5 ms·

This is the third thread today with pithy "this means nothing takes". If you're thinking of posting a one liner on the subject you should probably stop. Let's

by zbobet2012 4y ago

This is the third thread today with pithy "this means nothing takes". If you're thinking of posting a one liner on the subject you should probably stop. Let's save some time out of discussion now: 1. The lasers at NIF are not designed to be efficient, and they are very old. Modern semiconductor lasers are 20x more efficient. The 300MJ wall plug conversation is stupid, stop pointing it out. 2. Dropping crystals and hitting them with lasers is not hard, we do it in semiconductors for EUV light source generation all the time. In fact EUV light sources do it at 100khz or more. 3. Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant on the planet works. Make no mistake there are a lot of engineering problems to solve. The "droplets" are enormously expensive, the "firing" itself creates debries which need cleared from the chamber, dt supply is not something that's readily available in large quantities, blah blah. I'd love interesting conversation about what stands between ICF and a real energy plant, not hot takes.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
> Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant on the planet works. River power spinning a generator? Wind farm power? Are those counterexamples?
- falcor84 4y ago
  Well, these aren't "bundles" per-se, but as I understand it, both are relying on the Earth-as-a-system converting heat from the sun falling on particular areas into large-scale flows, which we humans can then hook into.
- manmal 4y ago
  GP was likely referring to power plants that burn things in order to heat up water to make steam in order to rotate an iron core encircled by copper wire. Using kinetic energy like wind or flowing water is a nice shortcut to the rotating iron core. Even nicer: Cut out the rotating iron core and directly produce voltage via photons hitting a semiconductor. I share GP‘s sentiment though that, in the end, there are remarkably few concepts at the bottom layer of electricity production. (There are other means of course, but they are not in use for power generation in amounts that can drive even one household, AFAIK)
Gwypaas 4y ago
> 3. Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant on the planet works. Coal and nuclear are uncompetitive simply from the cost of the steam side. Today you can just about give a steam plant free energy and it still makes a loss. Solar or wind does not have this limitation. CCGT gas plants gets around it by having a turbine giving raw mechanical power and then utilizing the same awful steam side to get the last percentage points of efficiency at a much smaller required scale. Unless you can step around the steam turbine I do not see this becoming anything outside of incredibly small niches.
- Gud 4y ago
  Neither coal nor nuclear are uncompetitive.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Compare newly built renewables with all costs included to the marginal cost of paid of coal and nuclear. [1] Today it is often better to simply shut down your existing nuclear plant and build a renewable instead. For a more comprehensive look see [2]. [1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png [2]: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Looks like you'll pay the same price if you shut down an existing nuclear plant for wind/solar, unless you can bag some subsidies.
    - opo 4y ago
      >...Today it is often better to simply shut down your existing nuclear plant and build a renewable instead. That is ignoring capacity factor. From your link we see that the most expensive power generation of all is residential rooftop solar. If cost is the concern, why support the most expensive option that also has a low capacity factor?
fuckHNtho 4y ago
My cynical take is a lot of people are subconsciously unhappy with how BS and mundane their "tech" jobs are. They chose money+cool, only it turns out the 'cool' part was a lie to get them to churn out as much useless BS work as possible. So they get through the day by fooling themselves: slap a cool tech name on your product, make trendy graphics ( https://traefik.io https://traefik.io https://github.com https://github.com ), pretend you're doing some sci fi shit. Then any real tech happening in the world exposes your BS so you need it to be framed as a disappointment.
- aidenn0 4y ago
  I'm 42 and there have been "breakthroughs" in fusion announced at least once per decade of my life. There's a very real chance that this breakthrough means the first fusion power plant will open after I'm dead, as none of the men in my family have reached 80.
  - dotnet00 4y ago
    So, the issue is that the community here has grown old, cynical and unable to appreciate anything that might only help the next generations?
    - malwrar 4y ago
      No, the community here is skeptical of science reporting that seems too good to be true and progress in fusion energy production fits the mould. I’m not an expert on fusion or the physics, so the best I can do is agree with this sentiment and note details from skeptical comments. Hey, if we’re wrong life will change for the better for billions of people. I like being surprised with good news more than disappointment.
