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Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab
- sliverstorm 13y agoNot really well-informed enough to comment on details, but it's fantastic to see the field is still moving, even if slowly. Proud that we are still funding this kind of research.
- rozap 13y agoSorry to piss on your parade, but.. "Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission." Admittedly that is phrased in an odd way...
- mrterry 13y agoThe showers continue. Budget pressures have NIF down to shooting three days a week. To make matters worse, DoE has decided to cut funding for high energy density physics, ie the field covering the physics needed to make NIF ignite and turn laser fusion into a viable electricity source.
- sliverstorm 13y agoNot thrilled about that part, but the "Soon after" refers to events past, not the success this article is about. However, the latest experiments... So, at least the fusion research is still funded and still moving.
- claudius 13y agoThis bit of the fusion research is mostly aimed at making small-scale experiments on weaponised nuclear fusion without having to set off nuclear bombs every other day. As a long-term energy source, it is assumed to be rather unusable.
- rpedela 13y agoGreat, but I don't see how these extremely expensive nuclear fusion projects will ever beat price/kW of coal without heavy subsidies. My bet is that dense plasma focus is the future of cheap, clean power. Only time will tell though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus
- germano 13y agoI would imagine that the price/kW of coal will become easier to beat as we run out of it.
- mikeash 13y agoWe're not running out of coal any time soon.
- rpedela 13y agoPick your favorite energy technology (oil, wind, solar), it still applies.
- NhanH 13y agoIt's quite a bit harder to run out of wind and solar.
- rpedela 13y agoYeah. My comment has nothing to do with finite or infinite amount of any energy technology but rather that my original comment applies to fusion competing with the price of any existing energy technology such as coal, oil, wind, solar, etc.
- tyree732 13y agoSure, but it's not too difficult to run out of the materials necessary to usefully collect those energy sources.
- gizmo686 13y ago
- Jormundir 13y agoI think Nuclear Fusion is the single most exciting up-and-coming technology. I can't believe we're not throwing a hundred billion dollars at it. Make fusion, not war.
- angersock 13y agoRight, but what's its viral coefficient? How can we get it as a mobile app?
- beambot 13y agoObligatory Nikola Tesla pitching VCs video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngK13FMgXM&noredirect=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zngK13FMgXM&noredirect=1
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- pyre 13y agoI'm torn. Should we focus on gamifying it or making it web-scale?
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 13y agoBetter yet let's get one of those growth hackers on it.
- marknutter 13y agohashtag nextgenpower!
- khalidmbajwa 13y agoLet's A/B Test that !
- foobarian 13y ago
- breckinloggins 13y agoI keep seeing this same story pop up (from what I presume is the same September event). Is there anything new this round? Perhaps some new results from post-experiment data analysis? The article isn't really clear on this point.
- knappador 13y agoProducing net-energy is a different story than collecting net-energy. NIF just blows up a canister with a pellet and takes forever to reload a shot. On the other hand, an at-least-as-promising technology like Dense Plasma Focus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_plasma_focus) is still receiving minuscule funding. I'm hoping to be able to meaningfully support DPF and other fusion technologies soon. DPF has my attention so far because of its scaling characteristics.
- gizmo686 13y agoWhat does producing energy mean if not collecting it? The conservation of Energy tells us that we are not actually producing any energy, rather we are converting energy from the mass of the reactants (hopefully into electricity). If you consider the energy converted from mass to be produced, then it is impossible to do nuclear fusion without producing net-energy (as long as you stay on this side of lead).
- hetman 13y agoYes but in the real world there are inefficiencies. We can't even transfer energy efficiently enough into the reaction yet to get a net energy gain from the fusion reaction. And once you reach that milestone, you still have to make transfer of the yield energy into useful work efficient enough to make the whole thing productive. Efficient energy transfer is hard!
- kansface 13y agoProducing does not imply the ability to do useful work (power steam turbines).
- DennisP 13y agoLPP is planning a crowdfunding campaign for their DPF experiment, so you'll be able to support them soon if you like. http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=com_lyftenbloggie&view=entry&year=2013&month=08&day=07&id=100%3Aplanning-for-crowdfunding-campaign-underway&Itemid=90 http://www.lawrencevilleplasmaphysics.com/index.php?option=c...
