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The headline implies that the "breakthrough" (why the scare quotes?) is a dead end, and thus contradicts its own subtitle, which is "Just one more step on the l

The headline implies that the "breakthrough" (why the scare quotes?) is a dead end, and thus contradicts its own subtitle, which is "Just one more step on the long road to commercialization". > As Lawrence Livermore director Kim Budil said during the announcement, this result is a necessary first step. Correct. Has anybody even been claiming it's anything other than that?

gigel82 4y ago
- xwdv 4y ago
  These are the people desperate for hope, not truth. When they’ve seen many such “breakthroughs” over the years that ultimately lead to nothing, they will learn to look upon such announcements with a cynical heart. You could tell me the cure for cancer was discovered tomorrow, and I would immediately search for reasons why it’s bullshit.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  It (combined with the ignition last year, which this shows wasn’t a fluke) definitely WAS a “leap of some kind.” Showing fusion ignition shows potential scalability, and this is confirmed by the achievement of scientific breakeven.
  - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
    If you scale up a process that only returns 1% of the energy you put in (which is the case here based on how inefficient the laser is), you’re still not gonna come out ahead.
    - tanseydavid 4y ago
      1% or did you mean to say 101% -- they demonstrated a net gain didn't they?
      - lolinder 4y ago
        As I understand it they demonstrated a net gain relative to the energy output by the laser, but not relative to the energy put into the laser. 1% is correct for the actual efficiency given the cost to generate the laser. (Yes, that distinction does seem important and wasn't brought out by the news reports.)
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      The scaling is non-linear, which is exactly why ignition is important. By showing that fusion heat is actually leading to more fusion reactions, to get double the amount of energy out of each shot, they won't have to double the amount of laser light. In other words, higher gain should be relatively straightforward scaling of the system. (Also, the laser inefficiency is a complete red herring as they just used plain old flash lamp pumped lasers, not the much more efficient lasers we could have used and which are available now, with efficiencies about 10-20 times that of those used.) They achieved a 1.5x gain. To get useful electricity out (without heroic efforts) will require a gain of 20-50.
- lolinder 4y ago
  The top reply to the top comment on that thread is a caution not to get overexcited. The second is a question. The third is another caution. Almost everyone in the top of any given subthread is approaching it very realistically. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377
  - cpleppert 4y ago
    The top commment though is just wrong. He says Q would be 0.375 with modern lasers. Which would be worse than the result announced today! Q is a factor internal to the fusion reaction, so upgrading to more efficent lasers would not change Q. Presumably he means something like total energy efficency would be very close to breakeven with modern lasers. You can tell how dubious this is from the fact no one involved in the project says anything like this. In fact, breakeven is still two orders of magnitude away and I don't believe anyone has suggested anything more optimistic.
petilon 4y ago
> Has anybody even been claiming it's anything other than that? They have certainly left the impression among many in the general public that we are close to commercializing this. Here's an example: https://www.cbs58.com/news/wisconsin-reacts-to-breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion-research https://www.cbs58.com/news/wisconsin-reacts-to-breakthrough-... "In terms of the physics, we are basically there, and the rest of it, at some level, is just engineering," he said.
- Calavar 4y ago
  I mean isn't that accurate? The same could be said for the moon landing. We knew all the requisite physics by the 1900. The rest was engineering. No one said that engineering was the easy part.
  - somewhat_drunk 4y ago
    Well said, and I fucking love it.
    - smaudet 4y ago
      Except they are not even in the same ballpark. Nobody is denying fusion can be done, but if you told me moon landing tickets were available to the general public I would say you were lying. It is not an engineering problem, they haven't solved half the physics still. You can't just tell the fuel pellets to burn hotter please, would you mind transferring your energy to this battery on the way out, they have none of the required steps to do this yet. Once it's actually possible to get net positive energy, then yes by all means engineer away the inefficiencies, before that it's still as much a pipe dream.
      - baandang 4y ago
        We also always ignore economics in these situations. The reason we all don't have a Boston Dynamics level robot right now is because of the economics of mass producing such a robot. To call that an engineering problem is too simplistic to me. We don't need to just solve fusion. We need to produce fusion in a manner that undercuts the price of fossil fuels. Then stack "renewable" on top of that. Sociologically, people operate on self interest and will in-group into team Fossil Fuels, Team Wind/Solar and we might even end up with Team Fossil Fuels and Team Wind/Solar forming an alliance to oppose Team Fusion. Of course, outwardly and individually we play make believe that we are all impartial 3rd party observers that just want the best for Team Human. It is those self interested jerks on the other team that are the problem. Never you and I.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
Well Neil DeGrasse Tyson went on Fox Business and talked about this like we have achieved net energy gain in a power plant, when in reality NIF uses 100x more energy than they got out of the pellet. He makes it seem as if we have solved fusion, which I think is pretty dangerous, as any viewer who believes what he says could start to believe we don't need to think about renewables anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsQ_9EIRTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsQ_9EIRTk The following is a partial transcription of what he said: Neil: Right at this moment I don't think people know for sure what the announcement will be, but if the secretary of energy is giving the press conference, everyone I think is thinking that we finally can get out more energy than we put in, and that is the key.. (Neil describes fission versus fusion, and (weirdly) magnetic confinement fusion, even though NIF is inertial confinement. It really feels like he doesn't know anything about NIF.) Host: alright so lets say we've overcome some of those challenges and finally created more energy than we put in to the experiment. Neil: That's it.. you got it. so now it's up to the engineers. Once we get the physics figured out, which it seems like we have, then the engineers say can I make that smaller, can I make that portable, would it fit in to a car? or is it only the size that might power a city? there are places that don't have access to energy... either oil or sunlight for example... so this would be transformative to civilization, and I see it akin to the transition from horses to automobiles, which happened in a matter of a couple of years, because we got the physics figured out for engines, internal combustion engines, when that happened you couldn't give away a horse, yet we were riding horses for thousands of years, building civilization literally and figuratively on its back. so my analogy to that is, we've been digging fossil fuels out of the ground for 150 years... Host: How long will it take to heal the planet from any harm that we've done to ourselves? Neil: Yeah here we are harming a planet that was itself trying to sustain us. by doing that you've sewn the seeds of your own extinction. and so the planet will heal, slowly. a lot of the carbon is taken up in to the oceans, so if you start dropping the carbon in the atmosphere, the oceans will equilibrate with that, so it will take time. but now is better than any time later than now, so oh yeah... I'm giddy. Host: I can't wait for my fusion engine. Neil: It's a pivot in civilization.
- geysersam 4y ago
  Jesus Christ. "Now it's up to the engineers." It's been that since the 50s.
dang 4y ago
The scare quotes are linkbait; the article says the progress is noteworthy. We've changed the title to reflect what the article actually says. Don't forget that headline writers for media publications typically don't write nor (one imagines) read the articles.

