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."
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.
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
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
it doesn't work like that.
the money hasn't just been going into a big hole with a sign saying "Fusion Power". it's been employing people and adding to our understanding.
This is what happens after the thinking. ... and then ... they go and test it.
See, the smart people think out a plan
From where I'm sitting, sustainable fusion should suffer from the inverse of the law of diminishing returns - the gains could be frickin' tremendous, so the effort should be pretty high.
Besides, making this big ungainly beast is an important step towards getting a Mr. Fusion power supply for a DeLorean, a critical part of our future economy.
I think I need a new sig here.
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.
Well, the US government probably funds this particular form of fusion research as much to improve their H-bomb designs under the test ban as to find a new energy source. Building a practical reactor isn't necessarily the main goal.
Todays world (well, the 'civilized' part of it) suffers from the instant-satisfaction syndrome. Everything has to happen now, now, now.
Things can take more than a decade, an election-term, a year, a month or a year. And that doesn't make them boring.
bash$
Nothing is wrong with this statement. You are probably referring to the Law of Conservation of Energy, which states, more or less, that energy cannot be created or destroyed. The confusion with nuclear reactions, fission and fusion, is that the reaction liberates energy stored in the nuclei of the reactants. No energy is being created, but more energy (hopefully) is harnessed than was used to start the reaction.
Think of a spark plug in a piston engine. It releases a fairly small amout of energy to start a reaction that releases a larger amount of energy stored in the fuel/air mixture.
Fusion will be a Good Thing once the bugs are ironed out.
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.
Real soon was always within the decade, that's no time at all, you go from being 35 to 45 in 10 years (or from 0-10.) It might seem long to you because you're used to some new processor coming out real soon as in a few months, but 10 years is a short time.
I think the irony of this situation is that we're already so far past the MAD model of weaponry (i.e. that there are already so many super weapons...) that whether or not a new technology provides a new superweapon is largely moot.
Sure, we may develop some fantastic death-star beam we can fire with pin point accuracy from space, but what does it matter if the enemy can simply still smuggle dirty bombs or plagues into our cities?
This is no more going to lead to a new superweapon [in and of itself] than any other increase in efficiency in power generation: we already have nuclear fusion bombs.
"Stumble before you crawl"
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.
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
Except that they really exist, and you can buy them now. Perhaps you meant cheap fuel cells?
This isn't a savings bond where you pay in and get your money out at the end. This is like a life insurance policy for when the cheap oil runs out. The payoff is survival of human civilization as we know it. Google for "peak oil" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
So when was the break even point that they recover all the money that has been spent developing it?
Think of it as a long-term investment for the human race, that over the course of human history will pay itself off millions of times over. Clean energy (only byproducts = water & heat, no radioactive byproducts) from the most abundant source in the universe (hydrogen) with significantly less risk than fission power (or arguably even fossil fuels). As far as investments go, it's a no-brainer, even if your great-grandchildren are the first to reap its rewards.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Who cares? I don't.
We need cheap, clean power. Fission is cheap and clean if done well, but with past waste disposal practices waiting to bite us on our collective bums in the future and certain incidents like that one in the Ukraine 18 years ago in the public memory, I don't think we can afford to risk it. Oil and coal are dirty and running out. Solar, wind, tidal? Useful adjuncts to conventional generation techniques, but blighted by NIMBY and power storage issues.
Everything that has been spent on fusion research could be multiplied tenfold, a hundredfold, and the payoff for humanity would still be worthwhile.
A hundred years from now, I want a fresh set of environmental and social problems. I want our biggest concerns to be the marginal increase in salinity in some ocean currents from desalination plants and some wacky local weather issues due to waste heat from the fusion plants. I want population growth to be a non-issue because of better education of formerly developing and subsistence economies and cultures. I don't even care if my great-great-grandchildren speak Hindi or Arabic or Mandarin so long as the improvement between my life and theirs (materially and in freedoms) is comparable to the improvement between the Middle Ages and now - is it really an issue that I don't speak Middle English, Old Norse, Latin? Or that most of the world doesn't either?I want it to be a world in which pertoleum is seen as too valuable to burn, and as a valuable raw material for manufacturing. I want a world in which it is so cheap to transport and recycle our waste that is easier to "mine" our garbage than process new raw materials.
