Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear Fusion Real Soon Now
Mr. A. Coward writes "Researchers at the
National Ignition Facility are attempting to produce nuclear fusion. They'll focus 192 amplified lasers on a pellet of frozen hydrogen. 'NIF experiments will be the first to create fusion that gives off more energy than it takes in.' That will have to be quite a bit, since it will take 500 trillion watts to ignite the pellet in the first place. The facility has been plagued with delays, and so far only 4 of the 192 lasers have been completed. Researchers believe they will first achieve fusion sometime around 2014."
SimCity said they should be avaliable around 2020, right? I love games that tell the future
Since when did Real Soon Now translate to 10yrs+ ... ?
In 1960 we where gong to have fusion in 1980.
In 1980 we where going to have fusion in 2000.
In 2004 we'll have it in 2014.
Things are starting to look optimistic!
....10 years from now =! soon.
Do you have any idea the difference between power and energy? 500 trillion watts for a period of a few billionths of a second is not a lot of energy, brainiac. You could probably get more out of a potato battery.
(Me? Picky and pedantic? Hell yeah.)
So really, fusion is only another ten years away...
At least cold fusion did not cost that much.
So when was the break even point that they recover all the money that has been spent developing it?
Umm, fusion is most certainly NOT impossible. Stand outside tomorrow around noon and look up at the sky. See that big burning thing that hurts your eyes? That's a nuclear fusion reaction.
Sounds like an arsonists' boot camp :S
There's supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!
We'll have nuclear fusion, tomorrow, or maybe Tuesday, but definately be next year, or maybe the year after!
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
Anyone can promise Fusion 10 years into the future. It could be a very good idea, but they could crash and burn do to money problems 5 years from now. In 10 years, anything could happen to them. I mean, what is the point of even posting this, it won't effect us for 10 years, and, although they may make it, in that large time frame they will most likely fail. Its like saying Duke Nukem Forever would be made in 80 years at the origonal announcement. It could be vaporware, but nobody could find out for much longer. Of course it could be planned to be real, but in 80 years, who says we would even still be using PC's? I mean, thats an exagerattion, but its similar to whats going on here.
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
In 10 years doesn't fall within my definition of soon. Whose definition of soon were they using anyway, a geologist's?
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
Ahh, hasn't break even been passed experimentally quite some time ago?
m l
http://www.jaeri.go.jp/english/fusion/fusion.ht
This claims break even in 1996, and 1.25 power increase in 1998 in the JT-60 tokamak..
And this article seems to be stating they plan to hit breakeven in 2014 or further out.. hmmm.. perhaps they mean some special kind of break even, like the first ones using our method, or in the US, or something like that..
That would probably be the first to create a net increase in energy using fusion. Either that, or those fusion scientists are pretty good fakers over the last few decades.
Call me when FusionSE is released and it's small enough to power my laptop.
'NIF experiments will be the first to create fusion that gives off more energy than it takes in.'
Just sounds like my design plans for a perpetual motion machine. Can I borrow your snake oil for the bearings.
Obligatory nit-pick. The article implies that about 10 Joules of energy hits the pellet. No mention of the laser system's efficiency.
The cost of the lasers and the associated ancillary paraphernalia associated with the fusion plant. If the cost per kWh from the setup and maintenance of the equipment needs to be x cents / kWh and using renewable / clean sources of electricity can generate at x/5 cents / kWh then it wont fly.
Great to see that it is now thought probable that fusion can actually be an energy producer though.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World" 1 John 4:14
Researchers believe they will first achieve fusion sometime around 2014.
What about my flying cars? I was promised flying cars!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
National Ignition Facility home page
National Ignition Facility project status and photo gallery with lots of pictures
LLNL Science on High Energy Lasers
So they can create fusion...big deal. It's been done before. Call me when they can retrieve more energy than they put in.
However, is artifically created fission possible, so far it hasn't been.
I know that it makes sense to at least do something so that we continue to learn, but sometimes it seems like they need to do more thinking and less building.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Fusion happens commonly in research labs. What hasn't happened yet, is getting more energy out than it took to create the fusion, in a controlled, energy-generating environment.
http://www.llnl.gov/nif/construction/photoshow.htm l
Isn't that when someone predicted the end of the world? Inca's? Someone?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
sale of foil hats will be at an all time high
Yeah, I really should have read the article before posting. I realized I was thinking of cold fusion. My bad.
We'll certainly need the power of fusion for it.
sp what do you you when you're in a lab with a little pellet of frozen hydrogen that's going to release 500 trillion watts? light it up and run?
Let's see...
Assuming that '500 trillion' means 500 x 10^12 watts... They said it would be for a 'few billionths' of a second: maybe 2 x 10^-9 seconds?
Am I counting wrong, or does that come out to about a million watt-seconds, or 0.277 kilowatt-hours?
I consume more energy than that makin' coffee.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
and produce more money that was ever really there..
hmmm
I imagine if the results of this test fail to cause a massive black hole at the edge of the earth and somehow produces more energy than was used to to create it that some law has been broken.. will this lead to electric companies paying consumers just to take electricity off of there hands. hmmm. or what if it succeds but fuses all the power together into a super diamond..
Jeoin
We don't need any nuclear disaster here. Last thing we need is a service pack or patch to fix a catastrophe.
Don't you mean really soon? Date an English major.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
As Mr. Potts says, Watts are a unit of power. 500 trillion Watts is the power being put into the reaction by the lasers. Energy is not the same thing as power. Power is energy divided by time.
According to the article, the beams will be fully on "only for a few billionths of a second". For a naive estimate of the total energy being output by the lasers, we can simply multiply (500 GW) * (2 ns).
Now, this yields a quantity with dimensions of energy: (500 GW) * (2 ns) = (1 kJ). To get a handle on this, it is the amount of energy that is output in heat and light by a 100W light bulb shining for ten seconds.
For a scenario Slashdotters are familiar with, it's the amount of heat generated by a 1 GHz Athlon thunderbird in 12 seconds.