      - fuckHNtho 4y ago
        certainly the need to exaggerate the news has crept through all facets of media in this annoying "attention is our commodity" era. even the most "boring" outlet has its more subtle versions of the cringey YT "wow face" thumbnail. but just because fusion energy will not be responsible for warming your frozen pizza next week does not mean we need to belittle a major milestone like this one. sure some damn reporter has a quota to hit and metrics to game. it just means we need to dedicate a bit more effort to read the article, read between the lines, and apply critical thinking. this is the dream technology of the far future we're talking about. it doesnt even need to happen for 1000 years. if we nail it we are set for Billions of years. but obviously people are not accustomed or incentivized to think about things on that sort of timeline.
jboy55 4y ago
The problem I have with this announcement is how limiting this technology path is to the future generation of power. If you look at the details, they imploded a sphere containing hydrogen with X-rays created by the interaction of the lasers with an outer casing. As a reminder, the second stage of an hbomb is the implosion of a cylinder of hydrogen, encased by uranium, by x-rays ablating the outer case. X-Rays produced by the explosion of a A-Bomb. The lasers are thus serving as a proxy for the first stage of a H-bomb. The critical question, how much of this design is to figure out how to produce energy from fusion with the aim of powerplant design, and how much of the design is to better replicate the second stage of a h-bomb? Edit: I'll have to research, but I would have to expect that the announcement of the h-bomb had language that also heralded this as the beginning of a 'fusion age' of power generation.
- Gibbon1 4y ago
  Sketch thing is that perhaps they're try to design an hydrogen bomb that doesn't require a fission primary. Use a laser to ignite the first stage, which ignites the next and so on. What if you can get 100X boost per stage, three stages gives you a gain of 1 million.
  - jboy55 4y ago
    There is just basic h-bomb efficiency gains here. By lowering the energy requirement for the fission primary by finding more efficient ways to control/generate the X-Rays you can use a smaller and smaller primary. It also occurs to me how analogous this research is to the early x-ray laser tech, that Teller claimed could shoot down warheads for the Star Wars program in the 80s. Those designs had rods that would amplify and focus the x-rays from a nuclear bomb on incoming warheads. If you could initiate the x-ray chain reaction from a laser, you would be able to launch these without breaking the 'no nuclear weapons in space' treaty.
cpleppert 4y ago
The studies done ten years ago suggested that the best case scenario was about thirty years( one demonstration phase of 15 years and another development phase of 15 years). This was premised on the INF demonstrating ignition using indirect drive soon after operation. There was also an expectation that the INF would transistion to researching other, possibly more promising technologies like direct drive ignition. Instead, it took over ten years to simply demonstrate ignition using the indirect drive method which was chosen specifically because it was seen as being more technologically viable. This "big breakthrough" was supposed to happen immediately after operation! No one knows whether commercialization of inertial confinement fusion is even possible. Laser efficiency is just one small part; the work to produce and develop a system to reliably shoot hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than shooting a static target in ideal conditions. Compared to these engineering challenges demonstrating ignition is the easy part.
- zbobet2012 4y ago
  > Compared to these engineering challenges demonstrating ignition is the easy part. Again, let's discuss what those challenges are. A bunch of talk about how hard it might be with no detail on what makes it hard isn't really informative to anyone. > the work to produce and develop a system to reliably shoot hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than shooting a static target in ideal conditions. Please see my note #2 about EUV light sources and similar technology. My understanding is the timing and precision requirements are much higher here, but on the other hand the "rate" of fire would be necessarily much lower making something perhaps feasible. From the presentation and panel today, one of the key drivers seems to be the purity of the capsules and the ability to correct for asymmetries in the implosion caused by them. The results announced today where not because of the purity of the capsule, but instead because of the correct prediction of the asymmetries in the implosion and the ability to counter that with modifications to the laser strength and timing. The NIF isn't (as others have noted) necessarily focused on bettering these two factors. What I'd like to understand is what are the major tradeoffs in ICF vs MCF that would drive pursuing the difficult engineering problems of one vs another.
  - cpleppert 4y ago

jjtheblunt 4y ago

> Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant on the planet works. River power spinning a generator? Wind farm power? Are those counterexamples?