- guimarin 13y agotl;dr - Another article about the US nuclear weapons research facility at Lawrence Livermore, AKA NIF, and its sideshow 57th priority. On a related note. It's been really sad to see the US slowly lose its edge in plasma based fusion tech, specifically tokamaks, which seem to be the only credible long-term method of sustaining a fusion reaction for power-plant purposes.
- mrterry 13y agoJust a couple quibbles from a former NIF scientist. NIF is much higher on the priority list than that. LLNL is already in the doghouse due to NIF failing to ignite on schedule. As goes the 5 giga-buck NIF, so goes LLNL (and the management knows it). Technologically, I'd put inertial and magnetic fusion about the same place. Even if the physics works, neither has a chamber first wall material that can stand up to the huge neutron loads that a power plant will create. Economically, both are hosed. Fusion wants to be big. Most reactor designs are for >1,000 MW. Electric companies are mostly interested in plants in the 50-400 MW range.
- nether 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor What do you think of this?
- mrterry 13y agoI haven't seen enough details to have a good opinion, but I'm skeptical (but would happily eat my hat if it works). We abandoned mirror fusion in the 80's because confinement is really hard if you have open field lines [1]. I do think high beta confinement concepts ([2], [3]) are very cool and could drive power plants small enough for power companies to be interested. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spheromak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spheromak [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_tokamak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_tokamak
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- nickpinkston 13y agoThis is awesome news - I visited the NIF a few months ago and they seemed a little downtrodden when asked about results. I bet they're all cocky now! They also told us that the lasers they use, if built with modern tech today, would actually only be the size of a 40' cargo container (as opposed to like 100K sq-ft building), and cost like 1000x less. Pretty epic... If we invested in fusion power like we did water power less than a century ago, I can only imagine the possibilities...
- marvin 13y agoThis is so cool. I almost can't believe that such incremental tech development would be applicable to fusion research. But there you have it. Now we just have to throw a few more billions at the problem. If the costs really have come down this dramatically, it is very promising indeed.
- drjesusphd 13y agoThey've been cocky many times before. After reading this article, I'm not optimistic that they've learned their lesson.
- devx 13y agoWow, I remember seeing this project start up a few years ago, about how they wanted to make a "sun" on Earth. It seems it only took them 5 years to achieve this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3981697/Scientists-plan-to-ignite-tiny-man-made-star.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3981697/Scie... In a way, it reminds of Spiderman, too, but let's hope things don't go as badly as in the movie, once we start to make that "sun" big enough to provide a ton of energy.
- Pxtl 13y agoWell, for one thing I assume they didn't build it in Manhattan.
- drjesusphd 13y agoThis is a trite and meaingless comment. Spiderman? Really?
- gnator 13y agoNot much of a physicist myself but I am wondering if the technology developed for nuclear fusion would have any use in progressing other fields
- mrterry 13y agoI can think of two off the top of my head. Low temperature plasma processing (used in semiconductor fab) got it start as the-mess-created-when-a-plasma-confinement-experiment-fails. Adaptive optics were developed for high intensity lasers and are now used in telescopes.
- Apocryphon 13y agoGlad to hear that this is continuing at LLNL despite the shutdown. Too bad no politician is going to use this as an example of why gov't investment is not a bad thing.
- TallGuyShort 13y agoProbably because "The real story here is that this facility allows the US to do nuclear weapons research without violating the nuclear test ban treaty." -- Another HNer from this field.
- Mizza 13y agoAh, okay, cool! I remember this being announced a while back, but I didn't understand why it was significant if the energy in was less than the energy out. This article helps to clear it up. The missing piece was that I didn't understand how this reactor works. I thought they just blasted a lot of lasers directly at the hydrogen isotopes. Instead, it seems like that use the lasers to shoot something else, which then creates a lot of x-rays which actually start the reaction. The significant thing here is that the energy produced is greater than the amount of energy coming in from the X-rays, but not the lasers which power those X-rays. Is that correct? (Not surprisingly, I'm not a physicist!)