Let's see, we get fusion in abou 10 years. That's 2014. Maybe 10 years later, we have a terrible disaster. That's 2024. So in 2044, I'm predicting we get a slashdot story about a cute biker chick riding around "ghost town," or what used to be Livermore, California.
Actually, once you've generated it and it puts out more than it received, you can recycle the process indefinitely. then its a matter of harnessing the output effeciently AND saving enough of the overage to eventually set a second chain of lasers firing, then in a few years the power output will grow exponentially and poof, free energy, mass space exploration, colonization, pure research civilization, galactic domination, intergalactic war with insect race, universal domination, peace and love and enlightenment, fin.
its kinda like putting a million bucks in the bank and living off the interest, but also putting aside enough of the interest to increase your returns.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
April 1st isn't until Thursday.
This announcement was supposed to come out simultaneously with the "verified" claim to have found Methane on Mars, and with Condoleeza Rice's hillarious admission of guilt before the 9/11 commission, all on Thursday. Now you've ruined it.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
'NIF experiments will be the first to create fusion that gives off more energy than it takes in.'
Anyone? Anyone?
Bueller? Bueller?
I suggest you read Slashdot
Is that before or after I get to buy a flying car?
Power is not the same as energy. It is energy per unit time. It is rubbish to say there will have to be a large energy output because the input power is high. By way of example, 500 trillion watts for a femtosecond = 500 joules. This is not an unreasonable amount of energy, contrary to the attempt to imply otherwise by shouting '500 trillion'.
However, is artifically created fission possible
Yes, in nuclear power plants. I think you meant fusion.
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz!
AFAIK, and I could be wrong: CERN has had a facility to research fusion, and there is a fusion facility in England that actually has been doing some cutting edge research on the topic while the US closed all but one or two of its fusion research facilities.
"Nimis exaltatus rex sedet in vertice - caveat ruinam!"
in other words, don't wake me up. For all you optimists out there, here's a good pro-cold-fusion website to pour over whie I sleep. It has plenty of info
Controlled fission is pretty common--you know, a regular nuke plant. And artificially created fusion that yields more energy than was put into it used to a regular thing--then they made those bomb tests illegal.
And if he meant fusion, he can look up hydrogen bombs.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
Got my SI prefixes wrong. 500 trillion * 1 femto second is 0.5W. My mistake. The correction is in favour of my argument though!
I thought all you had to do to get fusion (though not break-even yet, I think) is shake some heavy acetone.
Simple Unexpected Concrete Credible Emotional Stories
"IF experiments will be the first to create fusion that gives off more energy than it takes in"
umm...What happened to the conservation of Energy?
Another point: What about the fusion in a beaker posted a few days ago?
-=- celibate by popular demand
This should have been the link
Am I crazy or is the Sun an example of a fusion reaction that gives off more energy than it takes in?
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Ignoring the fact that this requires matter to keep going.
I know a number of people working on NIF and hear of its progress every few months. It's been plagued with problems largely due to budgeting, as scandals have hit the lab and much of the money was funneled out. The LLNL management was largely replaced due to these activities and for a while the entire laboratory was on the brink of being shutdown.
The four beams mentioned in the summary are really just a testbed. In the previous system, Nova, there was a smaller machine called Novet that had the same purpose. I always forget the newer machine's name, but this is standard practice versus a major delay. NIF is behind the original schedule, but that's due to problems (e.g. lens issues) and technical challenges always faced in such large R&D projects.
From what I hear, things will be going pretty well from now on. Since this is an international effort (led by the US), other countries are building their own versions. France has similar system that was brought up last year with help from LLNL personnel and has allowed the lab to avoid many of the same pitfalls the French have faced.
My main contribution to this thread is simply that NIF doesn't seem to be heading towards cancellation, like many government projects. The people behind it are extremely competent and far smarter than I am. The scandals are behind them and will be making steady progress. It's a really, really impressive effort.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
someday, once the break-even point is reached, and fusion reactors get built, no major h-bomb type accident occurs, turning people away from this energy source, the way 3-Mile Island did for nuclear fission.
No data, no cry
However, is artifically created fission possible, so far it hasn't been.
Assuming you meant fusion instead of fission (which is how current nuclear plants work):
Sure it is, you ever heard of a "Hydrogen Bomb?"
What hasn't been done yet, is create a sustainable / controllable fusion reaction in a lab. If that ever happens, then we are on the way to being able to harness fusion for energy production, commercially.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
A story from the mysterious future.
Neither. It's right after Duke Nukem Forever comes out.
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
The fact that the lasers use 500 trillion watts is not related at all as to whether this is the first fusion plant 'that gives off more energy than it takes in', since watts is not a measure of energy, rather, of power (energy/time).
That reminds me, how much longer after "real soon" can we expect the Mr Fusion to hit the market?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Bzzt, thanks for playing. Most hydrogen bombs have a yield breakdown of about 85% fission to 15% fusion (fission is a much better producer of blast and fire), but in the 1960s there were the Bassoon Tests, which used hydrogen bombs where virtually 100% of the blast yield came from fusion.
So yes, we have the capability to artificially create fusion. We've had it for decades.
Professor Farnsworth builds a Fusion Reactor at home.
Relax its a joke but seriously, its a Prof. Farnsworth mentioned in this slashdot story.
-=- celibate by popular demand
Conservation of energy is not violated as the reaction liberates energy stored in the nuclei of the reactant atoms. More precisely, it produces more energy than it takes to start the reaction.
Well... Maybe this isn't so unlikely.
I have this furnace in my house. It has a pump that consumes electric power, spraying oil into the burner, plus a fan. But it gives off a lot more energy (in heat) than it consumes in electricity.
True, I have to keep buying oil. But I think that these researchers intend to keep buying the little frozen-pellet thingies.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
go easy on him--if he's a real /. geek he hasn't seen the sun in a while
It is a wonder that people don't understand that we actully are way over the break-even point. Ever heard of a hydrogen bomb? That thing is base off fusion, and it is the most power "known" weapon. On the other hand, cold fusion is costly. Unlike normal fusionable hydrogen, use in bomb. Cold fusion need "heavier" hydrogen known as deuterium. The hydrogen:deuterium ratio in the natural is about 6000:1. It is very hard to find them, and you can not just separate the water(You will noly get normal hydrogen). You need to "bombard" a lithium atom with a neutrons. In the process, you will create a helium and a deuterium. The process of bombarding is very costly, and lithium isn't as common as hydrogen.
