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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."
You are aware that fusion ignition is typically studied in fission reactors right? You need a certain high temperature to achieve ignition and nuclear reactors are about the only place where it can be readily achieved. Other than in H-bombs.. ya know they're fission too right?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm sorry. I thought I was allowed to express opinions which aren't in lock-step with overly excited, premature knee-jerk reactions to any fusion-related story that happens to get linked here. Clearly I'm at fault.
Oh wait, this thing actually hasn't achieved a self-sustainable fusion reaction yet?! Sounds to me like somebody's getting all uppity over someone not inserting a fusion-will-fix-it plug into a comment which was strictly about freshwater reserves.
I hope fusion eventually gets to where we'd like it to be, (and as quickly as possible), but I think I should point out that commercial fusion power utilities don't automatically follow just because they've gotten a fusion reaction to reach ignition (which they haven't even accomplished yet). You also have to prove that the means for commercially producing deuterium & tritium fuel are equally self-sustaining as well. Everything from fuel creation, to storage, to waste management needs to be factored into that. It's comforting to assume that something will work, but you still have to actually demonstrate it works before claiming it's a definite solution.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. No idiot should be making plans based on expected future technologies which don't exist yet. A good administrator can tell you that you make your plans based on what you know you'll actually have to work with (otherwise it's called being incompetent). This thing hasn't reached its goal-line any more than the LHC has discovered the Higgs Boson (yet). And even if it had ignition tomorrow, you have to establish a hydrogen-infrastructure & commercially sustainable deuterium/tritium fuel supplies. And it's simply not enough to have fusion "whenever". There is a deadline and the clock is ticking. There's no guarantees that fusion power plants will be ready before we have painful shortages on fossil fuels. Anyone building a water desalinization plant due to open in the year 2021 based on the assumption that it'll be run by a fusion power plant is a moron. Forty years ago many thought we'd have flying cars by now, but we don't. Just because we want it doesn't mean we will have it. Just because we need it doesn't mean we will have it. This entitlement complex involving technology which doesn't even exist yet needs to end.
Dwell on that my friend.
(I may sound like I'm being overly harsh (in tone), but please don't take it personally. I'm mostly just fed up this "technological entitlement complex", as I see it invoked everywhere, especially by politicians and it is flat out dangerous).