- mrterry 13y agoLasers gets fired at the inner surface of a cylinder (called a hohlraum). The laser heat the surface of the hohlraum which then emits x-rays. The x-rays then deposit energy on the surface of a spherical capsule (this is the "energy absorbed" number). You start with ~2,000 kJ of laser energy, but some of that gets "backscattered" and never makes it into the hohlraum. Other energy is spent heating the walls of the cylinder. Additionally, some of the x-rays leak out of the hohlraum and do not drive the capsule implosion. After all these losses are taken into account, only about 15 kJ is absorbed in the capsule.
- unreal37 13y agoIf reliable fusion technology were developed, would the government share it with the public or would it be kept hidden away? Sadly I'm not joking. I think there's a 50-50 chance that any cool science that gets development by the U.S. government just becomes a classified DoD missile project.
- jlgreco 13y agoThe development of fission technology seems like a fine case to consider. I doubt we are more paranoid and militaristic now than we were during the height of the cold war. Maybe we are, but I really don't see it.
- locusm 13y agoFrom a friend that does research in fusion energy - no single country works on large fusion projects on there own as its too expensive. ITER has something like 7 or 8 member nations tipping cash in.
- pslam 13y agoOn the article itself: why did it take 6 paragraphs of text to finally mention what the milestone was? I hate this style of article writing, and it's usually a good bullshit-signal for any story. That's a shame, because it looks like this is the Real Thing (in a small way).
- dtap 13y agoThere was not an overall net gain. Direct from the source http://1.usa.gov/1e4Na9Q http://1.usa.gov/1e4Na9Q. 8 kJ out from 1.7 MJ (1700 kJ) in. At the end of the month they were able to get 14 kJ. I believe they are referring to the energy released within the hohlraum. Also, if you are interested there are privately funded companies doing this, General Fusion (http://www.generalfusion.com/ http://www.generalfusion.com/) and TriAlpha Energy (secretive and funded by the Russian govt., but in California). The VC fund I work for has invested in GF and obviously we think there is promise :)
- sam 13y agoIt is an important milestone. But to have a commercially viable fusion reactor, you'll need a factor of 50-100 more energy out than in to make up for inefficiencies in electricity generation using this kind of scheme. The real story here is that this facility allows the US to do nuclear weapons research without violating the nuclear test ban treaty. If the goal was to develop a commercially viable fusion reactor, the $3,500,000,000 spent so far could have been put into projects geared towards small scale fusion experiments investigating novel confinement schemes. Like the one I was working on, http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP07/Event/71002 http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP07/Event/71002 whose funding has since been cut and has been mothballed.
- pjlegato 13y agoSpeculating about their "real" motives is just that; speculation. I'm sorry your project was defunded, but that in itself is not evidence that the facility is actually a sham.
- skorgu 13y agoNIF is explicitly and publicly a weapons research facility; it's right there on their website[0]. If they happen to do some useful scientific or commercial work then yay but it's a nice byproduct. [0] https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/ https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/
- darkmighty 13y ago
- dekhn 13y agoA good place to start if you want to understand the purported rationale for the NIF (stockpile stewardship), I suggest reading and understanding this light introduction to modern nuclear weapons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon (the rhodes books, Making of the Atomic Bomb is required background reading, as is Dark Sun, if you want to get into the backstore). In particular: The NIH experiment recapitulates many of the design aspects of a thermonuclear weapon, but does so in a highly controlled lab environment. I'm a biophysicist. I know a fair amount of engineering, although I'm not a weapons physicist. Nonetheless, after years of reading about the NIF and various fusion projects I've come to believe that there is little justification for their expenditure. In particular, we can do stockpile stewardship without this device, more cheaply, nor does NIF present an economically viable method to production of power at a large scale in even the most rosy predictions. I still think the experimental design is cool, but I can't see this as a rational expenditure (HUGE opex and capex) compared to other investments we could be making. Most likely scenario I see in 20 years is that china will be mass-manufacturing small, safe fission reactors and making a mint selling them to the rest of the world. That's got far less reqiurement for massive capex and opex. It's just that the western nations decided to go stupid about fission because OH GOD NUCLEAR MUTATIONS and stop investing in building more reliable, safer, and smaller plants.