Compare this to the efforts of JET the Joint European Torus project, which achieved breakeven (Q=1) during 1997 (good explanation of fusion milestones here). JET's successor, ITER aims to achieve Q of at least 10, paving the way for commercial-scale power generation.
The only thing that worries me about ITER is the level of bureaucracy exhibited, but perhaps this is to be expected from a multi-national consortium.
ITER are standing on the shoulders of giants, NIF are discussing specifications for a step-ladder.
That's correct, but it is also bleeding a huge amount of mass so it is not a case of getting something for nothing.
How do you like our 192 lasers, Mr. Hydrogen Pellet? Yeah, that's one-nine-two. You better be fusing, bitch! Don't make me get the 193rd laser from my car.
... unsustainable. I mean, how do you keep things fusing while you extract the energy? The answer is probably more lasers.
Focused laser fusion is so absurd. I hope it works, but the whole scheme seems so
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Will that be after all the patents run out in 20 years?
That's what my set of encyclopedias from 1968 say about the new "Stellarator" reactor they're building over at Stanford... "Within 10 or 20 years." But cynicism aside, there's no denying we've made great progress. From energy output/input ratios of .00001 to .3 and .4 since fusion research began.
My thought is that if you want a way to get unbelievable energy intensities, use the big fusion reactor in the sky. Launch a gossamer thin sheet of aluminized mylar, spin it into a disk, and use a minimal amount of structure to form it into a parabolic mirror. If you use a 500 meter radius piece, that's a constant 740 megawatts focused on the pinhead-sized object of your choice. If you need more, just launch a bigger piece of aluminized mylar.
It strikes me that trying to create a fusion reactor is an awful waste of time, effort and money when there's one just just across the road (in space terms) that we can use for free!
If all the money that's been poured into fusion research so far had been poured into making those "cheap" solar arrays they keep telling us are "just around the corner" then we'd all have roofs made of the stuff that would make us energy self-sufficient and we'd even be driving electric cars that were powered by the sun.
It seems stupid to try and reinvent the wheel (fusion) when nature has done such a wonderful job about ninety quintillion times over and we can harness the power of at least one of those natural fusion reactors very safely.
It is much more real - the availability of new power plants depends on combinations of:
:)
1) Mayor Rating
2) Number of high-wealth residents
3) Total power requirements
4) Total number of high-tech industry
5) Total energy demand
Same is true for all other nice things you get in that game. However, it's impossible to do that in one city, it just stagnates. The interaction between bordering cities it crucial. You basicaly get a region where you develop tens of cities, and RCI demand in one city affects the neighbour. The "deals" thing is same as in SC 3000, i.e. they can sell each other services. It's neat to have one "garbage" city, because that's really the only thing you can not get rid of safely in this game - only two options - garbade dump or waste-to-energy plant, both affect neighbours. Of course you can still have garbage island
Also, you can no longer build perfect city.
The better question is, will the Sun, in its lifetime, give off more energy than it took to create it?
I'm guessing not, but I'm not a physicist.
Will I be able to cook burritos any faster?
We've had fusion weapons since the '50s... they're called thermonuclear bombs.
At this point, research into fusion *power* probably isn't going to increase their effectiveness much more.
Right now, the big areas of superweapon research are biotech and nanotech. Mmmm, grey goo.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
You mean the moon? It really doesn't hurt my eyes though. It does make me want to howl...
There has been much progress with the plasma focus fairly recently. Taken from the Focus Fusion website:
In recently completed test experiments, the researchers were able to achieve temperatures that reached up to two billion degrees in some shots of the plasma focus device, well surpassing previous records of 520 million degrees achieved by the commonly used tokamak device. The much larger and more expensive tokamak has been cornerstone of the US fusion program for 25 years.
The plasma focus functions in a fundamentally different way from other fusion devices. Tokamaks and most other fusion devices use powerful magnets to attempt to stabilize the plasma - the extremely hot, electrically conducting gas in which the fusion reactions occur. This task has been likened to lifting gelatin with rubber bands. Instead, the plasma focus takes advantage of the natural instabilities of the plasma, so that the plasma's own magnetic fields compress it and heat it. "The plasma focus works with the plasma, not against it," says Lerner.
Perhaps someone with the foresight to see the best path for future power generation can fund this research fully and cease our pseudo problems concerning concerns about future energy sources. The solution is apparent.
Just a thought.
Or they could just get a Mr-Fusion from the early 21st century and bring that back.
And a Hover conversion for the DeLorean while they are at it
H-Bombs are most certainly not constructed using plain vanilla hydrogen. Tritium and deuterium are both used, and in early Soviet devices, a solid, Lithium Deuteride, was used.
Without damaging the environment. That would be cool. Or in the least, we could send in soldiers in space suits to take over...
This is my sig.
Case 1:
Article: "When all 192 lasers in the NIF are operating, they'll focus 500 trillion watts (everything after this point is non-existent) - more than 1,000 times the power generated in the United States - on their target, albeit only for a few billionths of a second."
Slashdotter: "500 trillion watts?! You gotta be fuckin' kidding! You're gonna blow up California!"
Case 2:
Article: "When all 192 lasers in the NIF are operating, they'll focus a few kilojoules worth of energy on a hydrogen pellet..."
Slashdotter: "WTF is this all about? Is this good? Or is it whack?"
Case 3:
Article: "With this (Dr. Evil style)LA-SER device, we're gonna get FU-SION using less energy then what your Prescott has consumed while you're reading this piece of crap!"
Slashdotter: "I, for one, welcomes our new fusion power overlord! l33t!!!!"
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
It's interesting that the NIF first full light is now pushed back to 2014. There's a small chance we may just beat them to ignigion.
