the field to say.
- lostmsu 4y agoI personally believed so since a while ago, for that exact reason. Although I was thinking more of miniaturizing the existing bomb design where fusion material is surrounded by a fission shell made of material with lower critical mass. But I am no expert either.
- tibbydudeza 4y agoCongrats Doc Ok.
- ck2 4y agoThis was for a few seconds using radioactive "fuel" correct? So perpetually 10-25 years away at all times? https://m.xkcd.com/678/ https://m.xkcd.com/678/ Beware science packaged as press-releases.
- raydiatian 4y ago> achieve President Biden’s goal This seems unnecessarily partisan to mention
- desertlounger 4y ago
- raydiatian 4y agoIf they could, literal reptiles would absolutely be in support of this. Because Godzilla.
- alexose 4y agoThe full quote is > This historic, first-of-its kind achievement will provide unprecedented capability to support NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship Program and will provide invaluable insights into the prospects of clean fusion energy, which would be a game-changer for efforts to achieve President Biden’s goal of a net-zero carbon economy. That is his administration's goal, and it's the directive that DoE is working under during his presidency. Unless you have another party in mind that's been vocally championing a net-zero carbon economy?
- raydiatian 4y agoThank you for educating me. I was unaware Joe Biden invented the concept of bringing down CO2 emissions. It’s important that we’re calling him out by name so that we can illustrate the sixty years of effort put forth by the hard working men and women in nuclear physics. It is, after all, his money that is funding this research effort. Sincerely, a Biden voter
- anon291 4y agoThe GOP has been pro-nuclear for a long time.
- johnp271 4y agoWow so all this was accomplished starting from scratch in January 2021. Given another year or two and a second Biden term we should be finished.
- frellus 4y agoI hate to ask this, but have to ... is there any danger of these discoveries being weaponized easily by hostile countries? i.e. does this make unconventional weapons more accessible to countries who otherwise have embargoes on technology and material to make atomic weapons?
- frellus 4y agoOops, answered my own question I guess: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon That ain't good. Although fusion is clearly the future of energy, we have to get our sh*t together on earth so we don't kill ourselves off or devolve with endless wars. Or give up and use fusion to leave the planet efficiently.
- tinco 4y agoSo.. we attack our enemies by building large fusion power plants in their countries, and then blowing them up? Why not just build a traditional nuclear fission power plant and blow that up? It seems that would be a lot cheaper.
- rubyist5eva 4y agoI don't see how this is any different to mutually assured destruction via nuclear weapons.
- jameshart 4y agoFrom your wiki source: > The power densities needed to ignite a fusion reaction still seem attainable only with the aid of a fission explosion, or with large apparatus such as powerful lasers like those at the National Ignition Facility, the Sandia Z-pinch machine, or various magnetic tokamaks. Regardless of any claimed advantages of pure fusion weapons, building those weapons does not appear to be feasible using currently available technologies Nothing about this result from NIF seems to suggest that igniting fusion is any easier than previously suspected.
- mbauman 4y ago> That ain't good. Your takeaway does not match that article. The article details how "no measurable success was ever achieved" and that the large amount of energy required to start fusion is hugely prohibitive. I don't see how the NIF's success here changes that.
- bookingtrolley6 4y ago
- wnevets 4y agoI know this is from the DOE but is this real real or this is wormhole "real"?
- aetherson 4y agoIt's not like the "wormhole" thing where what was produced isn't really what can plausibly be described as a wormhole. In this case, fusion really did happen, and the amount of energy produced by the fusion reaction was about half again what the energy put into the fusion reaction was. That said, there are two pretty important caveats about how big a deal it is macroscopically: 1. In order to have useful fusion power, we'd need at least another order-of-magnitude or so energy out compared to energy in. Maybe, depending on how optimistic you are about the ability to capture that energy and efficiently feed energy in, closer to two orders of magnitude. 2. This is from an inertial confinement approach to fusion. Unlike the magnetic confinement approaches that we often hear about, this approach doesn't really create a continuously hot, spatially constrained bit of plasma that can then be used to heat things up -- it produces more like a small but intense explosion. There are real doubts about whether you can, even with very favorable energy-out ratios, industrialize that into an actual power plant. It's more challenging to harvest energy from an explosion than it is to harvest energy from a bunch of plasma flowing in a circle.
- wnevets 4y ago> 2. This is from an inertial confinement approach to fusion. Unlike the magnetic confinement approaches that we often hear about, this approach doesn't really create a continuously hot, spatially constrained bit of plasma that can then be used to heat things up -- it produces more like a small but intense explosion. There are real doubts about whether you can, even with very favorable energy-out ratios, industrialize that into an actual power plant. It's more challenging to harvest energy from an explosion than it is to harvest energy from a bunch of plasma flowing in a circle. Thank you, that is the kind of caveat I was expecting.
- lostmsu 4y ago> Thank you, that is the kind of caveat I was expecting. The caveat on caveat is that historically explosions (piston internal combustion engines) were developed before continuous burning (jet turbines).
- UltraViolence 4y agoI thought we had passed this mark a long time ago, but only during short stints. However, the way they're realizing it by shooting a fuel pellet with lasers is unsustainable and impractical IMHO.
