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."

Comments

Still problems?

[TFer_Atvar]

I didn't see anything in the article about Helium removal. I thought that was the biggest remaining problem with nuclear fusion -- removing the Helium-4 "waste" from the reaction before the Helium "poisons" it and shuts down. Someone please correct me. I'm sure that's not entirely accurate.

Re:Still problems?

[daknapp]

That's the problem with magnetically confined fusion. NIF will be inertially confined.

Re:Still problems?

[DBHolder]

Inertial confinement fusion does not rely on having a stable plasma for any extended period of time as magnetic confinement does. Instead, think of it as a series of small bombs. Each is fired into the center of the chamber and ignited with the laser system. In a commercial plant this would have occur 5-8 times a second. Meaning you have what is essentially machine gun speed firing of DT pellets into the center of the chamber with equavalent speed lasers. Thus one of the large problems remaining in ICF fusion is the development of the laser components that can fire in this way for extended periods of time. Additionally, first wall materials are needed that can handle the neutron and ion flux that is generated in extended operation. The major US project that was actually addressing the laser and material tech side was HAPL, which got zeroed out on the FY 2009 budget.

Re:Still problems?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't see anything in the article about Helium removal. I thought that was the biggest remaining problem with nuclear fusion -- removing the Helium-4 "waste" from the reaction before the Helium "poisons" it and shuts down. Someone please correct me. I'm sure that's not entirely accurate.

They've already started on an adjoining balloon factory. If they can break even on the energy production the Helium balloon animals sales will drive them into profits.

Re:Still problems?

[theapeman]

I would expect the charge to mass ratio to be more important than the mass alone. The He nucleus has twice the charge as an H nucleus. So He4 has the same charge/mass ratio as H2, and a greater ratio than H3.

Re:Still problems?

[Ihlosi]

Are you telling me we have the technology to turn Helium into Iron?

Yes. What do you think particle colliders are for? (Of course, turning helium into iron is a fairly boring affair, and particle colliders are expensive, so they're mostly used for interesting stuff, like producing transuranic elements, exotic isotopes or subatomic particles).

However, if you were asking if we have the technology to turn Helium into Iron _and_ harvest some of the energy released the the process ... then no, we can't do that right now.

Re:Still problems?

[JRIsidore]

I'd say building a laser capable of firing with this frequency is the smaller problem. They're already designing the next generation of lasers which can do this (see HiPER). IMHO the targets pose a way larger problem. Right now they are all hand-crafted and hand-picked. Target laboratories produce maybe a few dozen per day but a full blown reactor needs about half a million per day! And since they are cryogenic you have too cool them until the very last moment before the laser hits them. The latest system to do this takes ~ 3 hours to bring a single target in place. Even if you fire them with a some kind of gun into the target chamber you have to ensure they are aligned on a micron scale in a chamber with about 10m diameter (NIF).

So far this was of big deal as laser experiments have always been single shot experiments. Current big lasers can shoot only once in a few hours, plenty of time to prepare each shot and align the target. High reprate lasers (with high energy) only start to emerge and people begin to focus on high reprate target production.

indeed

[Trepidity]

Because energy is a useless fiat commodity, while you can eat cold, hard dollar bills.

Re:indeed

[digitalunity]

You're right, we should just give up now. Obviously the fact that it's not ready for commercialization now is indicative of it's future potential as a technology.

Excuse me while I go reload my coal plant.

Re:indeed

[StaticEngine]

Wait, you have a plant that grows coal? Are you selling seed packets?

Re:indeed

[QuantumG]

Nope. It's pure science. They have no other goals except "study the ignition of nuclear fusion". It's a bit hard to do that inside a nuclear reactor (or bomb) and thus the big freakin' lasers.

Re:indeed

[Daniel Dvorkin]

because it's not going to be energy production, fusion has been 10 years off for the last 40 years.

Which clearly means it is never, ever going to work and we should just give up, right?

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, you have a plant that grows coal? Are you selling seed packets?

I just planted some. And according to the instructions, all I have to do is sit back and wait sixty million years, then I'll RICH, BABY!!!

Re:indeed

[quantaman]

Wait, you have a plant that grows coal? Are you selling seed packets?

You should be forewarned that it takes a little while after planting the seeds before you can start digging out coal.

