12 ms·
I 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
by mustacheemperor 4y ago
I 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?