- simiones 4y agoIf only they were shooting a fuel pellet: they are instead shooting a hohlraum, a precision-engineered piece of gold and that, in turn, shoots the fuel pellet with X-Rays, acting as a kind of aiming/synchronization device. The hohlraum is destroyed in the process, and currently costs millions of dollars to build a new one.
- philipkglass 4y agoThe hohlraum is destroyed in the process, and currently costs millions of dollars to build a new one. Hohlraums are expensive but not millions of dollars. This 2004 report puts the cost at about $2500 each (still far too expensive for a power plant of course) while examining ways to get them under $1 each. "Cost-Effective Target Fabrication For Inertial Fusion Energy" https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/828518 https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/828518
- jmyeet 4y agoI hope commercial fusion power generation becomes a reality but I'm far from convinced that's the case. What we see here is just solving one problem with many more to go. Energy output exceeding energy input produces a surplus of energy. That's a must and that's the breakthrough LLNL is announcing but le tme list the some of the known barriers to producing electricity: 1. How stable is the reaction? What failure modes does it have? While fusion doesn't have the same failure modes as fission does (eg Chernobyl) it could still result in significant damage to the container or even the facility; 2. What's the relationship between capex ("capital expendiutre"), lifetime, maintenance and power generation. An extreme example is if your power plant costs $50B with annual mainteance of $2B and a life of 30 years but only produces 100MW of power then even though the fuel is free it's not economical because those capex and operational costs have to be amortized over the life of the plant; 3. How available are the fuels? Of course hydrogen is abundant but most of it is protium (H1), which is not useful for current fusion research. Most of it is DT fusion, meaning deuterium (H2) - tritium (H3). Deuterium is naturally occuring (IIRC ~1ppm). Tritium is not. It needs to be bred. 4. What about neutrons? Neutrons create two problems. The first is energy loss. High speed neutrons are energy loss from your system. Inertial confinement (ie this result) tries to capture neutrons with a "shell". Older designs (eg ITER) use a tokamak, which is magnetic containment of a superheated plasma. Magnetic fields are great for containing electrons and hydrogen nucei because they're positively charged. Neutrons obviously have no electric charge so just escape. The second problem is the damage these neutrons cause (ie "neutron embrittlement"). 5. How do you convert that energy into power? Nuclear fission, for example, heats water into steam that turns a turbine that generates electricity. This isn't particularly efficient and greatly adds to the costs. It's another system that needs to be maintained. "Direct energy conversion" would be the holy grail here but that's all very theoretical at this point. Once you start adding up efficiencies in the different stages of electricity generation you have to do significanlty better than simply exceeding power input. It's a notable achievement but as the release says, viable power generation is still a long way away (ie decades).
- pelorat 4y agoThis experiment was never intended to/or form the basis of a nuclear fusion reactor.
- snshn 4y agoI like how over 60 years after the nuclear boom, it somehow just happened to happen today. Just when the world is ready to transition to electric vehicles on a global scale, just when oil companies aren't able to make as much money from oil as they used to, just when one of the major suppliers of fossil fuels (Russia) is at war with the West, it has somehow magically happened. What a coinky-dink. Throw lots of money at something when you need it to happen and then it will happen. Or have control over the technology and don't let it see the light of day until it benefits you financially and makes your enemies lose their main stream of income. I truly applaud this timing and will err on the side of conspiracy rather than coincidence reading more about this "breakthrough".
- Alifatisk 4y agoYou're right when I think about it, the timing is amazing
- LarryMullins 4y ago> I like how over 60 years after the nuclear boom, it somehow just happened to happen today. Just when the world is ready to transition to electric vehicles on a global scale, just when oil companies aren't able to make as much money from oil as they used to, just when one of the major suppliers of fossil fuels (Russia) is at war with the West, it has somehow magically happened. What a coinky-dink. It would be coincidental timing, if the most breathless headlines were actually true. But in reality we're still decades away from commercially viable fusion power generation. A fusion energy gain factor of Q=1 is little more than a psychological hurdle. Imagine you have a process that consumes 1 gigawatt of power and produces 1 gigawatt + one additional watt of power; that's Q=1. And it's certainly not commercially viable.
- Apocryphon 4y agoIs that you, Lyndon?
- PaulHoule 4y agoLyndon Larouche came to my high school (in New Hampshire) for the presidential primaries in 1988 and talked about antimatter as an energy source. Years later I saw a picture of an Iranian woman holding a sign that said "Nuclear Power is a Human Right" and thought... She much be a LaRouchite. I wound up voting for Diane Sare, another LaRouchite, for US Senate in New York this year even though I know they're a coercive organization like the Scientologists or the Longtermists and I disagreed with her position on Ukraine -- we had a really sad ballot this year since they made it much harder for 3rd party candidates to get one and she was the only one. LaRouchites are the only people left who want to stamp out the Beatles but they are required to not only listen to only classical music but are only allowed to listen to Brahms and anything older. If I ran into a LaRouchite and wanted to make them squirm I would talk to them about Debussy.
- pdonis 4y agoCalling this "ignition" is a misnomer. The correct term, as given in the article (as opposed to the headline) is exceeding breakeven: more fusion energy output than energy input to the target. "Ignition" means the reaction becomes self-sustaining and does not require any further input of energy to continue.