Re:indeed

[i.of.the.storm]

Hi, my dad is an engineer who works on NIF, and I've talked with some of his coworkers as well, and they said that the profitability of NIF is sort of what they say to market it to politicians and the public. The truth of the matter is that the main purpose is for pure research, which is something the US is sorely lacking these days. Then the guy went off on a rant about how no one does research anymore, but yeah. The research they do there might lead to something that becomes profitable, but NIF itself is mainly for pure research.

Re:indeed

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:indeed

[Tubal-Cain]

I buried my deceased pet goldfish 10 years ago. Just 59,999,990 to go...

Re:indeed

[idiot900]

According to your post, the time between initial observation and commercialization of major energy producing methods has been decreasing by orders of magnitude as history marches on. Maybe it's not so stupid to ask about commercialization of the technology within a single generation.

Re:indeed

[mbkennel]

Nuclear experiments in 1855? Surely you joke. Nobody in 1855 knew what a nucleus was, or was even convinced about the atomic theory of matter.

In fact, nuclear fission was discovered in 1938, and large scale full production systems were operating by 1945 (Hanford), with commercial utility turn-on by mid 1950's.

Nuclear fusion was discovered in early 30's, I think, before fission.

The reason why nuclear fission went from discovery to exploitation immediately, and fusion is still really hard, is due to the laws of physics.

Specifically:

1) neutrons have charge zero, but nuclei don't.
2) strong force is very short range

These will never change.

And yes, the original poster is right, NIF isn't helping much for energy production.

Re:indeed

[ppanon]

You are aware that fusion ignition is typically studied in fission reactors right?

Do tell? Citation needed. Cause last I remember, unless you're dealing with Muon-catalyzed fusion, the temperatures and pressures you need for bulk fusion are a few orders of magnitude higher than you want to get in a fission reactor if you want it to remain controlled.

You need a certain high temperature to achieve ignition and nuclear reactors are about the only place where it can be readily achieved.

I hope you're talking special research reactors using exotic neutron moderators and coolants because most moderators in commercial reactors (graphite/heavy water) just can't stand that much heat. I expect you get much higher temperatures in your average blast furnace. Otherwise you would have some big problems with containment of a very hot radioactive pile and there just seems to be less dangerous ways to study fusion. Sure you could get a blob of fissioning material hot enough to melt through your equipment and all the way to the mantle, but that's not generally considered a good environment for study. Let's not forget that magnetic-containment plasma fusion has been studied in the lab for a few decades now. Although I would expect that the initial experiments in fusion probably involved collisions between ions accelerated by cyclotrons or fusors. Seems a lot more controllable and accessible than super-hot fission piles.

Other than in H-bombs.. ya know they're fission too right

The H-Bomb trigger and compression jacket is certainly. That's how they get the compression and heat for the fusion ignition of the hydrogen isotopes, which produce additional neutrons that pump back into the fission reaction. The later stages in a multi-stage bomb could be tuned more for fusion energy release though, or at least so says the Wikipedia article. Because the H stands for Hydrogen and hydrogen can only fuse - it can't undergo fission (although tritium does decay) - there's gotta be some fusion in an H-Bomb.

Re:indeed

[GospelHead821]

That's exactly the case made by some futurists. The most prominent one of whom I am aware is Ray Kurzweil. He has some pretty compelling explanations illustrating exponential trends in just about every facet of the growth of intelligence and technological capacity. I'm probably exaggerating his position a little bit, but he might argue that dreaming of harnessing fusion power by the end of the century is so quaint; by then we'll be closer to harnessing all of the energy that the earth receives from the sun.

Re:indeed

[mrsurb]

No, the question is, do people WANT nasally-fitted Fusion Reactors?

Re:indeed

[Hurricane78]

Unfortunately, the oil that you will get out, will be useless for your coal plant.

Shoulda have buried some plants...

Energy Independence

[joocemann]

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.

I'm looking forward to renewable energy sources blazing the path to peace, but what I keep hearing from people in the field of nuclear physics is that Fusion will be realized by the mid 2020s.

If we can only hold off on the nuclear weapons until then, maybe we stand a chance to exist in a time when we spend our efforts of work (money/tax-dollars) to help each other instead of kick each others ass as best as we can afford.

Re:Energy Independence

[icepick72]

Hey, I saw that Star Trek episode too.

Re:Energy Independence

[fishinatree]

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.

Re:Energy Independence

[digitalunity]

There will always be limited resources, and those who would deny those resources to others as leverage against their fellow man. It's about power, not scarcity of resources.

Re:Energy Independence

[14erCleaner]

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.

Re:Energy Independence

[Hao Wu]

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.