I work at the Omega Laser(still the most powerfull in the world at 60 Terawatts! ya!) and there is currently construction going on here to complete what is called Omega EP(extended performance) by ~2007. Omega EP will produce an astounding 2.6 PETAWATTS(million billion watts!!) of power for a around a picosecond (so about 2-3 Kilojoules per shot which is much less than the NIF's megajoule scale shots) making it, by far the worlds most powerfull laser when complete. The new laser will use what's called chirped pulse amplification to produce its incredibly high petawatt scale power.
Using the current 60 beam 60 Terawatt (~30Kj) laser to compress a pellet of hydrogen fuel and then just before the moment of maximum inward compression and then stagnation; the EP petawatt beam will fire, producing an instant injection of Mev scale electrons directly into the center of the collapsing target and hopefully producing high fusion yeilds and perhaps even approaching ignition. The Gekko XII laser in Japan with its 500 terawatt scale CPA lser has validated this scheme, which is called "fast ignition", reporting that with the CPA laser used at maximum compression with their 12 beam 40 terrawat laser they've achieve an increase in neutron output(fusion yield) by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude...Can't wait till we can fire ours up!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Nope. The fission reaction is just used to kick off the fusion reaction. Here, read this:
http://people.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb9.htm
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Doesn't an H-bomb release a hell of a lot more energy than they put in to start it? It's basically a regular nuke that sets of fusion in some deuterium placed next to it.
As if! First you have to teach the sharks to fly!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Yeah, it would be nice for a power generator, except for that pesky fact that everything around it for miles(or kilometers, choose what you will) kind of goes "BOOM".
Perhaps we should send a couple of settlers to the capitol and use them to help finish this Great Wonder!
but the good news is, it will only cost one MEElion dollars!
Question: What. do. you. get. when. you. combine. deuterium. pellet. terrawatt. laser. and. ancient. earth. leader. from. the. asian. steppes?
Answer: Khan. Fusion.
Not exactly on topic, but just to keep with the topic, I think it would be a tremendous breakthrough if we could get more energy out of fusion than we put in.
Judging from the Windows XP backgrounds on these computers lets just hope they don't get the blue screen of death when they test the final setup.
Oops I misspoke, I meant to say the Omega laser is actually the most ENERGETIC UV laser in the world at ~30Kilojoules/shot, Not the most powerfull, as there are a few other chirped pulse lasers with higher powers out there but not higher energies(most can only do a few hundred J per shot though this is still enough to do direct laser induced nuclear reactions).
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Yes, a world of happiness and leisure... for everyone except the poor sucker who has to keep pushing the frozen hydrogen pellets into the lasers.
Hope he's got real thick gloves.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
This is odd, as I've witnessed fusion power being used every day for as long as I can remember.
Same for my parents. And my grandparents. And their grandparents.
This sun thing seems to work much better than that complicaated machine LLNL is trying to build.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Also, watch a video of hydrogen bomb exploding...thats another nuclear fusion reaction.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
When the Chinese decided to build the Great Wall, the first thing they did was spend fifty years building schools, researching techniques, and training a generation of engineers to design the Great Wall.
Then they spent several generations building the wall.
Big things take time.
-kgj
-kgj
Be sure and put on your dark glasses.
500 trillion watts!! Great scott!! .5 gigawatts. Only .71 to go...
I assume that that is only
And I'm sure if I have my conversions wronge, some slashbot will correct me.
Skycar
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Ok, i blame my blindness on you. I've not been in the sun for weeks.. AND NOW LOOK AT ME! And now, back to the matter at hand. Nulcear fusion is possible. have a nice day :)
Thats all well and good but can you strap it to a freaking shark?
Pardon my going off-topic, but, what bank is that? I'm only getting 2%, and that's not enough to live on, let alone enough to put any aside.
WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Do NOT follow teh parent posters advice. My Meade ETX-125 displays a warning every time I power it up warning me NOT to look at teh fusion ball in the sky.
I've heard that Omega is an enhanced version of the LLNL NOVA laser. Do you know if that's accurate?
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
Solar is by its nature distributed like the PC empowers people. Fusion is centralized and empowers the power company. Or did you think they were in the electricity business.
But wouldn't that cause a rift in space and cause aliens to warp in and trash your lab?
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
That's what scientists been saying about commercial fusion reactors since the 70s.
I'm glad that progress is being made but I have to ask:
How good are (computer) simulations at modeling this? I mean the NIF and presumably you are going to spend billions to essentially run experiments. I assume this means that simulations of the physics are not good enough to predict what is the best design. So, what's the problem? Is there a fundamental lack of knowledge (quantum/relativistic effects/high energy densities) at these regimes or are your equations good but you just don't have the computing power to solve them? Because we might see PetaFLOP computers before we see PetaWATT lasers!
Also do you know if Magnetic confinement schemes also have simulation problems?
(BTW I met the exec. dir. of the Max Planck inst. in Plasma phys. while on the TGV last year, he seemed quite optimistic that magnetic confinement was going to be producing results "real soon now";)
Marty McFly: What the hell is a gigawatt?
That being said, a combination of fusion power on the grid and fuel cells driving our cars and powering our portable devices...Man that would be awesome. Bye bye OPEC.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Ummm
Now that I think about it, maybe what I'm remembering is Kafka's story about the Great Wall -- not exactly the best source for sinology.
Okay, I goofed. Apologies.
See Great Wall @ Wiki for better information than mine.
Here's the gist of what Wiki has to say: Hmm
As for off-topic
-kgj
-kgj
Essentially that's true, I suppose. NOVA was around 100 Terawatts per shot (I've heard it was capable of 100 Kilojoules per shot but I suspect it was actually less). NOVA only had 10 beams though and this ended up creating huge problems. When a pellet was imploded on NOVA the beam/beam instabilities and nonuniformity of the irradiation on target caused very large hydrodynamic instabilities as it imploded (Rayleigh-Taylor instability mostly) which spoiled the fusion reaction before it could really start.
