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Fusion "Breakthrough" At National Ignition Facility? Not So Fast
sciencehabit writes "One unintended effect of the U.S. federal shutdown is that helpful press officers at government labs are not available to provide a reality check to some of the wilder stories that can catch fire on the Internet. They would have come in handy this week, when a number of outlets jumped on a report on the BBC News website. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, it reported, had passed a 'nuclear fusion milestone.' NIF uses the world's highest energy laser system to crush tiny pellets containing a form of hydrogen fuel to enormous temperature and pressure. The aim is to get the hydrogen nuclei to fuse together into helium atoms, releasing energy. The BBC story reported that during one experiment last month, '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.' This prompted a rush of even more effusive headlines proclaiming the 'fusion breakthrough.' As no doubt NIF's press officers would have told reporters, the experiment in question certainly shows important progress, but it is not the breakthrough everyone is hoping for."
I don't know if NIF is snakebit or just really good at putting out bad information, but this kind of distasteful and misleading marketing of science has been associated with them since their beginning. AAAS is being generous in assuming that their press department would have stepped in and clarified things.
The truth of the matter is that NIF is run by Lawrence Livermore National Security Corporation, a private group formed by defense contractors and academics. They're managed this way specifically to separate themselves from the government. There are plenty of people who are not on the government payroll, who are there working right now, who could have stepped in and corrected everyone's misconceptions. They chose not to.
JET producing 5MW to 16MW fusion output power from 24MW input power for 5s
Even better is JT-60 has produced DD plasmas at conditions that would produce fusion power 110% more than what goes in if they had they run with DT plasma instead.
Yes, most of what the NIF does is actually weapons research. The fusion power stuff seems to be mainly a political ploy to get the Democrats to sign off on it - they're never going to get actual fusion power, meaning actually turning this power back into electricity, at NIF, and unless they know something big I don't, I doubt they ever will at any inertial confinement reactor. I only hope that they're able to do some solid fundamental research for fusion power using this.