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NIF Aims For the Ultimate Green Energy Source
theodp writes "Edward Moses and his team of 500 scientists and engineers at Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility are betting $3.5B in taxpayer money on a tiny pellet they hope could produce an endless supply of safe, clean energy. By the fall of 2010, the team aims to start blasting capsules containing deuterium-tritium fuel with 1.4 megajoules of laser power, a first step towards the holy grail of controlled nuclear fusion. Not all are convinced that Moses will lead us to the promised land. 'They're snake-oil salesmen,' says Thomas Cochran, a scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. Moses, for his part, seems unfazed by the skepticism, saying he's confident that his team will succeed."
This is first time I ever saw this - Error 503 Service Unavailable Service Unavailable Guru Meditation: XID: 595044882 Varnish
$3.5 billion? This is a better alternative than giving the money to the UAW.
an ill wind that blows no good
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_Fusion_Test_Facility
Do we have more stick-to-it spirit these days? Or is this another few billion dollars spent with no other purpose than to improve the economy of Livermore, California?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So a member of an anti-nuke group doesn't approve of someone's attempts to build a workable fusion reactor? Is anyone really surprised by that?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
We have had Farnsworth fusors for decades. We can control fusion. You know, for a geek website we sure do play fast and loose with facts and poor summaries.
Maybe "step towards controlled fusion power"? Words convey meaning, folks.
Guess they didn't bring in the high priced consultant to come up with a better name than the stogie-esque National Ignition Facility.
"Oh.. Well unless you really, really like the food at the New Yorker Hotel, you probably don't want to go there" -- Nick Tesla
Cochran says the NIF laser is still not powerful enough. Even if it were, he says, "these machines are just going to be too big, and too costly, and they'll never be competitive."
Proof of concept devices area always oversized and more costly than the production versions. Once you know it works and how it works, you can start shrinking it down and since the development is done, the cost per unit goes down further.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Moses leading a team? Will he stop and ask for directions?
I'm hesitant to say that nothing would do more to solve the world's problems than the availability of cheap, clean energy, but it would be on my top five. However, every few years I hear about a new fusion project, and then I never hear anything else about it. Here's to hoping that it works and that it works in a way that can be commercialized before we destroy the planet.
Make love, not reality television.
Has anyone wondered how to synchronize these lasers to less than a microsecond? Sure one could measure the path lengths and calculate the delays at approx 9 ns per foot. However, about 12 years ago I wrote the software for a system that sync'd a remote quartz clock to a local cesium clock to within a nanosecond over 10 -100 km of fiber. Changes in path length we automatically compensated. It was fun to write this code and put the system together. A prototype was delivered to the Lawrence Livermore Lab for just this purpose.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Deuterium is limited by the amount of deuterium in ocean water, which is the largest source on Earth but remains quite limited.
And sadly, unless these wishful dreamers can find an energy efficient way to harvest deuterium in bulk, there is very little point to this research. None of the available fusion processes work well with plain hydrogen, and barring a miracle occurring, deuterium refinement is still only done with stunningly high energy costs, nowhere near even theoretical break-even costs for bulk refinement and use in fusion.
No, this is an excuse to spend money on fusion weapons research under the guise of "energy research". It's flat-out pork-barrel money for military facilities who will otherwise "lose American jobs!". Spend it instead on solar mirror research, which has a much better return-on-investment and merely requires large-scale engineering, not hoped-for scientific breakthroughs that remain unlikely to occur in our lifetimes.
It would be great if NIF could produce a working fusion system within the next century, but i find it a bit doubtful. There are two other fusion technologies which have aimed to reduce the size and complexity of fusion systems, instead of building massive billion dollar generators to instead build smaller technologies. These inlcude Polywell and Focus Fusion. Both are developed by engineers and appear to be honest attempts to develop fusion power and to do it with a reasonable amount of money, under 20 years, rather than centuries. While the government has given NIF billions of dollars, the polywell has received about 8 million in funding, despite the fact that if it is possible it could save the planet. Some scientists seem so enamored by the size and complexity, and unfeasibly of such machines as ITER they seem unwilling to consider smaller, cheaper and more practical alternatives, thus fusion always remains something far off in the centuries away future, when it is desperately needed now.
Id like to see polywell, focus fusion and the NIF fully funded however, since it is possible that one may be right and the others not workable, it increases the chance of finding a solution.
Point one: Not spending money on fusion research is incredibly dumb. It's not likely to pan out in the near-term future, but there's plenty of ancillary science to be done on the subject. For example, the VASMIR space drive built on fusion research, it's just not hot enough to provoke fusion
Point two: Relying on fusion power to make for a short-term fix is also dumb. Especially if you think it's going to be safe and clean. The problem with fusion is how many neutrons it emits. Even when you use one of the fusion chains designed not to produce neutrons, you produce a good amount. The reactor core is going to be even more radioactive than a fission reactor core. And even if you get to a "Breakeven" point, that doesn't mean that you'll be price-competitive with other forms of power.