The Omega laser with its 60 beams produces much higher irradiation uniformity and even though it's lower power than NOVA(which was decomissioned in '99) it holds the record for neutron production in a shot at something like 5X10^13 neutrons, indicating a much 'cleaner' convergence and fusion burn. There were several lasers at LLNL before the NOVA laser with various names like Janus, Argus and Shiva, which all used the fundamental frequency of Nd:glass lasers at 1064 nanometers(infrared) and the great contribution in the early '80s to ICF laser fusion by the Omega guys was the idea to convert this IR to its third harmonic at ~351 nanometers in the UV. This greatly increased laser absorption efficiency on target and consequently increased target compression pressures/temperatures accordingly. Allmost all high power Nd:glass lasers use this technique today.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
which is that you could attach these to the heads of some sharks. Imagine sharks, with 500 terawatt lasers attached to their heads!
This only counts the energy of the laser beams. Unfortunately, getting the deuterium (heavy hydrogen) out of ordinary water requires a huge amount of energy, relative to what will be produced by the fusion of the same amount of deuterium undergoing fusion. This expense doesn't figure into the equation for "breaking even."
Worse, this isn't even deuterium-deuterium fusion they are trying to achieve. It's the "easier" to accomplish deuterium-tritium fusion. Tritium is not even a component of natural hydrogen (it decays with a lifetime of only a couple of years). Tritium must be manufactured, atom by atom. The amount of energy that is needed for this is even larger that for extracting deuterium, and of course it also doesn't figure into the energy budget equation. It's unlikely that d-t fusion will ever produce commertially usable energy. And we are truly a long way from d-d fusion in the lab breaking even (and that's without counting the energy for getting the fuel in the first place).
The ideal reaction to use of course would be proton-proton fusion, which powers the sun. Proton is the nucleus of the normal, "light" hydrogen, so it costs very little (relatively speaking) to extract it from water. But this reaction has never been observed in a lab, and it's probably unrealistic to expect something like that to happen in this century.
Sorry...
I think they have already achieved a net increase of energy using fusion. It's called H-bomb.
Seems the logic-impaired anti-American isn't just a stereotype.
Many people seem so desperate to feel superior to Americans that they assign American citizenship to every AC who posts something they feel they can criticise. Inventing a silly stereotype, inventing examples of the stereotype, then using this mental construct to bolster your fragile ego is a bit spurious, if not downright pathetic.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Heh, I went to U of R. Earned my BS and MS EE(92). One of the main reasons I chose Rochester was an issue of Scientific American published in 1985 which was telling of the wonderous miracles to be seen at the LLE. At the time I was a Naval Nuclear Reactor operator who won an ROTC scholarship.
I never actually did any work there, never worked in the nuclear field again, and only used the LLE to park my car when going back to Rochester for home comming. What a bummer.
Good Luck with your reasearch my friend. I wish you all the best success.
Actually, it's even more complex that that
OK, as one of the posters said - The "Hydrogen" bomb started off as a "fission/fusion" bomb - with MOST of the yeald being from the fission, believe it ot not. As things progressed, they DID come out with almost pure fusion bombs (only a small kicker to start it) - today, from what I've read, most are "3 stage" - fission/fusion/fission
A few months back, there was the links here to the famous, now declassified paper on "How the atomic bomb works" with DETAILS - like, what shape you make the pit, why most moderen nukes have a mini cyclotron in them, an what the refelectors are. The BIG detail turns out to be "time" - the fact that the xrays, light and particles from the starter fission explosion can get to the other end of the weapon before the pressure wave can, so they can be used to trigger the 2nd and 3rd stage
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
No offense bu investing money into researching fusion is pretty stupid IMHO. In case nobody noticed we're all sitting atop thin skin of solid rock floating on top of a space-borne ball of **molten lava**. WTF! Can we just drill a couple thousand holes in the ground, run some pipes, attach a heat exchanger and some turbines and call it a day? HDR Geothermal (Hot Dry Rock). What the hell.
You imply that maser is a neolgism, while laser is not. The maser actually was created before the laser so shouldn't you say, "visual light maser"? ;-)
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
We're getting a new solar heater for our house and it costs several thousand dollars. It will take a decade or more to recoup the costs in cost savings.
With fission and fusion the idea is to take a relativly small amount of energy to start a chain reaction that releases a very large amount of energy.
There is a solar array by the university but it's unsightly. We just don't have the stuff to make solar cells efficient enough to be practical. We can't very well be driving along at 20 miles per hour with 200 square feet of solar cells on the roof of the car that only has room for half a person.
Using the sun directly as a power source isn't looking very promising. So we make use of it instead to grow crops and whatnot. It's not like the sun's power is just going to waste. Trying to use it make electricity just isn't working out. The sun seems to be a screwdriver that we're attempting to pound nails in with.
Maybe one day we'll find a material that reaches a practical amount of efficency for solar cells. In the mean time we need power and fussion and fission are the most practical and cost effective.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
So this is all bullshit!
I know damn well you could light up a city for a year with the energy that went into making that 1kJ.
And their big goal is to get 1.1kJ back out.
That's like using an entire tree to make a toothpick.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Sounds like you're a petaphile...
-
Migma fusion
- Inertial electrostatic confinement
- Muon-catalyzed fusion
- Antimatter-catalyzed fusion
- Cold fusion
It would also be nice if the fusion effort was run by scientists and engineers instead of politicians and bureaucrats. Check out this stupidity:Historically, Livermore's laser fusion program has been a cover for bomb research. That's been true for decades. How does this new program lead to a useful power source?
In related news, NIF has ordered 192 sharks.
If you insist on using solar power, a better solution would be harnessing wave energy and sub-oceanic thermal differentials. Those oceans out there are already soaking up 70% of the solar energy that hits the earth. Why pave the land with solare panels?
Amazing.. so I guess californians will be seeing more of those rolling blackouts.
Slashdot lost my first post which had the link to the Federation of American Scientists paper "The Holocaust Bomb: A Question of Time".
..when you can have one kick ass laser pointer to bring to a concert?
;-0
Oh man,..to have one of these at a Celine Dion concert
Boss: When do you expect to finish the project?
Me: Hmmm, lemme see, I think I'll finish it by year 2014, and then it may not work.
Boss: OK, here's your paycheck. By the way, we've approved that $20M yearly budget increase.