- dogma1138 4y agoAnd it was just that the after the initial laser pulse that triggered ignition there was no need to sustain it to continue to heat up the fuel to induce fusion. The fact that this indeed was ignition was one of the main reasons why the fusion reaction itself was net positive.
- pdonis 4y ago> it was just that the after the initial laser pulse that triggered ignition there was no need to sustain it to continue to heat up the fuel to induce fusion I don't see this anywhere in the article. Is there a better reference for what actually happened during the experiment?
- Robotbeat 4y agoThey actually achieved both ignition and scientific breakeven. The resultant fusion heat helped produced significantly more fusion, not just relying on external energy (ie from the laser implosion).
- donquixote25 4y agoNo, this is ignition. However, the reason why this is a big deal is because it is scientific break-even. The first time they achieved ignition was in August of 2021. See paper below: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.075001 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12...
- lostmsu 4y ago> the reaction becomes self-sustaining This is applicable only to continuously running reactions like in jet engines.
- JaggerFoo 4y agoOk, so how long do I have to wait to get a coffee-can sized device to power my house?
- JohnBerea 4y agoLet's say this all works out and over the next few decades fusion replaces all other electricity generation, and we're past the point where all the initial infrastructure costs have been paid for. How much will my electric bill be reduced?
- happyopossum 4y agoThis is kind of a silly question given the time horizons and other potential factors that can crop up in 30 years, but my electric bill has separate charges for generation and delivery. Even if generation drops by 90%, it'd still only cut my bill in half.
- chasd00 4y agoi doubt your electric bill would be reduced at all. It would probably increase at a more constant rate instead of dramatic ups and downs though. So there's that..
- dotancohen 4y ago> How much will my electric bill be reduced? Your bill will be the same, or higher. But you'll be doing so much more with electricity. Push a button, and your clothes are clean in seconds. Push a button, and your beard is shaved in seconds. Push a button, and four of your five senses are entertained for hours.
- nonethewiser 4y agoWhy cant you currently do those things then?
- dotancohen 4y agoI'm unaware of a clothes washing machine currently on the market that finishes the job in seconds. I believe that the technology has yet to be introduced.
- mbg721 4y ago
- mFixman 4y agoWidespread energy generation nuclear fission is politically impossible in most Western countries. Why are people optimistic that fusion won't have the same kind of problems, such as new plants being too expensive to build and old obsolete plants being too useful to decommission?
- BudaDude 4y agoI'm a bit more optimistic about this. This technology will be more important for space exploration than it will be (currently) on the ground.
- BeetleB 4y agoIIUC, there is no concern about radioactivity with fusion.
- fullstackchris 4y agoI'm sure they said the same thing about coal plants before any of them ever existed
- dontwearitout 4y agoFission's amazing potentially is nerfed by three main things: proliferation risk, meltdown risk, and waste handling. These are all solved problems but dramatically raise the cost (you need armed guards, and the reactor has to be built to withstand a 747 strike, etc etc). The fuel cost is a very small fraction of the price of nuclear. If you can eliminate or reduce the need for armed guards and mountains of red tape, this has the potential to solve many of fission's problems while providing the same benefits (unlimited zero carbon power with dirt cheap fuel).
- DoughnutHole 4y ago> such as new plants being too expensive to build and old obsolete plants being too useful to decommission? There's no guarantee that these issues will be surmountable. But fusion largely avoids the fear association with past fission disasters and fears about nuclear waste. This is a non-trivial political problem in many parts of the world, especially much of Europe. If fusion becomes economical (big if) and the differences between it and fission are well communicated it might be easier for the world to swallow. I think visions of a 100% fusion world are fairly pie in the sky. Most of our energy most of the time will probably come from already viable renewables. But renewables cannot offer consistent baseline power all day, year-round, in every part of the world. We need either huge breakthroughs in storage, or carbon-free baseline generation. Economical fusion if it were achieved could offer that without some of the most politically difficult drawbacks of fission. I'd probably still bet the farm on renewables + storage though, at least for my lifetime.
- megaman821 4y agoIf ignition was achieved, why would they have to keep on shooting more fuel pellets? Shouldn't they just ignite one fuel pellet and feed in more fuel?
- jeffbee 4y agoThat's not really how NIF works. It's really a tiny bomb. It destroys the apparatus every time. It even wrecks the optics in the laser primary, which they have to regularly replace.
- typon 4y agoThis makes me feel America is back. This is a big achievement and should not be underplayed whatsoever. Whichever country achieves practical fusion is going to be dominant in the next century.
- apienx 4y agoExciting! Is this work published somewhere? I'm curious to hear more about the setup and other experimental conditions.
- s_dev 4y agoChristopher Nolan couldn't have timed the release of Oppenheimer better.
- falcor84 4y agoWell, it would have been better if the release date was this week, no? (I see it's currently scheduled for 2023-07-21)
- citilife 4y agoGiven the resulting output was "2x higher than expected", I'll wait patiently for any peer reviewed work on the subject and a replication (or improvement) of the results. In the presentation they mentioned they couldn't reproduce the results immediately due to the containment imperfections -- at least that was my understanding.