Ultra-cheap energy will create devices that require materials and technology which yield other shortages. Wars will continue over those items.

War itself will be cheaper to wage due to the low energy costs, removing a major incentive not to wage it.

Re:Energy Independence

[jmorris42]

> 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.

Re:Energy Independence

[Nethead]

The next big fight will be over fresh water.

Re:Energy Independence

[quantaman]

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.

Ultra-cheap energy will create devices that require materials and technology which yield other shortages. Wars will continue over those items.

War itself will be cheaper to wage due to the low energy costs, removing a major incentive not to wage it.

The first world would seem to serve as a counter-example.

True as our standards improve we'll squabble over more trivial things.

But I don't think it's as hopeless as you make it sound, there's a reason why the world is as peaceful as its ever been and I think it's related to the fact our material wealth is also as great as its ever been.

Re:Energy Independence

[davolfman]

If you've got shedloads of energy, distillation is a pretty cheap and simple technology.

Re:Energy Independence

[DigiShaman]

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.

Re:Energy Independence

[sycodon]

Well..Duh!

http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/01/michigan-muslims-attack-free-speech.html

Re:Energy Independence

[WCLPeter]

Hey, I saw that Star Trek episode too.

Like any good Slashdot geek I can appreciate a little Star Trek humor. But in all seriousness, the original poster is only half right. Nearly infinite clean energy is practically useless without the replication technology that takes advantage of it.

If our ultimate goal as a species is world peace, like the original poster was talking about, then we are going to have to eliminate the planetary struggle and competition of scarce resources that marks our current existence. In order to do that we will need both technologies.

Re:Energy Independence

[kestasjk]

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.

Re:Energy Independence

[renoX]

[[ Ultra-cheap energy will create devices that require materials and technology which yield other shortages ]]

That's FAR from certain: ultra-cheap energy would allow to recycle materials better so external need for materials could be lessened too.

Beside which material are you talking about??

Re:Energy Independence

[MadnessASAP]

Also, don't expect energy to stay cheap. Fossil fuels are obviously finite.

Did you skip the Article AND Summary? Well let me remidn you, this discussion is about the implications of Fusion power. Dwell on that one of a while my freind.

Re:Energy Independence

[mauthbaux]

Momofuku Ando, the guy who invented ramen noodles thought something similar: "Peace will come to the world when the people have enough to eat."

The problem is, as you provide for peoples' needs, they start to bicker about pettier and pettier things. For instance, look at the violence that breaks out between fans of opposing sport teams.

Re:Energy Independence

[tenco]

but the amount of wars per year has decreased for many many years now.

Citation needed.

Re:Energy Independence

[TheTurtlesMoves]

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.

Re:Energy Independence

[JRIsidore]

The material is the waste AFTER reprocessing. You just breed a lot of nasty stuff you cannot use for anything.

Re:Energy Independence

[ConceptJunkie]

If you have effectively free and infinite energy, practically any other resource problem can be solved with today's technology.

Re:Energy Independence

[ChromaticDragon]

I imagine there are all sorts of resources where this view may hold true. But I'm not certain every resource problem can be solved this way - especially not within a desirable timeframe.

Furthermore, since we are in the realm of discussing science fiction, what about waste heat? There are authors (such as Peter Hamilton) who have envisioned that the widespread adoption of fusion and "free energy" sends global warming skyrocketing, not due to greenhouse gases but simply due to enormous amounts of waste heat.

Re:Energy Independence

[TheTurtlesMoves]

5min+ (more like 10 to 20min) of sustained fusion is not "milliseconds". Tokamak are pulse mode devices by nature of induced currents. 20min on a few min off sort of thing. Stellarators are not far behind Tokamaks and can do constant burn.

The long time line is primarily due to the budget and results needed from ITER so we can build DEMO properly. The neutron fluxes are rather crazy.

Re:Energy Independence

[swillden]

What governs humanity's motivation often goes beyond just the quest of plentiful resources.

No, it doesn't.

The radical religious factions tearing nations apart are a symptom of lack of resources. Not that there won't be fanatics, regardless, but without a large population of hungry, dissatisfied people with no opportunities and nothing to look forward to but a life of grinding poverty, the fanatics have very limited power.

Re:Energy Independence

[Aqualung812]

My main point is that yes, there are leaders that will always want more power. Every leader depends on a large following of people, though. Equip those people with what they need, and they'll be less likely to follow their leader.
Many of your examples are fueled by legions of people who want a slightly better life for themselves, even if it is in the afterlife. If you take care of their needs, they'll be less likely to go along with it. They'll have more to lose by being part of a destructive mission, rather than feeling like there is nothing to lose and a chance for personal gain.