Boy, wouldn't that be sweet? Software industry is a wrong domain to work in right now. Those bloodsucking PHBs demand results every freaking week.
ouch... my head... acronym.... o.. o.. over.. load....
That's interesting but the real metric by which every laser should be measured is: Can it be used to heat a giant ball of popcorn kernels thereby filling a professors house with popcorn until popcorn flows out of every door and window?
In a fission-fusion-fission weapon, most of the power is due to the fission fuel. Without the third fission stage, it is usually mostly fusion, though. So no, it's not *always* just to kick off the fusion.
I thought entropy forbided this, that nothing could release more energy than it was taking...
I'm missing something here...
no, it always fell in the range of 2055-2065.
then again, the only version of sc2000 I've ever played is the 1.0 DOS version, so maybe it changed
any physicist worth his salt knows this one..
"plasma fusion is 20 years away. and it will always be."
notice how grammer is not a necessary component of a physicists salt content ^_^
All that said, fusion may well give us all that the fission power 1950's white elephant promised - but we don't know yet, so "practical" is not the right word.
Bubblegum Tate: "We'd need some kind of doomsday device to initiate an implosion
like that!"
Farnsworth: "Doomsday device? Aaah, now the ball's in Farnsworth's court!"
That's right. All your base.
Well, the good folks at Lawrence Livermore were already digitizing people and putting them inside the computer over twenty years ago. You'd think they'd have fusion licked by now.
Marty McFly: So does it run on regular unleaded gasoline?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Unfortunately no, it needs something with a little more kick - plutonium.
Marty McFly: Plutonium... wait, are you telling me that this sucker is nuclear?
Dr. Emmett Brown: No no no, this sucker's electrical, but it requires a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.
Marty McFly: Doc, you don't just walk into a store and buy plutonium... did you rip that off?
Dr. Emmett Brown: Shhhhhh. Of course. From a group of Libyan nationalists. They wanted me to build them a bomb, so I took their plutonium and in turn, gave them a shiny bomb-casing filled with used pinball machine parts.
-- There is no spoon. Only fork.
but don't you guys think the money being used is actually (mostly or in big part) going towards hidden military projects?
I am a physicist - but I have not read these articles - I'll wait for it to be published in Nature. My recollection of the experiment that achived breakeven some years back was that they measured the power in after losses due to generating the plasma, that is to say that there was more energy out than was in the plasma to begin with, but not more than was needed to generate the plasma. The analogous case of the laser method would be like saying that we generated more energy from fusion than we put in via photons from the lasers - but since the lasers are only 2% efficient in generating the photons it is not quite what you need for commercial energy generation. As for fusion energy from bombs, there was a nice study done at Stanford (IIRC) about the economics of simply setting off bombs in a deep hole and using the residual heat to power a steam turbine. According to the study this would be economical, you just neeed to convince your neighbors it is ok to do. As for having to have a huge hole, consider that at LANL people were designing steel containment vessals for small yield tests so that the cost of the hole could be amortized over several tests. In this case the problem was not the blast so much as the molten steel melting a hole in the bottom of the containment vessal at the end of the test.
Why do people take credit for all the great things that happen in their lives and then blame God for all the bad?
I believe that's frikkin' shark.
Oh, and before you think to answer ... zip it!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Anyone else remember MST3K's "Gekko Roman Wrestlers"?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
And what will power this disasterous little army?
Too bad civilisation will have crashed by 2010. We were supposed to have fusion five years ago..
Unfortunately, politicians get in the way of scientific research, and in the last 25 years in particular here in the UK, blue-sky research has been cut in preference to that which looks promising from a commercial point of view. The accountants rule. Unfortunately, this reduces science to mere "refinement of engineering" at the expense of radical new and exciting discoveries and knowledge; and they wonder why no one wants to be a scientist any more.
Stick Men
... ough to be considered news. Come on, folks... why is this on the front page of Slashdot? A program that's been in the works for decades is still in the works. Interesting, perhaps, but hardly new. There isn't even any real commentary, analysis, or detailed information here. What gives? Slow day finding "stuff that matters?"
Fusion could be a good thing, but what humanity really needs is a non-centralized carrying "powerpack" for each person/home.The need for war will become less, since having a personal powerpack will empower each person, instead of empowering the allready rich persons.
Why does'nt goverments around the world put up a "y-prize" for a project like this? Well, i think we all know
http://www.cheniere.org/
It's always amazing how the people in charge (or that sponsor the project) seem to 'forget' this little detail. But, in fact, the critics are right. Billions and billions are wasted, on something that they know full well will never amount to a working fusion reactor that actually delivers energy to the market. The design (and goals, btw) are extremely unsuited to accomplish that, especially compared to the JET-project - http://www.jet.efda.org/ - (or actually the ITER-project).
And all the 'new things that have been learned' does not weigh up against the billions spend on it. The REAL reason (which they never mention) that they have gone through with this, is because of military pressure and animousity between the EU and USA on some key issues. Because, while a tokamak design yields the best results and opportunities for actual energy-output in a sustained, marketable way, the laser-pellet system is a lot more usefull in one respect: the study and experimentation of atomic/hydrogen fussions as they occur in bombs (explosive output). THAT is why they went for that project, because for usefull civilian experimentation, other ways of attaining nuclear fusion are far better suited.
Strange how you never seem to hear that aspect from the scientists/politicians involved.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Don't believe the advertisements for nuclear power without question. Don't believe me either, I used to work with coal fired power, and met ex-USSR ex-nuclear people, so I'm suspect too. Pick up some basic physics and chemistry and you will improve your bullshit detection skills.
...the technology that's been twenty years away for the last fifty....
in fact it isn't any energy at all since Joules are the unit of energy and a Watt is a unit of power (J/S). My guess is that the laser system hits the fuel with a pulse of laser energy. Since it is a pulse of energy it is delivered over a period of time which I am guessing in this case is fairly short say 1 nano second. At one nano second duration that would imply a total energy of only 500,000 Joules. The amount of energy needed to light a 60 Watt light bulb for about 10,000 seconds or 2.31 hours. Not a whole lot of energy after all. (and if the pulse is shorter than I guessed, which it probably is, then the energy required is event smaller.) At say, 10 US cent a kiloWatt hour (3,600,000 Joules) that would be about 1.4 cents worth of energy. Further, using E = MC^2 you can calculate how much mass is convered into energy in the fusion process but if you don't even know the difference between units of power and energy this simple calculation is probably beyound you. (Sad comment on the state of education today isn't it?)