Fusion is easy. Just take a GIANT ball of gas, let it collapse into a star, and put solar panels around the star.
Point three: Calling it the Ultimate Green Energy Source is a cover story. A 2007 report by the National Research Council's Plasma Science Committee concluded that "NIF is crucial to the NNSA Stockpile Stewardship Program because it will be able to create the extreme conditions of temperature and pressure that exist on Earth only in exploding nuclear weapons and that are therefore relevant to understanding the operation of our modern nuclear weapons."
In other words, the NIF will be used, at least some of the time, to re-create the conditions inside of an exploding nuclear warhead so we can design new nukes without testing them and therefore violating the test ban treaties.
Gentoo Sucks
From what I've seen the NIF could never be a fusion reactor. All those lasers focus on a single pellet in a closed chamber.
Even if they get fusion, how would they turn this into a reactor where you could feed in a constant source of fuel and get continuous energy output?
There is big physics that is a good place to sink money, and big physics that is not.
Only the physicists and engineers who are payed by grants in this area seem to think its a good use of money.
And unfortunately projects like this pull billions of taxpayer money from research projects that may actually benefit society.
The NIF is the ISS of the physics world.
will be instantly empowered to enslave and slaughter all other nations. And it won't even have to declare war, because that nation will be the only one left. It's a weapon of unlimited power. The only other horror almost comparative to it is the slow but sure erosion of everybody's privacy on facebook.
Thomas Cochran? Are you 100% sure it is not Zefram Cochrane?
HiPER will be a European project that will take advantage of the findings of NIF to use IC Fusion as an energy source. (NIF has mainly military purposes).It will hopefully be ready sooner than ITER, and much cheaper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiPER
This may not work but it isn't snake oil. I mean snake oil salesmen sell something that doesn't work from the get go. They sell a lie. Its not like all the physicists will be like huzzah, enjoy your free energy if it doesn't work. I mean that doesn't even make sense. They'll go "Fuck, it doesn't work, sorry". Totally different.
The Natural Resources Defense Council spokesman calls fusion "snake oil". Couldn't have seen that one coming... ;-) Reminds me of "Thank You For Smoking."
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
So,
In one experiment the LHC could in theory create a small black hole that sucks stuff in.
In the second experiment, fusion could in theory create a small sun that ejects stuf out.
In theory, the two experiments cancel each other out and nothing happens :)
As usual, in theory, government spending goes for naught!
Or rather.
What will happen is it will allow the economy, unlimited growth. With that goes consumption. Humans will literally build, eat and fuck the planet into a desolate wasteland.
Deleted
There was a long (~1 hour) plenary talk about this at a recent American Physical Society conference.
The NIF is exciting scientifically for studying both fusion and "extreme" materials science. No, it's not going to turn into a power plant once we get it working, but fusion power is too promising to not take steps toward it. We won't be able to roll out fusion power in time to avert climate change, of course, so it's not a first priority for energy research. But it is certainly worth doing on its scientific merits alone.
Trouble is, the main intent behind the NIF isn't science -- it's "stockpile stewardship" and weapons development. If it were simply a science experiment I imagine that the science goals could be achieved far more cheaply, and with a higher degree of openness. (For instance, some of the other approaches to fusion seem more promising. But the US's flagship fusion project is this one -- just because you can learn about bombs with it.)
Science that is worth doing (which in my opinion the NIF is) should be done completely independent of the military (so it can be done honestly) and it should be done openly (so it can be useful to society).
I read your posting and all I can think of is why is America failing? At one time, we succeeded because we did NOT put all of our eggs in one basket. We actually spread the money and approaches around so that we could figure out the best approach. Now, I have to read the idiot postings that LOVE coal/Oil, Hate AE, and at best tolerate Nukes. Or we have the pure nuke lovers that hate AE/coal/Oil. Finally, we have ppl like you that imagine that this is weapons research and not really a way to lower our energy costs.
Why do ppl like you push this kind of crap? Solar research IS progressing. In many countries. BUT, we need to take multiple tacks and make sure that we have a cheap alternative.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
cheap energy also means we can get off this planet
so we can build, eat and fuck other planets into desolate wastelands
so it all works out, see?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The sole purpose of NIF is reproducing conditions similiar to a nuke without setting off a nuke. Its basically a way to work around various test ban treaties the US is signatory to.
Their token attempt at producing electrical power is just that no serious person expects that anything approaching commercial viability will EVER come out of such a design.
Dense Plasma Focus technology is the next best thing to what cold fusion had promised. Best of all it's real and doesn't use any questionable physics.