Re:Energy Independence

[Ihlosi]

There are authors (such as Peter Hamilton) who have envisioned that the widespread adoption of fusion and "free energy" sends global warming skyrocketing, not due to greenhouse gases but simply due to enormous amounts of waste heat.

Err .. I don't think that waste heat will be a global problem. Compared to the heat input earth receives from the sun, a couple of hundred fusion reactors will be lost in the measurement noise.

However, waste heat will very much be a local problem. You can only heat up rivers and spots on the shoreline that much before problems occur, and you _will_ need a water-based heat sink for those reactors.

Re:Energy Independence

[Bearhouse]

Yeah, and a global outbreak of selflessness and common sense.

I fear we'll get infinite clean energy waaaay before we get that.

I'm a shark, you insensitive clod!

[macraig]

Enough of all this shark-jumping! Sharks have feelings, too!

Actually I'm a loan shark, but we're all brothers.

hmmm

[Idiomatick]

Hasn't the worlds largest laser always been completed? Or at least since the first laser was created..

Still on track for 2011

[Armon]

I guess we are still on track for global annihilation by 2011/2012, between this bad boy, ITER, and the Large Hadron Collider, it is practically guaranteed!

Sorry, can't get worked up over it

[jmorris42]

We have been about thirty years away from having fusion power for the last forty or so years. Seems like they pick thirty years because it is far enough out that those making the predictions probably won't be around to be held to account.

And the NIF webpage says nothing about trying to actually achieve a stable fusion reaction, just general high energy research stuff with some carrots dangled out to keep the funding going. So we are still probably thirty years away from fusion plants.

If we were really serious about energy independence (or if ya still believe in AGW) we would be building fission plants as fast as we could pour concrete and dumping serious coin into R&D on fusion. The idea being fission is what we can do NOW but be sure we have something in the pipeline lest we, in a hundred years or so, find ourselves running out of Uranium and back in the same energy crisis and by then demand would be so great burning dinosaurs would be pissin' in the wind.

Re:Sorry, can't get worked up over it

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with you 100% wrt the importance of fission and why would should be building more, I feel obligated to point out to you that we already do have these better technologies of which you speak. Granted, they're still fission technologies, but they're the kinds of things that ensure we won't be hard up for uranium any time soon.

My favorite example is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Which is actually a broad envelope covering a number of reactor types. Some of which I've helped write simulation code for. (Dangle, you! Dangle I say!)

Anyway, they're very clever, in that they can take previously useless once-through fuel, fiddle with it a bit, and then run it through their cycles to burn fission up all the nasty transuranics into low-level relatively harmless junk and get some power out of them in the process. My favorite actually involves sticking thorium in there as well, on account of it can fission (it just doesn't do so as easily as U-235, so we never really jumped on it before) and its super abundant here on Earth.

Here, have another wiki, because Thorium is fun. Or something.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

Re:big a pdf

[MarkRose]

Your computer is infected with the Adobe virus. A format and reinstall is required to completely eliminate it.

Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[Sgs-Cruz]

Let's be clear here. The purpose of the NIF is not to achieve fusion for energy production purposes. They just sell it that way. Its main goal isn't even simulations of the interior of Jupiter, or whatever they're hyping up this week.

You just need to look at the operating agency to see what its goal is: the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). That is, the people who make and control the H-bombs. See, the U.S. doesn't detonate H-bombs anymore, and needs to figure out whether the old warheads are still reliable. Instead, giant simulations of H-bomb detonations are used: hence the 20-petaflop Sequoia being installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).

But these simulations are no good if the physics model being used isn't accurate. How do you get an equation of state for deuterium at a billion atmospheres of pressure and 10 million kelvin temperature? You do an experiment: NIF. (And also the Z-Machine at Sandia.)

I get annoyed that the DOE sells NIF as a fusion energy machine. It's not, and it was never meant to be, and when people realize that target implosion fusion is never going to put a watt onto the grid, they're going to get even more annoyed at broken promises from fusion. It's basically avoiding the hard marketing problem of H-bombs by selling the machine as energy research.

(disclaimer: I work in a magnetic fusion lab and while I'm not a pacifist, I don't generally like H-bombs and don't like that my field is associated with them)

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[doppe1]

Let's be clear here. The purpose of the NIF is not to achieve fusion for energy production purposes. They just sell it that way.