...puts a whole new meaning to the word soon that I never searched behind it...
Here's a pdf of an article from Infinite Energy Magazine detailing "Scientific Misconduct at MIT in 1989" dealing with the verification of Drs. Fleischmann and Pons claim to have have jointly produced cold fusion at the University of Utah on March 23, 1989, among other things such as skepticism about the viability of hot fusion.
I bet you're one of those people who claim that cars don't really burst abruptly in flames when driving off the cliff.
500 Trillion?
plz use proper scientific notation kthx.
Fusion power generation, as currently being developed is nothing like this. It's still a sensible investment for the next few centuries and as a step to better things, but it's not the panacea you suggest and you harm the credibility of science and technology by claiming it is.
Likely 21st century fusion power plants will burn tritium and deuterium. While both are isotopes of hydrogen and deuterium is acceptably common in the universe (1 in 10000 or so atoms if I recall correctly) we are not burning hydrogen. Tritium is radioactive with a 12 year half-life, so is basically not found in the universe except where it is being formed (in stars mostly). To make commercial quantities of it, you irradiate lithium 6 with neutrons producing helium and tritium. Lithium is reasonably common on Earth, but not super-abundant. The costs of extracting and purifying lithium, and in particular lithium 6 are not negligible, although we are unlikely to run out for a while.
So, effective fuel is lithium and deuterium. Both are reasonably plentiful, but neither is cost-free.
Now the tricky bit. The deuterium-tritium reaction produces a helium nucleus (alpha-particle) which is no problem and a neutron. We need a decent proportion of those neutrons to breed more tritium, but inevitably, some of them will end up hitting things other than the lithium target. When they do, they tend to make what they hit radioactive. Thus, once your reactor has been running for a few years, all of the inner structure, the lithium tanks and so on, are medium-level radioactive waste. The neutron irradiation also weakens these structures, so they need periodic replacement. Gigawatt for Gigawatt, it's a lot less radioactive waste than a fission reactor produces (and no plutonium to manage), but its not nothing, and the cost of the equipment and expertise to manage this periodic replacement with acceptable staff safety and so on is also not nothing.
Water, by the way, is not a byproduct of fusion reactors.
The final issue is safety. Here the big win is that there are no realistic disaster scenarios on the scale of a fission reactor melt-down or someone using reactor-produced plutonium to make a fission bomb. There are all the hazards common to fossil fuels and fission associated simply with running a large industrial plant -- things falling on people, leaking chemicals, etc. A tritium leak is still a real hazard, and a molten lithium leak or fire would be pretty unpleasant, and the medium-level waster would need to be managed, but it is a lot better than fission.
So, not a panacea, but a likely move forward, and I don't think we do any good by describing it as a panacea and rasing false expectations.
Break even and ignition are two separate things. Break even means that the total fusion energy produced exceeds the energy put into heating the ingredients. I think JET achieved break even in a tokamak, and it's even easier in laser fusion.
Ignition means that the energy being produced by fusion and re-absorbed in the plasma is keeping it hot enough to keep on fusing with no external energy inputs until some other factor (like running out of fuel or the plasma blowing itself apart) intervenes. This has only been acheived in bombs.
As an analogy consider trying to light a recalcitrant campfire. Break even is when the total energy produced by your buring wood before it sputters out exceeds the energy put in by the match. Ignition is when it keeps burning on its own.
Can they produce energy at an economically viable price. Every tokamak design on paper cant, even if it worked.
Just because something hasn't been done does not make it impossible. Postulating thus is bad scientific reasoning.
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
Well, given that the moon's light source is the sun, yes, looking at the moon is looking at fusion power.
..the cost of the hole could be amortized over several tests
What hole? All you need to do is drill a shaft. Then you place a bomb in the shaft and detonate it. Now you have a nice big hole!
no b/c you already have 192 lasers to shoot them with.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Jesus Christ for the billions we've spent on hot fusion research which has been "just 10-15 years away" for FIFTY YEARS, we could have paved everyone's roof with PV and weaned ourselves off of foreign petroleum by now!!!
Hot fusion research is responsible for 9/11!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Flying cars? Flying cars be damned; all I want is my pony!
Real Soon Now
How soon till I can hop into my 75 ton Mad Cat 'Mech and commute to work - while unleashing 40 LRM 20s to clear traffic? 1000+ years isn't soon enough.
Sig Applied For
Here's the Google cache of the article.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Get as many people together as you can, with laser pointers and a hydrogen filled balloon.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
4. PROFIT!!!
I'm placing my bets on this guy doing it first or some other amateur tinkerer. I hate to mention the billions of dollars wasted on tokamak "make it bigger and it will work" technology that completely does a reverse 180 from Farnsworth's discovery of potential wells where smaller is better (most people can't vacuum out the inert neutrons quick enough). I'd like to mention that nobody has yet met the fusor challenge, amateur or professional. Produce enough excess energy to light a 60watt lightbulb. I believe there's a million or two dollars out there as a reward if I'm not mistaken.
'nuff said.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
...is an instantaneous measure. 500 trillion Watt-*seconds* would be a whole lotta energy, but the actual pulses are quite a bit shorter than a second. The amount of energy used to ignite the fuel isn't exactly negligible, but stating instantaneous power makes it seem much larger than it is. That 500,000,000,000,000 is just there to wow people who are impressed by moderately large numbers.
That was inspired. Inspiring.
