Yet Another Method Of Achieving Nuclear Fusion

deglr6328 writes "Recent research has seen the use of the pyroelectric effect, the compression of bubbles using ultrasound and gas jet irradiation for producing nuclear fusion on small tabletop-scales. Yet another method can now be added to the list which uses ultraintense laser irradiation striking a borated plastic target to heat a plasma to billion kelvin temperatures and achieves aneutronic (clean) proton-boron fusion. (The PRL paper can be read online.) Though, like the other recently discovered exotic methods of attaining fusion, it does not look like a method which can be scaled up to ignition or even anywhere near break even, it still may have important use in the laboratory for the examination of such incredibly high temperature plasmas."

Comments

Re:Tabletop fusion isn't going to happen

[polysylabic psudonym]

Simple physics. You can't get more energy out of a reaction than it takes to reverse it. The same reason why hydrogen cars that run on electrolyzed water don't work.

Hey? Cars that run on electrolysed water - hydrogen cars - are all about moving the energy usage, instead of burning fossil fuels in the middle of cities on a road in an inefficient motor, use hydrogen cracked from water by a very efficient fossil fuel/whatever generator somewhere away from the city.

Of course cars running on electrolysed water, that make it from the energy they produce by burning the hydrogen from said water won't work, at least until we manage to get a perpetual motion machine working.

But does any of that mean fusion is bound to fail? A lot of people who are a whole lot more knowledgable than I am don't think so.