- johnthuss 4y ago"NIF, the world’s largest and most energetic laser system...-located at LLNL in Livermore, Calif.—is the size of a sports stadium" That's an important piece of information - the thing is gigantic!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- valine 4y agoEven if it doesn’t get smaller (unlikely), we as a society build stadiums all the time. Large construction projects are a small price to pay for abundant clean energy.
- 93po 4y agoWhy is it important? I picked a random nuclear plant in the US (Palo Verde Generating Station) and it's 4000 acres/more than 6 square miles.
- gfodor 4y agoAnother good time to remind everyone that the inventor of the maser (which led to the laser), Charles Townes, was discouraged by his department chair (allegedly): "Look, you should stop the work you are doing. It isn't going to work. You know it's not going to work, we know it's not going to work. You're wasting money, Just stop!" A few months later, it worked. [1] [1] https://www.theregister.com/2015/01/29/charles_townes_nobel_prizewinning_inventor_of_the_laser_dies_at_99/ https://www.theregister.com/2015/01/29/charles_townes_nobel_...
- nielsbot 4y ago"If we'd known it was impossible, we never would have succeeded!"
- quickthrower2 4y ago> He later explained that he was able to refuse to stop his research because he had tenure, so there was nothing they could really do to stop him. Not having to chase your next meal can make a big difference
- doikor 4y agoThis is why tenure for fundamental research is very important. You have to be free to fail without consequences or you won't be able to take the risks to figure this stuff out.
- chaosbolt 4y agoExactly, this is the biggest problem with modern universities. I wish billionaires would fund things like this directly as in no patent no nothing, just from the goodness of their hearts, which they claim is there seeing how much they all pledge to charities... But the reality is different, Oxford pledged to donate the rights to their covid vaccine for free then was urged by the bill & melinda "foundation" to reverse course and sold it to pharma companies.
- Palpatineli 4y agoCalling this fusion ignition is stupid. Laser fusion is unlike other fusion devices in that the efficiency of laser is extremely low. It is true that the reaction created 3MJ when the laser energy input INTO THE REACTION CHAMBER is 2MJ. But the whole laser system took 300MJ to run for this one shot. Thus the real Q value is extremely low compared to other fusion methods.
- pmarreck 4y agoI'm not sure I understand your criticism
- leephillips 4y agoNote that the announcements refer to laser energy supplied to the target, not laser energy entering the chamber. The former is a fraction of the latter, and the basis for the term “scientific gain”. The actual target gain may be < 1.
- brianyu8 4y agoWhat an amazing achievement. I was curious, so I looked up the open software roles at LLNL[0]. I'm very curious how the salary compares to your average bay area tech salary. [0]: https://www.llnl.gov/join-our-team/careers/find-your-job/0d659855-5fe3-49dd-a1c7-e75f07f64bb9_mid-senior-level_full-time_livermore https://www.llnl.gov/join-our-team/careers/find-your-job/0d6...
- nonethewiser 4y agoSee for yourself https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Lawrence-Livermore-National-Laboratory-Engineering-Salaries-EI_IE35235.0,38_DEPT1007.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Lawrence-Livermore-National... 145k TC for Software Engineer. Better than I'd expect from a government job, although a qualified applicant could obviously make so much more elsewhere. And supporting the needs of a bunch of PhD's doesn't really sound fun.
- phtrivier 4y agoSince I absolutely decided to take this in the worst possible way (get the downvotes ready) What is the timeframe for those lasers to light a bulb somewhere, vs the timeframe of those lasers killing someone on a battlefield ? (As in, how much of is applicable for the military?)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- adventured 4y agoI'm not sure what you're talking about. What is it you think you took in the worst possible way? The lasers in question are mediocre for battlefield use. The consequences for the military are trivial, unless you're talking about 70 years from now when the US military is using fusion to power some of its military bases, subs or carriers.
- phtrivier 4y agoI decided to take this "fusion breakthrough" with a massive dose of salt additionned with twice it's weight in pepper and bile. At least the Nature article had a good ratio of actual information about the experiment, its limitations and prospect, as opposed to massive hyperbole from other commenters already popping the champagne as if the energy crisis was over. This made sound grumpy, which, truth be written, I am. (And, jealous, too, of course. I wouldn't mind a bit of actual success, once in a while.) Or maybe the grunts working on the experiment know better, and are _also_ grinding their teeths at the PR effort ? Maybe _they_ also feel unsatisfied because they still haven't met their own goal ? I suppose nuclear fusion physicists must have imposter syndrome, too ? Who knows.
- MrFoof 4y agoI’m glad we might see fission power plants in my lifetime (next 30-50 years). My father still finds it novel that he basically gets to wear Dick Tracy’s watch. Yet I’m concerned that shortly thereafter, the giant robotic laser death spiders will destroy entire cities. This might also be be before we’ve built the arcologies to launch into outer space to escape the giant robot laser death spiders.