Safe, small, low cost, low maintenance and efficient. It looks like it will be small enough that it could be ran from inside a rail car or truck.
It's far ,more likely to work then blasting deuterium-tritium with lasers, but they can't get funding!
Slashdot's reported this several times.
A-Step-Closer-To-Cheap-Nuclear-Fusion
And I have posting my research in to this too.
green ideas thinktank
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
When is the last time your electric bill went DOWN, the rate you are charged?
See? Even if this is developed, you will NOT see cheaper electricity rates. Take a SWAG at what a potential commercial fusion plant would cost, then think of the "investors" and what their level of profit would be, AFTER they recoup cost of building and running the thing.
We are still a century or more away from this sort of tech being cheap and ubiquitous, if ever.
Fusion power is GREAT for getting research grants, that's about it.
If you REALLY want cheaper electric power, you have to invest in it yourself, get a lot of solar panels and stuff, eat it for some years until it is paid off, then ride on that cushion until they wear out. Even at today's prices, you should get at least ten years of eventually free or very low cost electricity. Prices vary, but yes, eventually it is paid off, has generated elecricity for you the whole time, saved you cash there, you hit a cross over point with your ROI, and there is some random number of years where you WILL get cheaper power then. 100% fact. All the variables are that, but if you do a lot of the installation yourself, really shop around for the panels and controllers, etc, take advantage of any deals and tax credits, etc, this is doable today, and it IS fusion power once you get down to it.
Waiting for them to actually have commercial laser dilithium crystal reverse turbo anti matter/matter reaction fusion plants running at your local utility is exactly the same as wondering back in 1970 when affordable commercial space travel would get here so you could go on vacation to the moon or at least an orbital hotel. IOW, a real long frikkin time.
In other words, the NIF will be used, at least some of the time, to re-create the conditions inside of an exploding nuclear warhead so we can design new nukes without testing them and therefore violating the test ban treaties.
So, this keeps us from having to explode nuclear weapons, and thus violate treaties?
Plus, it has side research benefits like experimental data for inertial confinement fusion?
And it only costs 3.5 Bn initially? That's not much more than an accounting error in a budget the size of Dept. of Defense or Health and Human Services.
Wow. Sounds like a real deal to me. Can we have a few more programs like this?
Recycling and clean manufacturing processes will become economically viable because the energy to do it will be cheap.
Planting in the desert will become economically viable because the energy to desalinate water will be cheap.
People will fight fewer wars over geographically concentrated energy resources.
Wealthy people reproduce less than poor ones, so population growth will be slowed or even reversed.
Cheap clean energy will save the planet.
NIF is and Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) experiment. If it works (and experiments are not 'bets' Soulskill) it will serve to inform physicists on useful ICF applications. There are, in fact, hypothetical designs for ICF based reactors. Those designs could become very important if NIF is successful.
Viable nuclear fusion energy production would alter the energy politics of the world. This is why well funded special interest lobbyists like Thomas Cochran spout off on queue; any actual solutions to the energy supply problem would probably reduce the need for pressure groups like the NRDC. Thus you find universal opposition from said pressure groups towards high-energy physics research.
Some people, such as most Slashdot editors and readers, are very sensitive to the bible-thumper anti-science agenda apparent on the extreme right. The anti-science agenda from the Luddites on the extreme left, however, always gets a pass. Selective outrage.
Just a reminder, femtoseconds may be common/easy today, but what we did was done 12 years ago as a prototype an proof of concept. I'm not talking about femtosecond lasers either. This project was to synchronize multiple devices over varying distances from each other and from a source, not to generate ultra short pulses.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
...science runs in Zefram's family!
Who the F*ck is Moses. Does he has a full name? Why on earth do you copy the nonsense from the article? This is supposed to be a small summary of the news topic not repetition of Journalistic rubbish...
Cheaper power won't translate to "cheaper for consumers". All it will do is enable bigger profit margins for the power producers. Power will always sell at a "market value". In fact, the tragic truth is that if ever a power source were created that was SO cheap it wouldn't be worth distributing due to lack of profits, the big businesses just wouldn't push it. It would die silently, or be implemented solely by governments in socialist countries.
Why can't anyone get their units straight? This seems like such a simple matter, but when they're talking about energy, they always use power units; when they're talking about power, they always use energy units.
They could call the fuel dilithium.
Just like it was 50 years ago. :-(
WWII pulled us out of the great depression(which by the way seems to have been caused largely by over confidence in Free Market Deregulation.) The "New Deal" managed kept us from collapsing into abject anarchy.
You should do your own homework. Some economists believe the New Deal made the Great Depression worse than it would have been. FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate. Obama repeating mistakes of Great Depression.
What we face today is a throw back to 1929. Same shit.
