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National Ignition Facility Fires 192-Beam Pulse
An anonymous reader writes "The construction and test firing of the National Ignition Facility have been completed. NIF was designed as the first facility ever to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion and, in particular, to reach the point of ignition in which more energy is generated from the reaction than went into creating it. While the recent 192-beam pulse only produced 80 kilojoules worth of energy, all signs point to NIF being able to reach an order of magnitude higher (PDF) than that in the coming year."
I think we've moved past the old Cold War era modus operandi: nuclear weapons are no longer necessary nor considered as an indicator of power. Military spending in that area has decreased drastically since the Reagan era. Essentially, we've reached a point where "kick[ing] each others ass as best as we can afford" is no longer a profitable venture and is, in fact, a great way to lose the economic support and favor of the international community. What we need is some CERN-scale collaboration on this so that we can possibly help to alleviate the energy strains on the global populace.
what I keep hearing from people in the field of nuclear physics is that Fusion will be realized by the mid 2020s.
Commercial fusion reactors have been 20 years away for at least the last 40 years. It's good to hear that we're now only 15 years away.
Have you read my blog lately?
> When we have energy in surplus, at the (general) expense of no one, the world
> may move much more easily to peaceful respect and cooperation.
ROFLMAO! Energy abundance will more likely just shift the resource wars to different places. We won't need oil any more but we will need all sorts of rare minerals just like we do now, only with limitless energy we will develop all sorts of new exotic manufacturing processes. But telling the House of Saud to go pound sand will still be priceless.
Democrat delenda est
What we need is some CERN-scale collaboration on this so that we can possibly help to alleviate the energy strains on the global populace.
That's great and all, but not very helpful when you have religious radical factions tearing nations apart from the inside out.
What governs humanity's motivation often goes beyond just the quest of plentiful resources.
Life is not for the lazy.
You're a fucking idiot. The time from the earliest nuclear experiments and commercial nuclear plants was almost a century. The time between finding out that black liquid from the ground burns and oil refineries was a thousand years. The time between fire and steam power was longer than all of recorded history.
The time it takes an idiot to turn a random brain firing into an unthought out Slashdot posting, however, is obviously much, much shorter.
But a nuclear fission plant had an accident 20 years ago.. Sorry but we'll just have to wait for fusion and use coal in the meantime.
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I guess you don't read the literature. Tokamak "advanced modes" are practically a breakthrough and thats from the actual data not simulations. ITER will produce sustained fusion burn. DEMO will go one step further. At the cost of 20 billion for 5+ year program its not bad since a plain old fashion nuclear reactor can cost upwards of 10 billion. In fact if they got the budget of say federal roading (about 40Billion per year) it would have been done by now.
I find it amusing that you assume that we are still in the 60s with plasma and fusion technology without reading up on any of it first.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!