They are not trying to sell NIF as the fusion energy production. It is the first step on a long road in that direction.

They are selling LIFE as the fusion energy of the future, this will be built on techonology developed for NIF.

From the link

LIFE, an acronym for Laser Inertial Fusion-Fission Energy, is an advanced energy concept under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Based on physics and technology developed for the National Ignition Facility (NIF), LIFE has the potential to meet future worldwide energy needs in a safe, sustainable manner without carbon dioxide emissions.

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[Sgs-Cruz]

Well we (meaning humanity, not the United States) have achieved plasma discharges several hours long in the TRIAM-1M tokamak in Japan.

We have also achieved plasma conditions in pure deuterium plasmas in which, had the reactors been fueled with "live" fuel (50% deuterium, 50% tritium), the Q-value (energy out / energy in) would have been greater than one.

There have also been two experiments in which 50%D/50%T "live" fuel has been used. One is the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, England, near Oxford. It's still operating today, albeit on "inert" fuel (100% D). Even with 100%D, some amount of fusion still goes on, so it's not totally "inert", but it's far less than with 50%D/50%T. The other experiment was the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) in the United States at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL). That's now disassembled.

The problem is that we haven't done all of these things at the same time, yet. That's why we're building ITER

ITER, the big reactor being built in Cadarache, France, will achieve Q=10. It was supposed to achieve "ignition", in which self-heating of the plasma is enough to keep it hot, and you can turn off the external heating (corresponding to Q=infinity), but the ITER consortium had to cut the budget when the U.S. pulled out of the project in 1998. Of course, then the U.S. rejoined in 2003, but by then the plan was set on "ITER Lite". It's not supposed to be done construction until 2018, though, and there's a chance of further schedule slippage approaching 100%. It's going to run for 25 years.

If you go to slide #25 of this presentation by Chris Llewellyn-Smith, you can see that the current "fast-track" plan for a commercial fusion plant has the first plants operating in 2048. Of course, that presentation was in 2005, and the ITER schedule has slipped by about four years since then, so we can say that if we somehow manage to stick to the "fast-track" plan from now on (we won't), there could be operating fusion power plants in the 2050s.

Yes, it's a long-term plan. That doesn't mean it's not worth funding. There still is no other energy source that can compete with its theoretical benefit. The only ones that come close in ability to provide a large amount of energy are fission and solar, and they have the disadvantages, respectively, of long-lived actinide waste, and massive land use.

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[Sgs-Cruz]

Go to the NIF site. What are the first things you see?

NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY AND PHOTON SCIENCE: THE POWER OF LIGHT

Schwarzenegger touts NIF energy innovations

Creating a miniature star on Earth: that's the goal of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), the world's largest laser. When ignition experiments begin in 2010, NIF will focus the intense energy of 192 giant laser beams on a BB-sized target filled with hydrogen fuel â" fusing, or igniting, the hydrogen atoms' nuclei. This is the same fusion energy process that makes the stars shine and provides the life-giving energy of the sun.

Missions:

National Security

Energy for the Future.

You can't tell me that there isn't a very deliberate marketing plan being put into action here.

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[BlueParrot]

I did my BSc thesis on the laser plasma interaction in NIF and my impression was that while inertial confinement fusion is extremely unlikely to be practical as a power plant, it may be used as an exceptionally intense neutron source for various experiments. Spallation sources can generally achieve high neutron fluxes and neutron energies, but an inertial confinement fusion device would generate orders of magnitude higher neutron intensities still. Moreover the fusion neutrons are virtually mono energetic, and this is impossible to achieve with most present spallation designs without drastically reducing the number of available neutrons. Essentially the only way to do it is to use some criteria like time-of-flight or neutron diffraction to select for only neutrons of a given energy, thus wasting all other neutrons, and this is only practical at low energies. At higher energies you would likely need to exploit the kinematics of some form of knockout reaction, like Li(D,n)Be, and since the large yield requirement would likely cause you to ionize your target, such a scheme would have challenges similar to those faced by inertial confinement devices. It also seems to me that it would be tricky to generate such a powerful deuterium pulse, if it is at all possible.

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[Goldsmith]

Nice comments on this thread! I totally agree with you about the need in physics to separate basic and weapons research.