gigel82 4y ago

xwdv 4y ago
These are the people desperate for hope, not truth. When they’ve seen many such “breakthroughs” over the years that ultimately lead to nothing, they will learn to look upon such announcements with a cynical heart. You could tell me the cure for cancer was discovered tomorrow, and I would immediately search for reasons why it’s bullshit.
Robotbeat 4y ago
It (combined with the ignition last year, which this shows wasn’t a fluke) definitely WAS a “leap of some kind.” Showing fusion ignition shows potential scalability, and this is confirmed by the achievement of scientific breakeven.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  If you scale up a process that only returns 1% of the energy you put in (which is the case here based on how inefficient the laser is), you’re still not gonna come out ahead.
  - tanseydavid 4y ago
    1% or did you mean to say 101% -- they demonstrated a net gain didn't they?
    - lolinder 4y ago
      As I understand it they demonstrated a net gain relative to the energy output by the laser, but not relative to the energy put into the laser. 1% is correct for the actual efficiency given the cost to generate the laser. (Yes, that distinction does seem important and wasn't brought out by the news reports.)
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    The scaling is non-linear, which is exactly why ignition is important. By showing that fusion heat is actually leading to more fusion reactions, to get double the amount of energy out of each shot, they won't have to double the amount of laser light. In other words, higher gain should be relatively straightforward scaling of the system. (Also, the laser inefficiency is a complete red herring as they just used plain old flash lamp pumped lasers, not the much more efficient lasers we could have used and which are available now, with efficiencies about 10-20 times that of those used.) They achieved a 1.5x gain. To get useful electricity out (without heroic efforts) will require a gain of 20-50.
lolinder 4y ago
The top reply to the top comment on that thread is a caution not to get overexcited. The second is a question. The third is another caution. Almost everyone in the top of any given subthread is approaching it very realistically. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33971377
- cpleppert 4y ago
  The top commment though is just wrong. He says Q would be 0.375 with modern lasers. Which would be worse than the result announced today! Q is a factor internal to the fusion reaction, so upgrading to more efficent lasers would not change Q. Presumably he means something like total energy efficency would be very close to breakeven with modern lasers. You can tell how dubious this is from the fact no one involved in the project says anything like this. In fact, breakeven is still two orders of magnitude away and I don't believe anyone has suggested anything more optimistic.

