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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."
Because energy is a useless fiat commodity, while you can eat cold, hard dollar bills.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Hey, I saw that Star Trek episode too.
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?
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.
I suggest you read Slashdot
> 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
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)
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
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.
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.
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.
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!