I used to work in fusion (DIII-D), but I don't believe the "40 years away" mark. My feeling is that the materials to build a commercial grade reactor are still too expensive and that there is some non-trivial materials work still to be done with the reactor walls and gathering energy. I realize this is what the ITER people tell the grant reviewers they're going to look at, but it has been my experience that plasma physicists are not really interested in materials research when it comes down to who gets to pay postdocs and grad students. In the end, the monolithic grant structuring in fusion will need to integrate or approximate the smaller scale, more distributed materials research community (lots of small, cheap experiments) for fusion to have a chance to work commercially in 40 years. I doubt the handful of experiments around now will be able solve the materials problems quickly. Oddly, this is not an opinion I got from studying materials physics, but from the plasma physicists I used to work with who thought ITER was trying to sell something it couldn't deliver prior to being changed into "ITER lite" and cutting back on the expectations.

NIF could do some materials research, and I'm sure they'll run a few test, but it's still the wrong kind of experiment. The money would have been better spent developing a tool which could be sold to ~50 research universities for materials testing for fusion.

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[polar red]

massive land use

yes, we have to build solar panels on the ground, not on roofs.

Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement

[nojayuk]

You (I presume you are American) already have one. It's called... ITER. The US whined and moaned over the possibility of ITER being built in France, delaying its start by a couple of years. Eventually the US was over-ruled by nearly all the other countries who actually wanted to get on with developing fusion as a possible power source. Cadarache in France was finally chosen as the site and the project is now up and running.

There are a number of other fusion research projects going on around the world, but ITER's job is to figure out how to build a magnetic-containment fusion reactor that will deliver electrical power into a grid, and it's the biggest and best-equipped (and best-funded) of the current fusion projects.

EDIT: I may have spoken too soon, as I'm not sure the US has actually agreed to contribute to funding ITER, at least in this budget cycle.

This is a really big deal, right?

[JTMoon]

I thought sustained nuclear fusion would be a really huge scientific breakthrough.
Can this replace all nuclear fission and coal power plants with a clean plentiful nuclear fusion?

Isn't this a change-life-as-we-know-it achievement?
Would a local expert comment on this?

close but not quite

[circletimessquare]

a society is as rich as its values. this is the reason the west is so powerful, not because it has nike sweatshops in indonesia. the usa, in 250 years, has eclipsed civilizations thousands of years older, because its foundational values from the enlightenment are simply superior ways of organizing society in productivity and happiness, and valuing progress and tolerance

however, in its need for energy, the west rewards places like saudi arabia. therefore, saudi arabia has no incentive to get better values, or evolve, and remains a stultified insanity exporting (wahabbi islam) country. when soccer mom fills up her SUV, she funds ultraconservative madrassas in pakistan and indonesia via saudi arabia that teach the west is the devil and should be destroyed

if oil never existed on the arabian penninsula, the insane ultraconservative religious ideas would remain the enclave of the few tribes who remained in the desert, and the cities would be full of young progressive thinking muslims, modern-looking and clamoring for change, and achieving it. simply because there would be no artificially propped up old guard preserving medieval values that simply don't work, and keeping their young from having a society they can envision themselves as better than the one they have

oil money, petrodollars, it keeps saudi arabia frozen in time, without any need or desire to adapt better values, and it allows it to export social values which are toxic to progress and prosperity. it exports these backwards values, and funds the evangelizing of ultraconservative wahabbi islam throughout the muslim world. so when we have fusion, and the value of oil drops to squat, only then will saudi arabia begin to modernize, because only then will it have to modernize for the first time since the penninsula was united in the early 20th century and oil was discovered

but right now, saudi arabia doesn't have to modernize its value system, because it is rewarded insane amounts of cash simply for sitting on a lot of oil. to the detriment of saudi society, the detriment of poor muslim societies that are recipients of the evangelizing of well-funded ultraconservative thinking, and the detriment of the west, which is vilified by the people it pays to give them oil to run their gas guzzling cars

in this way will fusion promote peace: by stop rewarding feeble, backwards societies and their unhuman values, simply because they sit on a lot of oil

Re:close but not quite

[sycodon]

When a 60 year old woman is sentenced to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation for having two unrelated men in her house and no one in the middle east really cares, then yes, our values are better than theirs.

When hundreds of thousands celebrate in the streets apon news of 3000 civilians killed in America, then yes, our values are better than theirs.

When men are allowed to beat their wives, restrict them to the house as a virtual slaves and concubines, then yes, our values are beter than theirs.

When men are allowed to kill their wives, sisters, or daughters becuase they "dishonored" the family and face little to no prosecution, then yes, our values are beter than theirs.

It has nothing to do with race. It is their society.