Well...jeez. I wish the tides turn in our lifetimes so that people start thinking this way.
but i have no wish to strip mine 1/2 the planet to cover the other half with solar cells. Ther are horrendously damaging to the enviornment to make, and DAMN inefficent, i think 23% of the suns energy gets converted to power, and thats at noon in death valley on a clear day. To get enough to supply our power needs youd have to pretty much cover most of the continent in them. ANd the byproducts of the manufacture would probably poiso nwhats left. DOnt gget me wrong, they have their uses, but they arent the answer. Unless we build them in pace and beam the power down, then il lstart working with you.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I remember watching a documentary that stated that it only takes 1.21 gigawatts to time travel. They need to get with the times and get a Mr. Fusion.
I'm not convinced that fusion will ever be the power source of choice for earth-based uses...but space colonies are a different matter. Once you get out beyond Jupiter's orbit, you aren't going to get very far on solar mirrors, even in space.
So, unless we can come up with a practical anti-matter engine, or tap the zero-point energy (quite unlikely) fusion seems the power source of choice for MacroLife. I'm not convinced that a Bussard ram jet would work, but one might be able to capture hydrogen at a slower rate, and burn it in a reactor. If not, perhaps one could capture it en-route from wandering planetoids out beyond the Oort cloud (though relative speeds are likely to make this be problematic).
In the long term, fusion research looks like a good thing. I'm not expecting much short term payoff, but then we aren't investing much. We're certainly making investments I consider less desireable.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I read that first in a science magazine from 1949. We heard it every few years since then. I bet there will be no usable fusion technology in 2050. These people just want more money. Not that I am against giving it to them to do some weird reasearch and build strange looking apparatus ...
Press release from 2014,"... a new break through in multi-fermionic bohemian fusion technology will enable scientists to create a self prepetuating fusion reaction in only ten years commercial." I'll beleive it when I see it. Have you ever noticed that fusion is always just ten years down the road?
I read the headline as "They'll focus 192 amplified lawyers on a pellet of frozen hydrogen." Now THAT would cause intense heat.
of suggesting NASA research using a giant reflecting lens to fry ants from the ISS. They'd be "heavy" deuterium ants of course. But they'd be about pinhead size.
Hmmm. I guess it'd be hard to orbit the giant sidewalk substrate, though...
(perhaps I'm due for an "insensitive clod" rebuttal?)
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Outpost was one of those games that 95% hated, and 5% lost a significant part of their life to.
;-) Morale was a big factor throughout the game.
It was described as "Sim City in space". You built a colony on another planet from the ground up, starting with the loadout of your spacecraft, selection of destination star system and planet, deployment of your selected satellites and probes, and choice a landing site.
Then the game actually got started, in much the same style as Sim City (though turn-based), but with a strong orientation toward hard science. Typically, it turned into a race to research and develop full nanotechnology before the available material resources dried up.
At that point the game became easy, as your resource limitations pretty much vanished. Then the objectives switched to terraforming, redeveloping a space program, and building 50 factories turning out woopie cushions and 8-track tapes.
Great game for its time.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
Nuclear fussion? Great.
Can you wake me up when it gets here.
Zzzzzz..
My father is a Nuclear Engineer. He had this to say about the article:
There are two major approaches to fusion: Inertial Confinement and Magnetic Confinement. The facility at Livermore discussed in this article is part of the inertial confinement effort. I visited this facility quite a few years ago when they were building the NOVA facility which was mentioned in the article. The basic idea is to compress and heat a target pellet and hope that it stays together long enough to fuse before blowing apart - hence the "inertia" in its name. My personal opinion is that this method has less chance of being used for commercial electricity production than magnetic confinement fusion concepts. I think that this method has a pretty good chance to form the basis of some fantastic weapon for attacking threats coming from space. Once the tecnical hurdles are crossed, fusion will still face a huge economic problem. The facilities, either magnetic or inertial, have huge construction costs. I do believe that we will persevere and cross all of these hurdles. One driving force is happening now. The price of gas is going up. When other forms of energy get prohibitively expensive, the governments of the world will increase their support for fusion research and the problems will be solved. Fusion has considerable advantages of limitless cheap fuel, very low and easily managed radioactive waste products, very safe facilities, and no chance of proliferation of weapons-grade material. It will be great when we are able to achieve it, but I'm not expecting that to happen very soon. I once bet a colleague that we would see a commercial fusion power plant before I retired. I will concede that I have lost that bet. I hope that we will see it before my children are all retired but I'm not very confident even of that.
Don't put your desk in front of the resulting beam to "see better". Mr, I'm such a cool scientist with my sports car. Otherwise you might see yourself transported to a place where they have poisonous leeches (stomp them with your foot) or big lion-type dogs (trick them with a vine).
:P
Ok, that game had an accelerator, but it's still the same science voodoo.
The laser method of fusion was also depicted in the comic "The two faces of tomorrow" by James P. Hogan, drawn by yukinobu hoshino and published by Dark Horse (maybe the book as well). The comic was more about battling an AI in space but the fusion was explained well.
I thought to myself, bah, fusion is done with a magnetic containment field, not lasers, but now that I think about it, a short pulse to compress hydrogen is probably less problematic than herding plasma particles with a containment field.
My god, what a jumpy post, but I said what I wanted to say in 1 post, and that's what counts
In that much time maybe lasers twice as powerful as their set of 192 all put together will be available. If it's going to take that long maybe they should try something more practical...
About 23 years too late. The Berkeley Tokomak achieved break-even, as published in "Fusion" Magazine, back in 1981. One of the people involved was Dr. Dr. John Coonrod, who was also involved in building the first whole-body CAT scanner.
-- Terry
The Princeton Plasma Physics Lab has been working on nuclear fusion for i believe 50 something years. They accomplished it a while ago. check it out here
10 years to recoup followed by another 10 years of service - that's a 3.5% per annum return which sounds quite reasonable for what is a pretty secure investment. The DOE has an example on their site which has a 7 year payback time which makes it a 5% per annum rate of return (over 20 years.) These calculations are not taking into account inflation though, but that would only improve the return.
Perhaps an interview with Gordon Freeman should be setup?
Actually the hydrogen bomb is a three-stage fission-fusion-fission device. First the core (usually plutonium) fissions, the energy output causes the hydrogen fusion reaction, and that intense energy causes a much higher yield fusion of the uranium shell which encases the fusion reactor. You were so close, yet oh so far away.