- pmarreck 4y ago> fission power you probably meant "fusion" > My father still finds it novel that he basically gets to wear Dick Tracy’s watch. Well, except for the front-facing camera, but that's trivial to add at this point. And as a 50 year old, I agree. I feel like being incarnated in '72 has gotten me ethereal tickets to the greatest technological expansion/brouhaha in all of human history, and I don't know what my soul did to deserve this pleasure. Everything I've been into as a kid "before it was cool" has absolutely exploded: Computers, electronic music, gaming, telecom, AI, green energy/electric cars... but also science, medicine, etc. are making tremendous progress (I'm down 35 lbs thanks to Mounjaro, a brand new drug). Hell, even that weird side interest in UFO's (one of the first sections of the library I discovered as a kid) has paid dividends with the USG finally admitting they're real. BRB, I have to pinch myself. Unironic "what a time to be alive"! > giant robot laser death spiders you should probably worry more about the silent airborne drone army suicide bombers first. (What was the movie that actually featured a scene with those, btw? I think it had Morgan Freeman? EDIT: Found it, thanks to those other technological wonders, Google and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40JFxhhJEYk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40JFxhhJEYk) There will always be dangers with progress. Two steps forward, one step back. But I leave you with this. I asked ChatGPT to summarize this article as a sarcastic poem https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/everything-sam-bankman-fried-is-doing https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/everything-sam-bankman-f... and here's what it gave me, and I'm still chuckling about how awesome this is: Sam Bankman-Fried talks a lot But it's all just hot air He tries to seem transparent But he's just trying to repair His reputation, once so grand Is now as tarnished as can be He's just a fraud, don't be fooled By his attempts at publicity.
- anotherman554 4y ago
- _a_a_a_ 4y agoMaybe I missed it but it's not a net positive output. From the article, the implication it is: "LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output" From newscientist, the same info followed by a rider: "generated a power output of 3.15 megajoules from a laser power output of 2.05 megajoules – a gain of around 150 per cent. However, this is far outweighed by the roughly 300 megajoules drawn from the electrical grid to power the lasers in the first place"
- belval 4y agoThis was explained by another commenter yesterday, but this is not an issue. The 3.15:2.05 ratio is the news as it is the part that was difficult to achieve. The 300MJ accounts for significant laser inefficiencies in much the same way that the 3.15MJ of output won't convert to 3.15MJ of electricity as the conversion is not loss less. In other words: it's a net-positive output for that reaction, not the whole process, there is still a lot of work to be done before you and I exchange comments on a server powered by fusion energy in homes powered by fusion energy.
- _a_a_a_ 4y agoGranted... > in much the same way that the 3.15MJ of output won't convert to 3.15MJ of electricity as the conversion is not loss less ...and very much touche! That's a good point. But I do feel the overall loss should have been made clear and distinct from the gain in one part of the whole. Gross vs net perhaps?
- jasonhansel 4y agoIIRC part of the issue is that NIF's lasers are very old and much less efficient than more modern ones. So the 300 MJ needed to power the lasers is higher than would be expected if this were commercialized.
- dang 4y agoRelated ongoing thread: Nuclear-fusion lab achieves ‘ignition’: what does it mean? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971953 - Dec 2022 (82 comments) Two threads from before the announcement: Fusion energy breakthrough by Livermore Lab - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33945863 - Dec 2022 (755 comments) Secretary Granholm to announce major scientific breakthrough by DOE [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33968357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33968357 - Dec 2022 (160 comments)
- aidenn0 4y agoSo for my entire lifetime Fusion has been 30-50 years away. Now it's 29-49 years away?
- jackspratts 4y agocorrect. about as long as a typical academic research career, with an extra margin thrown in for emeritus positions to be on the safe side. get the boffins' grand kids through college etc. anyway, there won't be grids in 50 years. or if for some sentimental reason there still are 95% of us will be off the failure prone things while making, storing and using our own uninterruptible power safely at home. much sooner really. i can't even imagine being on the grid in 10 years let alone 49. no way then to distribute the staggering costs for what will be the planet's most expensive and complex power plants. - js.
- spencerchubb 4y agoThe most surprising thing I've learned from this is we're only allocating $624 million / year to this program. We really need better mechanisms for deciding how to allocate taxes.
- yrgulation 4y agoWould you rather the us takes second place in researching space and energy tech?
- jboy55 4y agoIts actually pretty good, since this is primarily weapons testing. The real money is being spent in the EU, where there is at least a chance of getting a sustainable fusion reaction.
- davrosthedalek 4y agoIt's, depending what calculation you believe, around 20 billion for ITER. Started in 2013, first plasma in 2025, first full fusion in 2035. So about a billion per year. Of course, costs are calculated differently, and I'm not sure on what time scale the 600 million are, but it's not that drastically different. Research wise, it's a pretty big chunk of money. But yeah, more money in research would be nice. (Disclaimer: I am a scientist with grants.)
- jboy55 4y agoYes, I think more research towards eventual power generation, rather than weapon testing, would be better.
- ZeKK14 4y agoITER is built in France, but is financed by many countries outside of EU, including the USA. It's not a huge cost per-country. > the ITER Members China, the European Union, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States See https://www.iter.org/proj/Countries https://www.iter.org/proj/Countries
- 4y ago
- kobalsky 4y agoELI5 level question. Please correct me if I'm saying something stupid. If you toss a solar mass of water into the sun it just becomes fuel. So, could a fusion reactor, when efficiency is improved, use water as fuel?
- ArtificialAI 4y agoYes, that's generally correct. If you were to toss a solar mass of water into the sun, it would become fuel for the sun's fusion reactions. Fusion reactors work in a similar way, but on a much smaller scale. They use fuel, typically hydrogen or a mixture of hydrogen and helium, and use intense heat and pressure to fuse the atoms together, releasing a large amount of energy in the process.