Re:big a pdf

[uvajed_ekil]

Did my computer screw it up or does the link really point to a 6MB 1p pdf? Why not just use a bmp?

6MB? That's nothing. A few days ago I clicked on a link to some information about a local city park. Five minutes later, after being distracted, I thought the link was broken or I didn't click it or something. Nope: the 28MB pdf was still downloading! But at least I got the entry info for the 5k run... for last year! But I guess that's to be expected in a city of 20,000 that still doesn't accept online utility payments, doesn't have even one Starbucks (which I'm okay with) and has 3 Circle K stores one one road within 1.5 miles of each other.

how is that racist?

[circletimessquare]

i have muslim friends. i have nothing against islam. there's a mosque down the street. doesn't bother me at all. i am a very tolerant person

what i don't tolerate is: intolerance. get it?

your problem is you are confusing my criticism of ultraconservative islam, with criticism of just plain islam. i am criticizing the ultraconservative, not islam

we are talking about a society where christians and hindus can't practice their religion: all the rough jobs in saudi arabia are done by indian and filipino laborers, because saudi men won't do jobs "beneath them". don't you consider freedom of religion a basic human right? and women: in saudi arabia, a woman's rights are about as good as the rights of a head of cattle

this is horrible intolerance. and its the law of saudi arabia

i can't criticize that without being a racist in your mind? really?

since when does tolerance mean you tolerate the intolerant?

since when are you a racist simply because you criticize another culture? i can't criticize saudi arabia at all? and if i do, that means i must be a racist? you really believe that?

Re:how is that racist?

[Nutria]

since when are you a racist simply because you criticize another culture?

When multiculturalists are in position (namely, academia) to influence society.

Of course, anyone with at least half a functioning brain can see that it won't work ("The Diversity Theorem: Groups of people from anywhere in the world, mixed together in any numbers and proportions whatsoever, will eventually settle down as a harmonious society, appreciating--nay, celebrating!--their differences... which will of course soon disappear entirely."), thus leading to Balkanization.

Re:how is that racist?

[Nutria]

Seriously, calling the US a "nation of immigrants" is not something those evil multiculturalists just made up, its a freakin' fact. Wave after wave of immigrants from almost every continent at one time or another during the first century and beyond, at a rate that often exceeded the natural population increase in the main population.

The difference in that the previous waves of immigrants tended to Anglicize their names, give their children "English" names, speak English in the home if possible, etc, to assimilate their children as quickly as possible.

Now it seems the opposite is happening.

ISTM that if your country-of-origin is bad enough that you want to pick up everything and leave, and that America is good enough that it's the place where you want to drop yourself in, that you'd want to leave as much of the past behind, and embrace American culture. Otherwise, stay in your CoO because you obviously think it's better than America.

I'll give you a hint

[Weaselmancer]

He should probably wash his hands next.

A thousand years? Come on. That's the difference between the viking raids and landing on the moon. A lot can happen in a thousand years.

And FYI, RTFA. The thing has a maximum theoretical payoff roughly ten to one in terms of input/output, which they're predicting by 2010. 2MJ goes in, 20 comes out. If they only manage half that, you still have a x5 payoff. Which is still a massive win.

I don't know about you, but that much energy out of a nugget of 2mm nugget of beryllium sounds pretty freakin commercializable to me.

I'm thinking all sorts of great things can come from this. Uber cheap electricity, plug in hybrids to end the fuel crisis, shutting down coal/oil electricity plants, ion drives...there are lots of applications.

And you're not going to have to wait 1000 freaking years for them, either.

Re:I'll give you a hint

[digitig]

I'm thinking all sorts of great things can come from this. Uber cheap electricity, plug in hybrids to end the fuel crisis, shutting down coal/oil electricity plants, ion drives...there are lots of applications.

And the USA can stop invading oil producing nations and can start going after berrylium sources. Expect to see Utah added to the axis of evil really soon now!

Re:I'll give you a hint

[geekoid]

and how much energy goes into getting gas to the pump? (Hint: A lot more) why do people, always ignore that with gasoline when they are poo-pooing a different technology.

People like you just really hate change, don't you?

And why are you comparing this to a combustion engine efficiency? you should be comparing this to power generation efficiency.
When talking abut electric engines, then talk about the efficiency of engines.

Of course in that comparison, combustion looses, badly.

Re:jump

[MrNaz]

Has that meme gotten to the point where it gets associated with any article that has words like "beam" that can conceivably be related to lasers in it?