falcor84 4y ago
Well, these aren't "bundles" per-se, but as I understand it, both are relying on the Earth-as-a-system converting heat from the sun falling on particular areas into large-scale flows, which we humans can then hook into.
manmal 4y ago
GP was likely referring to power plants that burn things in order to heat up water to make steam in order to rotate an iron core encircled by copper wire. Using kinetic energy like wind or flowing water is a nice shortcut to the rotating iron core. Even nicer: Cut out the rotating iron core and directly produce voltage via photons hitting a semiconductor. I share GP‘s sentiment though that, in the end, there are remarkably few concepts at the bottom layer of electricity production. (There are other means of course, but they are not in use for power generation in amounts that can drive even one household, AFAIK)

Gwypaas 4y ago

> 3. Power extraction from a bundle of hot material is not a particularly unknown problem. It's in fact how every power plant on the planet works. Coal and nuclear are uncompetitive simply from the cost of the steam side. Today you can just about give a steam plant free energy and it still makes a loss. Solar or wind does not have this limitation. CCGT gas plants gets around it by having a turbine giving raw mechanical power and then utilizing the same awful steam side to get the last percentage points of efficiency at a much smaller required scale. Unless you can step around the steam turbine I do not see this becoming anything outside of incredibly small niches.

Gud 4y ago
Neither coal nor nuclear are uncompetitive.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Compare newly built renewables with all costs included to the marginal cost of paid of coal and nuclear. [1] Today it is often better to simply shut down your existing nuclear plant and build a renewable instead. For a more comprehensive look see [2]. [1]: https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png https://www.lazard.com/media/451885/grphx_lcoe-07.png [2]: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Looks like you'll pay the same price if you shut down an existing nuclear plant for wind/solar, unless you can bag some subsidies.
  - opo 4y ago
    >...Today it is often better to simply shut down your existing nuclear plant and build a renewable instead. That is ignoring capacity factor. From your link we see that the most expensive power generation of all is residential rooftop solar. If cost is the concern, why support the most expensive option that also has a low capacity factor?

fuckHNtho 4y ago

My cynical take is a lot of people are subconsciously unhappy with how BS and mundane their "tech" jobs are. They chose money+cool, only it turns out the 'cool' part was a lie to get them to churn out as much useless BS work as possible. So they get through the day by fooling themselves: slap a cool tech name on your product, make trendy graphics ( https://traefik.io https://traefik.io https://github.com https://github.com ), pretend you're doing some sci fi shit. Then any real tech happening in the world exposes your BS so you need it to be framed as a disappointment.

aidenn0 4y ago
I'm 42 and there have been "breakthroughs" in fusion announced at least once per decade of my life. There's a very real chance that this breakthrough means the first fusion power plant will open after I'm dead, as none of the men in my family have reached 80.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  So, the issue is that the community here has grown old, cynical and unable to appreciate anything that might only help the next generations?
  - malwrar 4y ago
    No, the community here is skeptical of science reporting that seems too good to be true and progress in fusion energy production fits the mould. I’m not an expert on fusion or the physics, so the best I can do is agree with this sentiment and note details from skeptical comments. Hey, if we’re wrong life will change for the better for billions of people. I like being surprised with good news more than disappointment.
    - fuckHNtho 4y ago
      certainly the need to exaggerate the news has crept through all facets of media in this annoying "attention is our commodity" era. even the most "boring" outlet has its more subtle versions of the cringey YT "wow face" thumbnail. but just because fusion energy will not be responsible for warming your frozen pizza next week does not mean we need to belittle a major milestone like this one. sure some damn reporter has a quota to hit and metrics to game. it just means we need to dedicate a bit more effort to read the article, read between the lines, and apply critical thinking. this is the dream technology of the far future we're talking about. it doesnt even need to happen for 1000 years. if we nail it we are set for Billions of years. but obviously people are not accustomed or incentivized to think about things on that sort of timeline.

