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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."
Blowing things out of proportion and bad reporting? Say it isn't so!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
not the breakthrough everyone is hoping for.
The breakthrough I'm hoping for is cheap free fusion energy, generated in my backyard, from trash, branded "Mr Fusion."
What is everyone else hoping for?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There's a good discussion by Jeff Hecht in the Laser Focus World blog: "Progress at NIF, but no 'breakthrough'"
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2013/10/progress-at-nif-but-no-breakthrough.html
The amount of energy generated by fusion is quoted as having exceeded the amount of energy absorbed by the fusion fuel [my italics].
The misleading part comes from the fact that the target absorbs only a small fraction of the energy in the laser pulse. The August experiments used a laser pulse of 1.7 million joules to generate 8000 joules of fusion energy (measured from neutron yield). So the fusion energy amounts to a few percent of the energy in the laser pulse (and much less if you account for the inefficiency of the laser).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So it was not more than break-even. The gain was actually 0.0077 - 1.8MJ in, 14kJ out. Just a small (i.e. about "1") mistake by the genius journalists.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
My worry is that these people don't really know what they're doing, and that they're going to ignite a fusion reaction that will be self-feeding and turn our planet into a sun. This is one area of research where a mistake can really ruin the environment.
actually the BBC's story reports correctly -
"The BBC understands that 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.
This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known "inefficiencies" in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel."
Like Slashdot, for example?
The headline states, "the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel".
This is not enough, they must be able to capture that energy and use it to produce the next laser implosion of the fuel.
That will be a milestone.
Also, since this is using a Deuterium-Tritium Fuel it produces very high energy neutrons which will help destroy the reactor much faster than in conventional fission reactions.
Really? There aren't any other people in the world that don't work for government agencies that could have pointed out this silly mistake?
Something good happens in science and all the neckbeards come running to shout it down.
Sometimes I wonder why science is a religion for these people since they obviously have some kind of emotional need to destroy what it produces?
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.
Because the staff and management are contractors, not Fed employees, LLNL is not shut down. The Lab will begin shutting down next week (assuming the budget boondoggle continues), but until now has been fully staffed with the exception of a very small number of people directly employed by DOE.
I suppose one of the biggest advantages is that suppression of scientific advancement and the press would be a bit hard to perform at the moment.
*BSD is dy1ng It is use 7he sling. Kreskin
"This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known "inefficiencies" in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel."
The article made it CLEAR that the energy output was more than the energy absorbed. But it also made it CLEAR that it was not as much energy as was input to the whole system.
This is a non-article about a non-issue.
HEADLINE: "People Read Article Wrong... Chaos Ensues!"
I thought the government was shut down. If that is so, why is this government lab still operating? Is someone trying to convince the rest of us that sending a press "officer" home but keeping everyone else on the job is a "shutdown"? I suppose if the government can lie about whether or not it is operating, it can lie about achieving scientific breakthroughs.
The correcting article gives the impression we have a verrrry long way to go..
Energy released was 0.0077 that of total put in.. This gives the impression we have over 1000x more progress to make. It causes the reader to mistakenly assume it could take hundreds of more years.
However, fusion ignition, when it occurs will be a VERY dramatic jump in output. In other words, for this project input/output ratio is a measure of success, but a very poor measure of progress.
Lies, lies, lies. We won't have actual, real, fusion producing actual, real, power in an actual, real, commercial power plant on the grid in the lifetime of anyone alive now. It is not going to happen. "They" have been making up stories about this for decades. And still the lies go on - mostly from the media and even from some scientists.
We can't blame the network that brings us Dr Who for shoddy reporting, so lets blame the Americans and their shutdown.
On the other hand just go out on a sunny day and enjoy more free power than man will ever develop.
Further evidence:/p /p /p /p /p /p
09:18 EST 10/11/13 http://www.nist.gov - "NIST Closed, NIST and Affiliated Web Sites Not Available"/p
but,/p
http://www.uscis.gov - "All USCIS offices worldwide are open. Report to interviews and appointments as scheduled. Fee for service activities performed by USCIS are not affected by a lapse in appropriated annual funding."/p
Yah, right. Gotta process those EB-5's./p
Tinfoil hat, my ass. Tell it to the people the Park Service is arresting.
We'd still pay the same, or more than what we do now. Fat cats gotta get paid!
Awesome!! If our future of energy production is to fuse hydrogen nuclei (protons) into helium atoms, we would have a great source of ever-so-precious helium, which is becoming more and more scarce and expensive. The problem is, it sounds like He2 is produced, which is the lightest isotope of helium, consisting of two protons and no neutrons. If that's the case, it would be VERY unstable helium. In nuclear fusion, when protons are fused, where would the neutrons come from? Is it even possible to get a stable isotope of helium (He4) ?? I guess the helium we DO have is He4 and it's from natural radioactive decay but, that was from fission... bah!
Never, ever believe what comes out of a PR department. Doesn't matter whether it's the PR dept at a government agency, or a major university. They will either slant it or get the facts wrong, or both. Every dang time. Doesn't matter if it's MIT or Stanford or Los Alamos.
The BBC article made it pretty clear when they stated that this was NOT ignition, merely a breakeven. I didn't see any "blowing out of proportion."
the government is not shut down
Was that the original news post had a sensational title, but nowhere in the story, nor any of the links were ANY details about the numbers used in the experiment, specifically about exactly how much power was put in, and how much came out.
It is pretty basic stuff.
I either thought is must be BS or the value were unrealistic to be used in anything but in an experiment (so small as to make it impossible in real scale).