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Fusion Reactor Breaks Even
mysqlbytes writes "The BBC is reporting the National Ignition Facility (NIF), based at Livermore in California, has succeeded in breaking even — 'During an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel — the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.'"
Cool. Let it run the US gov't.
$
Mr. Fusion here we come!
FTFA:
"Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission."
Makes you wonder where we'd be now if we stopped pissing about on weapons research.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Seems to have just a little more information than the source material :)
https://lasers.llnl.gov/newsroom/project_status/index.php
A few points - Still more energy needed than produced - because lasers aren't 100%. They exceeded the amount of light energy going in, but not the power level fed into the laser. Second, how much of the released energy was in a form that could be fed back in to make the next thingy go moob? Not seeing anything on that here...
Overall though, it's a step in the right direction. Go guys go!
why is the bbc first to report on this? It happens in CA, and we get scooped? wtf??
It's 5 to 8 hours later in England than it is here. They've had a few more hours to report on it than we have.
But what's this "break even"? If it produced more than it consumed, it's not "break even".
define facility, because fusion is known to release energy with great facility.
Here is a picture that looks to me very much like a facility.
It achieved a net fusion output about 100X as much as the energy input. (This facility did have the drawback that it was vaporized within a few microseconds after startup, but that's just a cooling issue.)
why is the bbc first to report on this? It happens in CA, and we get scooped? wtf??
Because Americans don't care about science and if you told the typical American that we achieved nuclear Fusion, they'd say "That's the same thing that killed all those people in Fukishima, we don't need that sh*t here!"
"Energy released" is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than "energy generated". They've simply reached the point where causing a fusion reaction doesn't require more input energy than the reaction itself releases - HARNESSING the released energy (a large chunk of which is energetic neutrons, i.e. not recoverable) is another matter entirely.
Yep, all you need is a 5 billion dollar fusion reactor to make a couple of bucks of helium.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The RESEARCH is expensive. The base fuel comes from seawater and costs hundreds of dollars per pound. The energy in one pound is equal to millions of pounds of coal.
Even better, most of the fuel cost is the energy needed to separate the fuel from seawater. With self-powering desalination / fusion plants, fuel cost would be pennies.
The difficulty is that conditions have to be just perfect to keep the reaction going. If anything isn't just right, the process stops and you're left with what looks and acts like a baby aspirin. That's awesome for safety, though. That's the opposite of fission, where they are trying to keep a naturally volatile reaction under control.
Here in Australia we got today's news about the NIF reactor yesterday.
The energy in neutrons is not unrecoverable. You would probably need to use a heat engine to get the energy out, but at high temperatures that could be efficient.
The break even point is somewhat arbitrary, as any neutrons out will give you some heat. All you have to do is harness it. In practice, though, about 10X break even is thought to be necessary. To be economic you would need much more, especially since fission is so easy. Most fusion reactions will also create waste, and any reaction that creates copious neutrons will be a proliferation risk. Aneutronic fusion is very hard, and the NRC would probably crush anything else.
It's a nice technical achievement, but I can't see us using it to produce electricity.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
So in other words, "almost breaking even!". Just like everyone at the casino.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Who knows why the US press did not get it out first?
Because if it's not about what some republican or democrat said about the other regarding the budget, ACA, or debt limit nobody is interested right now. Getting one step closer to fusion power just doesn't scare the crap out of anyone, or piss them off like the other issues right now. If you can find a janitor that once worked at the facility and is claiming that there's an out of control black hole that's going to destroy the sun, turn mankind into vampires and vaporize the spotted owl, then we'll hear about it.
Three words: "Miley Cyrus twerked."
Google Trends search term popularity.
Achieving fusion break-even just when a skinny white girl learns to twerk is just wrong place, wrong time, baby.