- logical_ferry 4y agoOn a scale of 1 to invention of fire/wheel/smelting/electricity/computers, how relevant is this? I have trouble comprehending the historical impact.
- lostmsu 4y agoIt is less of inventing and more of engineering. But I would put it along with ARPANET.
- low_tech_punk 4y agowright brothers first flight?
- devmor 4y agoThis is some of the most incredible and inspiring scientific news in my lifetime. I am overcome with excitement right now.
- sam0x17 4y agoEarly in my career I had the pleasure of interning at LLNL (ironically, working on a completely open source compiler project) but I was able to go on a number of tours of NIF. It was extremely cool. They have a whole team of software engineers writing software just to keep all the mirrors calibrated and things like that. In person it is much bigger than it seems in pictures.
- busyant 4y agoI'm sure this has been considered, but I haven't ready anything about the "geo-political" effects of virtually unlimited energy from fusion. I imagine that power dynamics would change drastically, but I have no clue, really. I understand that's still far away, but are there any articles/discussions on how large scale fusion-generated energy would change the world?
- josho 4y agoOh it will be interesting. Assuming it is possible to commercialize this at scale then relatively overnight we'll some some of the following: * The middle-east no longer becomes a strategic region. Wealthy regimes see their income disappear. The US has supported Israel as a strategic check in the region, but with oil losing its value the US no longer needs to fund Israeli security. We are likely to see skirmishes if not major wars, but this time it's over empires in decline, rather than empires with strategic resources. * Texas' GDP declines substantially creating significant unemployment. Will government scape goat immigration and create further social problems, or invest in leading the transition creating a new wave of energy industries. * Developing countries swiftly raise their standard of living as cheap energy is brought online. No idea what this ramification would be.
- maerF0x0 4y ago> “We have had a theoretical understanding of fusion for over a century, but the journey from knowing to doing can be long and arduous. Today’s milestone shows what we can do with perseverance,” said Dr. Arati Prabhakar, the President’s Chief Advisor for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. This part gives me so much hope as we have understandings of what is theoretically possible, and in due time humanity reaches them. This gives me a lot of hope especially in the fields of curing major diseases and in longevity!
- trhr 4y agoI have an idea. Why don't we just take all the nuclear weapons we've accumulated around the planet and explode them in the South China Sea?
- cm2187 4y agoIt's a weird scientific annoncement, punctuated with quotes from politicians...
- leephillips 4y agoOld news: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13008 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13008
- xyst 4y agoOne more step towards getting away from dirty fossil fuels. I just hope we have enough time to see it implemented at scale (ie, powering entire states/cities/towns/municipalities, swapping infra in place). I also hope the O&G industry doesn’t attempt to block this with fake science (ie, decades of climate denial, greenwashing via “recycling” campaigns).
- yuvalkarmi 4y agoTangential, but fun: the following is NOT what this post says. The following is the response to a the ChatGPT prompt "write the press release by an imagined body called the Department of Energy announcing the achievement of fusion ignition." Mind you, ChatGPT training data ends in 2021, so it's definitely not aware of this news: "The Department of Energy is pleased to announce the successful achievement of fusion ignition in our latest experiment. This breakthrough marks a major milestone in our pursuit of clean, limitless energy. Fusion, the process by which atomic nuclei combine to release vast amounts of energy, has long been considered the Holy Grail of energy production. It has the potential to provide an virtually limitless supply of clean, safe energy, without the harmful greenhouse gas emissions or dangerous waste products of other forms of energy production. For decades, scientists and engineers have been working to unlock the secrets of fusion and harness its power. This has been a challenging and complex endeavor, but we are now closer than ever to achieving our goal. The successful fusion ignition in our experiment marks the first time that this process has been achieved outside of the core of a star. This is a significant step forward in our efforts to harness the power of fusion and bring it to practical use. We believe that fusion has the potential to revolutionize the way we produce energy, and we are committed to pursuing this technology with all of the resources at our disposal. In the coming years, we will continue to conduct experiments and research, with the goal of developing a fusion reactor that can provide a stable, reliable source of energy. We are extremely proud of this achievement, and we will continue to work tirelessly to develop this technology and bring it to the world. This is an exciting time for energy production, and we are confident that fusion will play a major role in our collective future. We are grateful for the support of our colleagues and partners in this effort, and we look forward to continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible."
- bulbosaur123 4y agoTL:DR please, how big of a deal is this and when can we approximately expect cheap or costless energy? And is it sort of like perpetual energy generator? And if yes, doesn't that break law of physics? And if not, why not? So many questions. Pardon my ignorance.
- mlindner 4y agoThe design of the National Ignition Facility was never intended to study commercially viable fusion power. It's exclusively a physics testing facility with origins for testing the physics of thermonuclear fusion weapons for better bomb design. Nothing that happens at the NIF is very useful in heading towards commercially viable fusion. The design of the testing apparatus is also similarly incompatible with making a sustained fusion device as there is no way to continuously feed in fuel into the device, nor methods of extracting the energy.
- daxfohl 4y agoMy pessimistic self feels like the short-term effect is that it sets a deadline by which oil companies know they have to extract and sell all the existing oil on the planet, and a doubling down on increased emissions now because fusion will solve it eventually.