The thing is, power that is too cheap to meter (at least in personal-use quantities) is going to shake up things considerably. In the West we have all sorts of neat manufactured goods because power is cheap compared with a century ago. Imagine conveying those benefits to Africa, India, China, Iraq without the environmental downside. Imagine a world in which manufactured goods and food are so easy to produce that it doesn't matter that a significant percentage of the population don't make or grow things. Many Western economies are heading towards being services-based rather than manufacturing-based, but we can only continue to do this at the expense of the developing world - unless we can give everybody the same opportunities. We can turn the advent of fusion power into a golden age. Our descendents can wonder at a world in which it made more sense to build something in Beijing than Boston because the people in Beijing were paid less and lived under worse conditions than those in Boston. Our great-great-great-great-grandchildren can scratch their heads in wonder at the fact that people used to get sick and die because they could not afford to heat their homes in winter. They can stare in history books in disbelief, not comprehending what it would be like to live in a world before Universal Service Obligations extended beyond basic telecommunications to the energy necessary to sustain and enjoy life.
So, is this some left-wing Utopia? Maybe. But there's no reason it couldn't be shared by all - except that those currently holding the purse-strings will feel threatened - it's only natural that present energy suppliers may feel this way, although the more astute ones will already be diversifying and looking at possible futures. New industries will spring up that we can't even imagine now. Jobs will be displaced - but will we really need a coal miner then any more than we need cloth fullers now? Half the jobs our great-great-great-great-Grandchildren will be doing probably haven't even been invented yet.
So, when will the great payoff from fusion occur? With the first child's life that it saves. With the better husbanding of the scarce resources of this world, and with access to those of the rest of the solar system (Str
But they dont' keep failing. They achieve modest goals and obtain new information that we didn't have before. That new information often leads to new lines of thinking or design changes and so on and so forth.
It's the way science is done. If we can spend this kind of money entertaining ourselves, and making our children into big round fat blobs (from too much fast food), surely this is worth the money too.
Hmmmm, I wonder how many hundreds of years humans have attempted to make flying machines and failed, guess we should have stopped a long time ago. I do beleive your incorrect about these plans not showing any fruit, unfortunatly you do not understand what we have learned.
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
And a good thing. China and India appear to be getting their acts together so that their economies can develop. Industrialized economies need a LOT of energy. If they're ever going to approach the level of per-capita energy consumption of the US, or even Japan, we need some good new sources.
The point being that the theoretical work is pretty much all good
This is what I heard in my introduction course of plasma physics almost ten years ago. The argument being that big plasmas (like in a star) are pretty well understood, so a bigger machine should be easier to control. The size of the plasma has to be larger then a certain number, in order to make the magnetoyhydronamics solvable.
and at this point they need to build a big test reactor to get some practical work done.
Yes, famous last words of the guy who arranges the funding. Experimental physics doesn't work like this without a war to drive the effort. The nuclear bomb and the lunar landing were achieved in such a short time because the got a wartime budget. Under normal conditions, the "getting some practical work done" means rebuilding the device numerous times, it means a few generations of PhD students graduating, etc.
Some practical problems still being considered were things such as location and financing.
Yes, and then they will be able to start building the machine, but it will not work at the push of a button. It will take many many years before this thing will actualy works. The theories will probably be proved wrong and lots of thing will be learned along the way, which is all a good thing, because that means science is making progress. That's the way experimental physics works.
But this does not mean breakeven fusion will be achieved by just building a machine according to the theorie.
I believe that's frikkin' shark.
Oh, and before you think to answer ... zip it!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
... 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?"
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.
Hmmm, or you could just beam the energy back down to the surface of the planet and leave fusion to the sun.
-josh
Ain't the universe big enough for all of us?
Why did GEAR crush RDP?
Every two months this topic comes up and every two months I point out the fairly obvious point of Hydrogen economies, and every two months I get more karma for it.
The point of the Hydrogen Economy is not to free you from fossil fuels. Of course Fossil Fuels are the easiest way to get hydrogen.
The point of the Hydrogen Economy is to provide a generic and highly portable form of energy storage which can be generated from any other energy source. Essentialy, H2 allows you to run your car on fossil fuels, nuclear power, fusion power, or a beowulf cluster of hampsters in wheels.
H2 won't do squat today, the idea is to have the infrastrucure in place so that when/if a more useful source of power comes into play we can convert easily and rapidly.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
"Fission is cheap and clean if done well, but with past waste disposal practices waiting to bite us on our collective bums in the future and certain incidents like that one in the Ukraine 18 years ago in the public memory, I don't think we can afford to risk it. "
Fission is a good source of power today. The waste disposal, at least for irradiated fuel, is not such a bad things. When 15 years of 2000MW production fits into a large swimming pool, I really don't think that is so bad. Try cramming all the CO2 and other byproducts of coal, oil, or natural gas into such a small space. At least with nuclear, the waste doesn't float around in the atmosphere.
As for Chernobyl, that was Soviet tech, while running an experiment gone wrong. They did not have a containment dome, and the reactor used a different moderator to control the reactivity.
Things have come a long way since Chernobyl and TMI, and what is required in the US should not be compared to something different in other nations.