petilon 4y ago

> Has anybody even been claiming it's anything other than that? They have certainly left the impression among many in the general public that we are close to commercializing this. Here's an example: https://www.cbs58.com/news/wisconsin-reacts-to-breakthrough-in-nuclear-fusion-research https://www.cbs58.com/news/wisconsin-reacts-to-breakthrough-... "In terms of the physics, we are basically there, and the rest of it, at some level, is just engineering," he said.

Calavar 4y ago
I mean isn't that accurate? The same could be said for the moon landing. We knew all the requisite physics by the 1900. The rest was engineering. No one said that engineering was the easy part.
- somewhat_drunk 4y ago
  Well said, and I fucking love it.
  - smaudet 4y ago
    Except they are not even in the same ballpark. Nobody is denying fusion can be done, but if you told me moon landing tickets were available to the general public I would say you were lying. It is not an engineering problem, they haven't solved half the physics still. You can't just tell the fuel pellets to burn hotter please, would you mind transferring your energy to this battery on the way out, they have none of the required steps to do this yet. Once it's actually possible to get net positive energy, then yes by all means engineer away the inefficiencies, before that it's still as much a pipe dream.
    - baandang 4y ago
      We also always ignore economics in these situations. The reason we all don't have a Boston Dynamics level robot right now is because of the economics of mass producing such a robot. To call that an engineering problem is too simplistic to me. We don't need to just solve fusion. We need to produce fusion in a manner that undercuts the price of fossil fuels. Then stack "renewable" on top of that. Sociologically, people operate on self interest and will in-group into team Fossil Fuels, Team Wind/Solar and we might even end up with Team Fossil Fuels and Team Wind/Solar forming an alliance to oppose Team Fusion. Of course, outwardly and individually we play make believe that we are all impartial 3rd party observers that just want the best for Team Human. It is those self interested jerks on the other team that are the problem. Never you and I.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

Well Neil DeGrasse Tyson went on Fox Business and talked about this like we have achieved net energy gain in a power plant, when in reality NIF uses 100x more energy than they got out of the pellet. He makes it seem as if we have solved fusion, which I think is pretty dangerous, as any viewer who believes what he says could start to believe we don't need to think about renewables anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsQ_9EIRTk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsQ_9EIRTk The following is a partial transcription of what he said: Neil: Right at this moment I don't think people know for sure what the announcement will be, but if the secretary of energy is giving the press conference, everyone I think is thinking that we finally can get out more energy than we put in, and that is the key.. (Neil describes fission versus fusion, and (weirdly) magnetic confinement fusion, even though NIF is inertial confinement. It really feels like he doesn't know anything about NIF.) Host: alright so lets say we've overcome some of those challenges and finally created more energy than we put in to the experiment. Neil: That's it.. you got it. so now it's up to the engineers. Once we get the physics figured out, which it seems like we have, then the engineers say can I make that smaller, can I make that portable, would it fit in to a car? or is it only the size that might power a city? there are places that don't have access to energy... either oil or sunlight for example... so this would be transformative to civilization, and I see it akin to the transition from horses to automobiles, which happened in a matter of a couple of years, because we got the physics figured out for engines, internal combustion engines, when that happened you couldn't give away a horse, yet we were riding horses for thousands of years, building civilization literally and figuratively on its back. so my analogy to that is, we've been digging fossil fuels out of the ground for 150 years... Host: How long will it take to heal the planet from any harm that we've done to ourselves? Neil: Yeah here we are harming a planet that was itself trying to sustain us. by doing that you've sewn the seeds of your own extinction. and so the planet will heal, slowly. a lot of the carbon is taken up in to the oceans, so if you start dropping the carbon in the atmosphere, the oceans will equilibrate with that, so it will take time. but now is better than any time later than now, so oh yeah... I'm giddy. Host: I can't wait for my fusion engine. Neil: It's a pivot in civilization.

geysersam 4y ago
Jesus Christ. "Now it's up to the engineers." It's been that since the 50s.

dang 4y ago

The scare quotes are linkbait; the article says the progress is noteworthy. We've changed the title to reflect what the article actually says. Don't forget that headline writers for media publications typically don't write nor (one imagines) read the articles.