jboy55 4y ago

The problem I have with this announcement is how limiting this technology path is to the future generation of power. If you look at the details, they imploded a sphere containing hydrogen with X-rays created by the interaction of the lasers with an outer casing. As a reminder, the second stage of an hbomb is the implosion of a cylinder of hydrogen, encased by uranium, by x-rays ablating the outer case. X-Rays produced by the explosion of a A-Bomb. The lasers are thus serving as a proxy for the first stage of a H-bomb. The critical question, how much of this design is to figure out how to produce energy from fusion with the aim of powerplant design, and how much of the design is to better replicate the second stage of a h-bomb? Edit: I'll have to research, but I would have to expect that the announcement of the h-bomb had language that also heralded this as the beginning of a 'fusion age' of power generation.

Gibbon1 4y ago
Sketch thing is that perhaps they're try to design an hydrogen bomb that doesn't require a fission primary. Use a laser to ignite the first stage, which ignites the next and so on. What if you can get 100X boost per stage, three stages gives you a gain of 1 million.
- jboy55 4y ago
  There is just basic h-bomb efficiency gains here. By lowering the energy requirement for the fission primary by finding more efficient ways to control/generate the X-Rays you can use a smaller and smaller primary. It also occurs to me how analogous this research is to the early x-ray laser tech, that Teller claimed could shoot down warheads for the Star Wars program in the 80s. Those designs had rods that would amplify and focus the x-rays from a nuclear bomb on incoming warheads. If you could initiate the x-ray chain reaction from a laser, you would be able to launch these without breaking the 'no nuclear weapons in space' treaty.

cpleppert 4y ago

The studies done ten years ago suggested that the best case scenario was about thirty years( one demonstration phase of 15 years and another development phase of 15 years). This was premised on the INF demonstrating ignition using indirect drive soon after operation. There was also an expectation that the INF would transistion to researching other, possibly more promising technologies like direct drive ignition. Instead, it took over ten years to simply demonstrate ignition using the indirect drive method which was chosen specifically because it was seen as being more technologically viable. This "big breakthrough" was supposed to happen immediately after operation! No one knows whether commercialization of inertial confinement fusion is even possible. Laser efficiency is just one small part; the work to produce and develop a system to reliably shoot hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than shooting a static target in ideal conditions. Compared to these engineering challenges demonstrating ignition is the easy part.

zbobet2012 4y ago
> Compared to these engineering challenges demonstrating ignition is the easy part. Again, let's discuss what those challenges are. A bunch of talk about how hard it might be with no detail on what makes it hard isn't really informative to anyone. > the work to produce and develop a system to reliably shoot hohlraum targets is an order of magnitude harder than shooting a static target in ideal conditions. Please see my note #2 about EUV light sources and similar technology. My understanding is the timing and precision requirements are much higher here, but on the other hand the "rate" of fire would be necessarily much lower making something perhaps feasible. From the presentation and panel today, one of the key drivers seems to be the purity of the capsules and the ability to correct for asymmetries in the implosion caused by them. The results announced today where not because of the purity of the capsule, but instead because of the correct prediction of the asymmetries in the implosion and the ability to counter that with modifications to the laser strength and timing. The NIF isn't (as others have noted) necessarily focused on bettering these two factors. What I'd like to understand is what are the major tradeoffs in ICF vs MCF that would drive pursuing the difficult engineering problems of one vs another.
- cpleppert 4y ago