- beloch 13y agoThe NIF is probably more useful for coming up with new fusion bomb designs than for stockpile stewardship, as you say, but what makes you say hot fusion can never be economically viable? The sun is proof that nature can do this on a grand scale! It may be a long ways off, but "a long ways" becomes "never" without experimental work like the NIF. Yes, the U.S. is probably doing this primarily to create new weapons just as the space race was really about developing ICBM's. However, the fundamental science being done has huge long-term potential. It's a sad, but true fact that, sometimes, scientists have to use the megalomania of states to fuel research that has the potential to benefit all of humanity. Fission power is a separate matter. The single most important thing that most people still do not understand is that power grids have almost zero capacity for storing energy. That means most alternative energy sources, such as wind or solar, can never exceed a certain percentage of the grid's production capacity or it will become unstable. On-demand energy generation is still needed, and there's absolutely no reason to fear nuclear power while we're still using coal power, which is far more deadly in every sense! It's not just the West that has this fear either. Look at Japan's recent nuclear shut-down[1] (from 30% of their grid to 0%, replaced with fossil fuels), and tell me that isn't going to influence China! [1]http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/14/us-japan-nuclear-shutdowns-idUSBRE98D0DL20130914 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/14/us-japan-nuclear-s...
- jimmcslim 13y agoWhat would be the impact of a 'fusion economy', assuming realistic evolution of the technology for the purposes of commercialisation? (i.e. I'm assuming "Mr Fusion" powerplants on top of one's DeLorean aren't ever going to be practically feasible). What would such a world look like? Does it promote world peace; through greater energy security for nations, would less reliance on fossil fuels for baseload electricity generation have a significant impact on price of air travel/sea cargo?
- dreadpiraterob 13y agoFusion changes everything. Cheaper electricity makes transporting materials basically free. And projects like desalination become possible = no one remotely close to an ocean ever lacks clean drinking water again.
- regularfry 13y agoOr irrigation water, for that matter.
- mrterry 13y agoit is unlikely that fusion energy will be cheaper than current tech. however, it does not emit CO2, is not a proliferation risk, and cannot have a nuclear meltdown.
- enupten 13y agoThis is wonderful news, go NIF !
- fuddle 13y agoI can imagine everyone driving around in Tesla cars powered by Nuclear fusion in the not too distant future.
- 2muchcoffeeman 13y agoWhat ever happened to the polywell reactor design?
- NamTaf 13y agoThe University of Sydney have continued research of polywell reactors. I'm not terribly across their progress but I try to read papers whenever they're released though I haven't read any of their 2013 papers. It seems the last few years (2010-2012 at least) have focused around minimising point- and line-cusp losses. More reading here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell#University_of_Sydney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell#University_of_Sydney
- drjesusphd 13y agoIt's all classified. It may be useful as an economical neutron source, or as a way to keep a contractor in business, but there's been nothing published about its efficacy as a reactor for sustained fusion power. If there's one thing we've learned over the past few years, it's that "classified" knowledge, with no critical eyes to keep it honest, is often wrong. Science works, not because it's done in secret.
- ck2 13y agoIs it plausible this lab is trying to figure out how to make nuclear explosions without the radiation? Because just imagine how terrifying the world would become from a superpower that didn't have to fear the radiation aftermath. Fusion research seems like just a complete cover up.
- moca 13y ago"the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel" means it is at least 4 orders of magnitude away from being useful. Since we still depends on nuclear power for decades to come, it is much cost effective to invest safer and cleaner nuclear fission reactors. The kind of fast reactor that can burn down nuclear waste so we don't need to build nuclear waste storage system, which nobody knows how to build anyway. That would give us power supply for several centuries (along with renewable energy). Too many countries wasted too much money on fusion reactors for decades, while we are still running nuclear reactors designed/built more than 30 years ago. Just wrong priority order.
- drjesusphd 13y ago> the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel So what? What if the fueld didn't absorb anything? What do they mean by "absorb", anyway? This article is lacking in details, peer-reviewed literature, or even the names of scientists willing to stake their reputation on this claim. The BBC should know better.
- drjesusphd 13y agoWhat milestone? Be specific.
- manimalcruelty 13y agoWhat is the opinion on Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks High beta fusion reactor? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_beta_fusion_reactor How does this stack up against the more conventionally theorised techniques?
- abelardx 13y agoIt looks cold in that lab. Cold fusion?