What we have now is different than in 1929. In 1929-30 congress passed and President Herbert Hoover signed the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, even though more than a thousand economists warned him to veto it, which slowed international trade. When the US passed this act other nations passed their own protectionist laws. US export businesses watched as their exports shrank, they thus had to lay off workers or went out of business. This harmed other businesses such as suppliers. Like it or not international trade is necessary to a thriving economy today and has been that way for a long tyme.
As for Mr. Fusion? How about some cleaner cheaper fission first.
Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. Even in countries that do not have the US's environmental regulations nuclear power isn't profitable without subsidies. "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
And that's a reprint on the Free Market CATO Institute of a Forbes magazine article. Finland's Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant's reactor 3, being built by the French government owned Areva, was due to be compleated this year but now is not scheduled to be compleated until 2012. It is already $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget.
You ask about cheaper energy, the cheapest and cleanest energy is the negawatt. Unfortunately that depends on people conserving power and most Americans will not do that.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the bonds generally have a face value, and they are sold at an auction to the highest bidder.
No, bonds at auction are sold to the lowest not highest bidder.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Your back of the envelope math fails to take into account facilities and maintenance I suspect.
Profits = revenue - expenses. If GM makes a profit on each vehicle sold it makes more than it cost to make each one. Facilities and maintenance is part of the expenses.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Yes, please keep modding reductio ad absurdum arguments as INTERESTING.
If youre seriously proposing that without unions, we would have ridiculous work weeks and no choice about it, no ability to retire, and no regulations, you are sadly misinformed. Unions performed a useful function, but I am currently in a non-unionized shop (it consulting) and have benefits, a decent salary, and a 40-hour work week-- less if i bill a substantial amount.
You have those because unions fought for them. Without collective bargaining most people may still be working as peasants or serfs for the aristocracy.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
whole, but rather why certain things are not regulated that should be.
Again I have to disagree in part. Because of pressure if not regulations and laws banks made loans to those who could not afford to pay back their mortgages. In return for making those mortgages the US government created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought the loans. Of course greed set in when real estate prices kept on rising year after year until the bubble burst.
What is scary, is that I think at the end of the show they said that currently there is still no regulation or monitoring of these swaps today
What would be scary is if investors didn't learn to distrust swaps, or derivatives, and kept on investing in businesses that create or trade them. And they'd better not be bailout out again. Taxpayers should not be made to pay for others' bad decisions.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
the technology is just beginning start getting available for realistic electric cars, and so some time in the moderate future, there may be enough electric cars on the roads that electrical power may actually make some significant inroads against oil as a transportation fuel-- but not in 1985, and the oil companies are (and were) perfectly aware of that.
I'm pretty sure there are those in the petroleum industry who know very well electric cars were made before internal combustion engine cars were released. In the 1830s "Robert Anderson of Scotland invented the first crude electric carriage." However I don't necessarily blame or think the reason electric cars didn't take over the roads was because of the petroleum industry, electric companies were pretty powerful too. And the power of coal companies wasn't something to sneeze at either.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqkbPkeahOQ
Recycling and clean manufacturing processes will become economically viable because the energy to do it will be cheap.
Even now recycling uses less energy than refining raw materials, recycling saves energy.
Wealthy people reproduce less than poor ones, so population growth will be slowed or even reversed.
Now this brings up something not many people know or realize. As people's income goes up they have fewer children and care more about the environment. When people are starving they don't care about much else but once they no longer have to fight to scratch a living they start caring about other things.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I'm not sure about bats but buildings, cars, and cats kill more birds than wind turbines do. Over one billion birds strike windows in the U.S. every year. What Kills Birds? is a list of what does kill birds. Now that's on a wind power consultant's website so some may consider it biased. But Google returns more sites saying how many birds are killed by wind turbines versus other things that kill birds.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The adventures of somersault, alias mentalboy
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1438984&cid=30107250
THE ADVENTURES OF "MENTAL BOY":
"I myself needed to go on pills a few years ago for depression, and I had an episode of OCD, I know it's not pleasant to have mental issues." - by somersault (912633) on Sunday November 15, @01:33PM (#30107250) Homepage Journal
Evidence is above (somersault alias "mental boy")
In this post where I ask "Where is the NRDC mentioned in TFA? Or is this an attempt to slam the NRDC?" That's the vary same post you replied to criticizing me.
Life would be a lot easier if you didn't work so hard at denying your mistakes. We all make them.
Apply that to yourself. You criticize me for not asking for a link where where the NRDC is criticized, but I did ask for one.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Natural law demonstrate that when one of the ressource become almost inexhaustible, a specie starts to grow and deplete the other resources it depends on. Dont get me wrong I'm the first to support nuclear fusion and free energy for all. The sudden advance in technology it would bring would be incredibly huge. But I do think most of the world is not ready for such a boon. Having lots of energy not only provide you tools to create good things. It do provide you tools to do incredible bad things too.