Fusion breakthrough?

[Cmaier]

If confirmed, this would be a huge deal.

US scientists boost clean power hopes with fusion energy breakthrough

Net energy gain indicates technology could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels

www.ft.com

 

[dada_dave]

Aye though I still worry about the timetable to turn it into a commercial utility. Without a Manhattan style project (and maybe even with) it may come too late without significant improvements to our energy grid and utilization of available green energy technologies - which of course itself would require significant investment of money and resources. Basically no matter what we have to spend a massive amount of money to move away from fossil fuels and in the US this would require massive political capital (even to overcome NIMBY environmentalism not just the entrenched fossil fuel industry).

Edit: and no doubt some of the anti-nuclear folks will find a way to oppose utilizing such technology too. Obviously the fossil fuel industry will be the hardest to overcome but they’ll definitely use the other groups to try to delay, defund, and demoralize any political effort to go green using any kind of alternative energy solution including fusion. I really hope I’m wrong but the politics may be almost as hard as the science.

 

[Nycturne]

I’ll wait for the more in depth results later.

I’m seeing conflicting reports as to if it was truly net-positive, or only net-positive when compared to “energy the fuel absorbed”.

 

[Cmaier]

I’ll wait for the more in depth results later.

I’m seeing conflicting reports as to if it was truly net-positive, or only net-positive when compared to “energy the fuel absorbed”.

From what i can tell from reading a bunch of reports, they do think it was net-positive, but they are still confirming the data, A complicating factor, apparently, is that they damaged the equipment because the output was higher than they expected.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Obviously the fossil fuel industry will be the hardest to overcome but they’ll definitely use the other groups to try to delay, defund, and demoralize any political effort to go green using any kind of alternative energy solution including fusion. I really hope I’m wrong but the politics may be almost as hard as the science.

That's been my initial reaction to the story ...
My very first thought was "here's the next thing the entrenched players will hold out there as the future promised solution... to ensure more business as usual for the foreseeable future"

 

[MEJHarrison]

I believe an announcement is expected tomorrow. Should be exciting!

 

[Cmaier]

I believe an announcement is expected tomorrow. Should be exciting!

Agreed. If they actually did it, I predict that it won’t take nearly as long to commercialize as people think. It always looks daunting at the start, but history shows that where strong economic incentives exist, and as long as the science is proven, people figure out how to make things practical in less time than expected.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Hard to be excited much until we see what this announcement really entails

 

[rdrr]

I can't wait for the fossil fuel lobbyist to ask their core group to start a baseless claims campaign against this new potential clean energy. MTG will probably lead the way.

 

[dada_dave]

Agreed. If they actually did it, I predict that it won’t take nearly as long to commercialize as people think. It always looks daunting at the start, but history shows that where strong economic incentives exist, and as long as the science is proven, people figure out how to make things practical in less time than expected.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited too. My take is that science and technology always moves both faster and slower than expected. What is thought to be an easy problem to overcome suddenly becomes an impenetrable wall while other fields have incredible breakthroughs that neither the most embedded expert or visionary futurist could’ve foreseen. As you said let’s see what they actually announce.

But again, beyond the technical issues, there exists the political angle. I’d love for this to be some sort unifying event where everyone supports the development and utilization of clean energy. But god damn there are times humanity can be so disappointing on that front … I mean in the middle of a deadly pandemic there are people who won’t wear masks or get vaccinated to not only protect each other but even themselves. Obviously a different situation but there are a lot of very powerful actors who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo. Overcoming that may require a ruthless expenditure of political capital. I don’t want our politicians to simply expect everything to be fine because this obviously so beneficial for everyone. Sadly that’s not how humanity works.

 

[Eric]

Nuclear fusion: Has there been a breakthrough and what will it mean?

Rumours suggest the US National Ignition Facility has made a significant advance in nuclear fusion, though there are still many hurdles to overcome

www.newscientist.com

A nuclear fusion reactor has reportedly created more energy than was put into it, for the first time ever​

Rumours suggest the US National Ignition Facility has made a significant advance in nuclear fusion, though there are still many hurdles to overcome

A nuclear fusion reactor has reportedly created more energy than was put into it, for the first time ever. If the experimental results are confirmed, it will prove that fusion is a viable way to meet the planet’s growing energy demands by replicating the reaction that has been occurring at the heart of our sun for billions of years – with some caveats.