- chrisco255 4y agoThere are hundreds of years worth of oil deposits (possibly more) even at current usage rates. "Selling all the oil" isn't in the realm of possibility.
- daxfohl 4y agoStill, as much as possible before the party is over.
- chrisco255 4y agoAs much as necessary, sure. Oil it turns out is pretty useful in many different industries and contributes to higher standards of living for the vast majority of the world. It isn't some inherently evil technology or resource. Still, it's going to take decades to transition to electric regardless of any breakthroughs in the meantime.
- tommica 4y agoGratz to the scientists, seems like an impressive achievement!
- _9hey 4y agoScientists spend their whole lives researching a particular topic, but as soon as there’s a breakthrough the politicians take credit. Unbelievable!! Excellent milestone for humanity nonetheless
- randomsearch 4y agoThis is a really hard question to answer, but do you think in peacetime 1930s if you’d asked someone how long it would take to build the bomb, they’d say “we’re only a few decades away with proper funding”? The pay off achieved by accelerating fusion development seems to justify almost any amount of spending. Is it worth going for it? The most important subquestion for me: is there a sufficiently brilliant living scientist who has the technical ability, managerial skills, and integrity to be trusted to deliver? I wonder if this is the reason we haven’t already done it.
- sergiomattei 4y agoScience is a collaborative achievement. There isn’t one scientist that can deliver at this scale and complexity.
- randomsearch 4y agoOppenheimer
- TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y agoThank you, Biden!
- lukeplato 4y agoWhat does this mean for ITER and magnetic confinement fusion?
- einpoklum 4y agoUS DOE: Excessive uncritical media hype achieved.
- empiricus 4y agoI still don't understand why we waste time and money with fusion. Fision so much easier. Should focus on it. Fusion is ok, but 100 years into the future when we are bored.
- empiricus 4y agoActually just a rhetorical question. We are so irational that fusion makes perfect sense.
- XCSme 4y agoChatGPT can answer this: > Fission is currently the most common method of generating nuclear power, and it has been used in power plants for many years. It is a relatively well-understood technology and it can provide a large amount of energy with relatively little fuel. However, fission produces radioactive waste and the risk of accidents, such as the one that occurred at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan in 2011. > In contrast, fusion has the potential to provide even more energy than fission and it produces very little radioactive waste. It is considered a safer and more sustainable source of energy than fission.
- rcgorton 4y ago
- supergirl 4y agoeveryone should watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY to put this into perspective. for some reason, all the news articles are extremely misleading. previous output ratio for this fusion method was something like 70%, now it is 150%. it's a useful improvement, but not a major breakthrough. the whole system still consumes 100x more energy than it produces. 100MJ of energy is needed to power the laser. the laser generates only 2MJ of energy that powers fusion. fusion generates 3MJ of output energy. so all the articles are saying "they put 2MJ energy and got 3MJ energy back". no, they put 102MJ and got 3MJ.
- DesiLurker 4y agoas somebody already explained to you earlier, the NIF uses arcane lasers because their focus is not lasers at the moment, it is fusion. At current tech level we have about 20% laser efficiency (with some types as much as 50%, not sure if they apply). this experiment specifically was about energy positive from a fusion reaction which has never been done except for uncontrolled things like hydrogen bombs. as far as a fusion milestone goes, this is a big deal. Also, the other thing most commenters are missing here is the remaining problems are incrementally solvable so we should see steady improvements in laser efficiency and pellet optimization going forward. this is even doable with VC money (which we have some now but not significant). in that sense it is a pretty decent development.
- dsign 4y agoHN people has three orders of magnitude more technical background and education than politicians, yet when it's about fusion, fision, renewables and climate warming, we only manage to output a miserable 0.01 % consensus and the rest dissipates in waste argument. It comes to reason, the politicians are going to produce only 0.00001% of consensus. Conclusion: things are looking rather bad. We are not going to achieve Civilization Survival, much less Singularity Ignition. My suggestion: highly educated Homo Sapiens may not be the right course. There is a proven way of saving the planet which, by virtue of its remarkably sustainable intellect, we should be investing more on: koalas.
- mclightning 4y agoI have been a HN user for a long time. Honestly, I disagree. Most HN users commenting here with smart stuff about fusion, just read it on another page a day or a week ago, from a bite-sized article or a reddit comment. Everyone, for the most part, parroting what they read on a short note somewhere else. Some more committed ones read the synopsis of a few papers before writing something smart. Anything you read on the internet, explaining any advanced scientific concepts like fusion etc... take it with a huge grain of salt. We are all parrots.
- willis936 4y agoSome commenters have devoted their career to it.
- mclightning 4y agoThey’re a tiny tiny minority if any, compared to what we are seeing here in comments. I’m sure they would agree with what I said when they scroll through the comments. I would not want to wander into HN comments section if I am doing any kind of divergent innovation, challenging the limits of what's technically possible. People here just parrot the status-quo as the absolute truth. If that was the case, humanity would have made zero progress. Some nerd in some quiet corner, working hard in disbelief of the rest of the society, is the one changing the course of history. Not the ones, parroting established textual truths. There is GPT-3 for that.