Because if so, I'm breeding sharks with frikkin' two by fours on their heads!

So who says it doesn't have energy apps too?

[Sycraft-fu]

There are plenty of technologies that start out as a military primary (or even exclusive) purpose but yield benefits to the whole world. Sometimes it is direct, sometimes indirect, but it is very common.

Heck, take nuclear technology in the first place. Whole reason that shit got developed so fast was to make a big bomb. Los Alamos was not started for humanitarian reasons, it was started to blow some people the fuck up. Now the work they did there didn't have any direct civilian applications. Not much market for having a nuke in your yard. However, the research and engineering there was the basis for civilian applications like nuclear power plants.

As a more direct, and recent, example, take GPS. GPS was designed so the military could accurately blow some people the fuck up. They wanted an accurate, universal location system for ships, planes, and even bombs. Does great for that. However it was opened up for civilian uses and has now become the greatest navigational aid in history. It is the prime location method for basically all commercial traffic, land sea or air. They only fall back to older systems should GPS fail.

So sure, one of the uses of this facility may be nuclear weapons testing. Heck, might be the reason for it to exist. That doesn't mean the research there doesn't have civilian energy applications.

little help!

[i_b_don]

Ok... i'm not a nuclear scientists obviously and I need a little more information to help me out. What's so great about nuclear fusion? If this works does that mean we'll have clean energy without radioactive byproducts? If not, why is this better than nuclear power plants today?

Next, assuming we get this working, what material does it require to make it work successfully? And really, what then becomes the bottle neck to producing infinite cheap energy?

I went and skimmed the wikipedia page but in my 3 min search i couldn't find anything to answer my questions. Without this knowledge I don't think I can appreciate this discussion.

Thanks in advance.

d

Re:little help!

[Ihlosi]

What's so great about nuclear fusion?

Fuel for nuclear fusion is more abundant than fuel for nuclear fission, by a couple of orders of magnitude.

If this works does that mean we'll have clean energy without radioactive byproducts?

Not quite. The "waste" of fusion isn't radioactive, but most fusion reactions generate neutrons that will activate whatever the reactor is made out of. So there will be some waste that needs to be dealt with.

If not, why is this better than nuclear power plants today?

It doesn't depend on heavy elements as fuel, and doesn't produce waste that's a mix of all kinds of crap (unfissioned material, fission products, unfissionable (but still toxic) heavy elements, activated materials), but just one kind of crap (activated materials).

Next, assuming we get this working, what material does it require to make it work successfully?

We have the materials, we need to get the processes right.

And really, what then becomes the bottle neck to producing infinite cheap energy?

Possibly, waste heat. You'll still need to get rid of that, provided that the fusion reactor drives a standard turbine setup.

Re:jump

[tenco]

If you're high, don't try telling jokes to sober people.

Bad/misleading summary

[Carbon016]

They testfired the lasers they're going to be using for fusion later. Those beams (attempt to) put out a fixed amount of energy. They reported the total energy. No fusion happened, no energy was net produced, the only thing that happened was the lasers fired at 420J each.

This is pretty clear from the article, but not like anyone would RTFA anyway.

Oblig. Marvin the Martian quote:

[Ihlosi]

"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"

mod parent up!

[je ne sais quoi]

Mod parent up! The grand parent is mistaken. Studying fusion is the secondary mission for the NIF, the primary mission is to aid in the design of better nuclear weapons. From the NIF facts document on this page:

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) will use the world's largest laser to compress and heat BB-sized capsules of fusion fuel to thermonuclear ignition. NIF experiments will produce temperatures and densities like those in the Sun or in a nuclear weapon. The experiments will help scientists sustain confidence in the nuclear weapon stockpile without nuclear tests as a unique element of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Stockpile Stewardship Program and will produce additional benefits in basic science and fusion energy.

How Did We Go So Wrong?

[Toad-san]

Actually has a practical purpose.

No threat of black holes destroying the Earth.

Didn't take years of design and construction, a crew of thousands, massive engineering, a huge staff, and a subterranean circle beneath miles of peaceful countryside.

Didn't destroy itself within a week of startup.

Oh nooooes!

Exclusive Photo!

[cashman73]

Here's an exclusive photo of the test facility!

Re:It's not pure science

[Werthless5]

You're confused. The scientists there are conducting experiments for the sake of science. That is pure science.

The people who fund them see the benefit. That does not, however, make the science "impure". It just means that there are additional reasons for conducting these experiments.

They're observing nuclear fusion. That is as pure as science gets.