 

[Roller]

I think there's a considerable gap between demonstrating a net excess of energy in an experimental setting and deploying it commercially, even in selected use cases. But it's still a welcome advance if it holds true. At least I hope it's better than cold fusion turned out to be.

Still, we have renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) that should be used far more than they are today, though they're catching on.

 

[dada_dave]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really excited too. My take is that science and technology always moves both faster and slower than expected. What is thought to be an easy problem to overcome suddenly becomes an impenetrable wall while other fields have incredible breakthroughs that neither the most embedded expert or visionary futurist could’ve foreseen. As you said let’s see what they actually announce.

So it is indeed net energy positive but the predictions for commercialization have a wide range: 8-40+ years. If we’re serious it’s going to need a lot more resources to develop this and we still are going to need to expand the technologies available today.

Edit: that’s another issue with the same set of assholes I mentioned earlier: “why build green power plants with technology X when fusion is right around the corner?” to keep delaying things.

 

[Eric]

Good to know it won't be utilized to power a fusion bomb within our lifetimes.

 

[dada_dave]

Good to know it won't be utilized to power a fusion bomb within our lifetimes.

Unlike in the worst of the Nolan Batman movies, such reactors are projected to be extremely safe - no meltdowns, no bombs. Of course no one has built one yet but I’ve not seen anyone disagree with that assessment.

 

[Andropov]

I’ll wait for the more in depth results later.

I’m seeing conflicting reports as to if it was truly net-positive, or only net-positive when compared to “energy the fuel absorbed”.

I believe another inertial confinement reactor had a >1 energy emitted per energy absorbed by the plasma (the Q factor) about a decade ago. Instead, it looks like what they achieved is that the energy *outputted* by the laser is less than the energy emitted by the plasma. The important distinction here: the lasers probably required more energy to run that the energy that was later outputted by the laser. So the reaction in the plasma had a Q >1, but the reactor still probably required more energy to run the experiment than it produced.

It's an important milestone, but all kinds of nuclear fusion reactor have been getting closer and closer to the Q factor of 1 for a while, there's nothing inherently special about the breakeven point. It's not really a leap in the progress towards commercial fusion, more like a milestone of years of steady progress.

 

[lizkat]

Unlike in the worst of the Nolan Batman movies, such reactors are projected to be extremely safe - no meltdowns, no bombs. Of course no one has built one yet but I’ve not seen anyone disagree with that assessment.

I'm laughing only because first thing went through my mind was that the main person disagreeing would be (or have been) the guy who pushed the button and maybe had time to start to think "uh-oh..."

In principle I'm all for this stuff. I would expect the oil and gas sector either to get on board bigtime (we can build production facilities!) or else put up shade like we haven't seen since advent of solar energy.

 

[Andropov]

The important distinction here: the lasers probably required more energy to run that the energy that was later outputted by the laser. So the reaction in the plasma had a Q >1, but the reactor still probably required more energy to run the experiment than it produced.

There was no technical information in the press conference. I'm reading that the lasers require ~300-400MJ of energy from the grid to output ~2.05MJ of energy in the form of photons. The latter is what has been used to compute the Q factor (1.54, reportedly) because the reaction outputted 3.15MJ of energy, but if we use the grid energy to emitted energy, the reaction was orders of magnitude below the breakeven point. And AFAIK converting the energy generated in inertial confinement reactors to electricity is an unsolved problem.

 

[dada_dave]

In principle I'm all for this stuff. I would expect the oil and gas sector either to get on board bigtime (we can build production facilities!) or else put up shade like we haven't seen since advent of solar energy.

Solar also requires massive production, actually a lot more actually than fusion power (in theory), so given their reaction (ha!) to solar I think we can safely say that the fossil fuel industry will fight this tooth and nail whenever fusion becomes viable if they still have (political) power by that point. At least if that is the only consideration.

 

[dada_dave]

There was no technical information in the press conference. I'm reading that the lasers require ~300-400MJ of energy from the grid to output ~2.05MJ of energy in the form of photons. The latter is what has been used to compute the Q factor (1.54, reportedly) because the reaction outputted 3.15MJ of energy, but if we use the grid energy to emitted energy, the reaction was orders of magnitude below the breakeven point. And AFAIK converting the energy generated in inertial confinement reactors to electricity is an unsolved problem.

So we’re getting waaay outside my knowledge base here but is the grid energy here just to get things started such that as long as the reaction is positive that grid energy isn’t needed to sustain the reaction and thus would be repaid … eventually (in this case very eventually and only in theory)?