- dqpb 4y ago> maintaining a nuclear deterrent without nuclear testing What is meant by this?
- julienreszka 4y agoSince the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water was signed in 1963, all nuclear weapons tests must be performed underground. This is typically done by digging a deep shaft or tunnel in the earth and detonating the weapon at the bottom of the shaft or tunnel. The explosion is monitored by a variety of equipment, such as seismographs, radiation detectors, and air samplers. The data gathered from these tests helps to understand the weapon's performance and its potential impact. In addition, computer simulations are often used to test the effects of a nuclear weapon, such as the predicted fallout and atmospheric effects. These simulations are based on data collected from previous nuclear tests as well as theoretical models.
- dqpb 4y agoIs this ChatGPT? It doesn't answer the question. When I ask ChatGPT it says: "fusion is not directly related to nuclear weapons or the maintenance of a nuclear deterrent"
- julienreszka 4y agoIn other words research in fusion helps make more accurate simulations of how nuclear weapons would behave. >fusion is not directly related to nuclear weapons or the maintenance of a nuclear deterrent ChatGPT is wrong in this case. Fusion occurs in hydrogen bombs i.e. nuclear weapons
- over_bridge 4y agoAre there any thoughts on how this will become a power plant yet? It's awesome to see it filled up, reacted and then reset as a proof of concept, but can it ever be a continuous flow through the chamber without losing that ignition temp? Or will it be more like a 4 cylinder engine where each reactor is at a different stage of being filled, heated, reacting and emptying, with the net result being continuous? Edit: Taking the internal combustion metaphor further, I'm imagining these connected in a circle. The grid is the starter motor to power the first laser, then each active chamber powers the laser on the next one (probably by capacitor not directly). Thus the energy production moves around the circle with each chamber being flushed and refilled before the laser powers back on. How far off is that image in my head? I've never actually seen it described
- gateroid 4y agoNIF never was designed to be a power plant or have anything to do with power generation. This is something most commenters don't appear to appreciate. It's an experimental facility that, when distilled to its simplest explanation, lets us study things when you squish them really, really hard. It turns out, fusion is one of the things you can study when you squish stuff really hard - and one of the big challenges was controlling how you do the squishing (which turns out to be pretty difficult). There are lots of other problems that NIF also studies that boil down to "what does this do when we squish it" that have nothing to do with fusion or energy production. Aside from the weapons program applications, there are experiments that take place there in materials science, understanding extreme environments ("what do these elements we believe sit in the core of Jupiter act like at those pressures?"), etc. TLDR: Think of NIF as a lab for energetically squishing things. It's not a power plant, it's not a prototype for a power plant, it's not a pre-prototype for a power plant, etc. It's a lab for basic physics research. It's about as close to being a prototype for a power plant as a test tube in a lab full of hydrocarbons is to being a prototype of an internal combustion engine.
- over_bridge 4y agoYeah obviously. I was asking about the next stage.
- nsxwolf 4y agoWhat’s the difference between "ignition" and every other “fusion achieved“ news story I’ve seen in the last 40 years? This has the feel of those “water discovered on Mars for the first time ever” headlines.
- omnicognate 4y agoWell, for one thing achieving it is the purpose for which the "National Ignition Facility" was created. It's right there in the name. They're justified in having a bit of a party about it.
- 93po 4y agoMy laymen understanding is that this is showing the first net-positive energy fusion, which has always been the biggest roadblock.
- pontifier 4y agoInertial Fusion in a Magnetic field is something I've been pushing for a long time. There are a lot of interesting variations on this design, and I hope I can get more interest in my design at http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com
- helpm33 4y ago3.15 MJ is equivalent to 1.5 lb TNT, so it was quite a bang in their target chamber. Just for comparison, it's also just short of one kWh, so it would run an electric car for about three-four miles.
- gabesullice 4y agoAfter the Wright brother's first demonstration of powered flight, I like to imagine all the pessimists in this thread would have said that commercial air transport would never be viable because wood and fabric don't have the material properties to carry a ton of steel.
- jerrygoyal 4y agoremember those "experts" who said fusion won't be feasible before second-half of this century?
- rurban 4y agoSo for how many milliseconds did it run? Those things are incredibly unstable, I see only one private US company making the stability breakthrough
- forthorbor 4y agoThis is a huge deal, but not as big as it is being made out to be. This is only a fractional output, there is still significant work required to make this feasible for use outside the lab.
- afiori 4y agoI recommend reading [0] for (only slightly outdated) context on the field and its progresses. [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-future-of-fusion https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-the-f...
- mansoor_ 4y agoA couple points: - Yes the efficiency of the laser is poor and modern tech is more efficient, but not enough to make it an energy producing process. The best lasers are ~50% energy efficient. - This can only be maintained for short periods of time and the time to restart the process in long. Not only that, tritium is a rare isotope. These are probably the largest challenges to overcome. - The energy is released in the form of high-speed particles, and there is no efficient energy capture process. The significance of their achievements is overblown. Yes, they achieved ignition, but no it is just an incremental process towards commercial fusion power.
- ag315 4y agoCool technical achievement, but it has essentially no implications for economically or politically significant energy generation anytime soon.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoIt's interesting that they beat ITER to ignition. I wonder if this changes the direction of fusion research and funding in any way.