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Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition. Research Continues - Slashdot

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition. Research Continues - Slashdot

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition. Research Continues - Slashdot
Aug 14, 2022 6 mins, 54 secs

While “scientific breakeven” (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion.

I'm guessing they managed to reach "scientific breakeven", which is when the power released by fusion for some period equals or exceeds the power being used to heat the fuel!

The real practical breakthrough will be "engineering breakeven", which is when a facility produces enough *usable* power to run itself.

There's greater than the input power to the 192 complicated lasers, there's greater than the input power to the facility, and there's greater than the power needed to fabricate targets and replacement laser parts, from mining raw materials to landing finished parts at NIF.

There is Nuclear Energy and the Second Law [stormsmith.nl] which is an end to end study of Fission base Nuclear Power answering the criteria you specify to a similar complexity.

However for Fusion base Nuclear power it's unlikely because the energy system is still a prototype and the va.

Not that surprising: remember how many people here were wild gems of the EM drive despite it being a perpetual motion machine in all but name.

There's a reason the EM drive was actually replicated and tested by scientists rather than just being fobbed off as nonsense like cold fusion and normal perpetual motion machines are.

It was ultimately determined to be a perpetual motion machine in all but name, but t.

It was ultimately determined to be a perpetual motion machine in all but name, but the actual proof for that took months?

EM drive was most certainly a classic example of pathological science yet it was never a perpetual motion machine?

It required energy to operate and pushed magical aether in an equal and opposite direction?

Thing is it was a perpetual motion machine, but a hidden one.

Most perpetual motion machines require energy and are so described as"over unity", as in they need energy in, but give back more.

The EM drive wasn't supposed to be, but if you hooked up something to turn some of its kinetic energy back into electrical energy you get enough to run it with plenty to spare?

That makes it a perpetual motion machine.

The EM drive wasn't supposed to be, but if you hooked up something to turn some of its kinetic energy back into electrical energy you get enough to run it with plenty to spare.

That makes it a perpetual motion machine.

EM drive is no more a perpetual motion machine than an amplified photon thruster.

That's a perpetual motion machine/violation of thermodynamic.

It was trivial to show the EM dive was a perpetual motion machine.

No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, ...

And where are we going to get all the required hydrogen -- fossil fuels, water electrolysis, etc....

If sourcing hydrogen for electric cars is a problem, won't sourcing it for fusion reactors be too.

The amount of energy fusion releases per kilogram of hydrogen is on the order of a million times more than it takes to separate the hydrogen from water, ...

And where are we going to get all the required hydrogen.

I was wondering about the energy required to generate enough hydrogen (ffrom water or fossil fuels) to run the fusion reactors.

Someone else noted that the fusion process generates more than enough energy per unit of hydrogen (deuterium) that this isn't a concern...

The amount of energy released by the second is a rather large order of magnitudes larger?

nd where are we going to get all the required hydrogen --.

They are only using small quantities, and they can buy all they need from Amazon for $10.

Power generation is not part of NIF's mission.

Of course working fusion will be the end of all energy problems, although you ideally want a nearby fission reactor to be able to jump-start the damn thing if you need to power it down for any reason.

Why does the backup to a fusion reactor need to be fission.

Why can it not be another fusion reactor, similar to how fission plants have multiple reactors operating at the same time!

If a fusion reactor is down, it's likely because the grid can't handle that much power, and the most common causes will be line failure, followed by lack of demand.

In that case, the backup fusion reactor would be shut down as well.

Flywheel won't generate enough power, you need a huge initial input for mag fields, computers, and cooling system.

None of that really amounts to a downside for fusion; unless you're trying to say "solar is cheaper and has failed to be the end to all energy problems, so a more expensive solution doesn't stand a chance," you haven't really dismissed fusion.

As I understand it, solar power does pose some problems of its own.

The S1W reactor did its first serious power run in 1953.

If replacing the boiler in a well understood steam plant with a reactor took 10 and a half years then I would expect it to take longer to get power on the grid from fusion.

Laser fusion is not a viable path to the sustained fusion we will need for a working reactor.

It is important research project because we need to understand what happens at the moment of fusion but it will not lead to a practical reactor.

Practical fusion energy is only 10-15 years away now!?

We need to be building the infrastructure that can handle the kind of power output expected from a fusion reactor as it's going to be a bit late to start AFTER we have such reactors?

First, When the NIF got funded, ignition was projected as when the reaction produced more energy than the lasers consume from the power plant?

When the realization dawned that that was hard,, ignition was redefined as when the energy produced from fusion exceeds the energy of the UV lasers (1.9 megajoules).

Everyone agrees: Ignition occurs when the energy deposited by products of the thermonuclear burn during one confinement time equals the energy required to heat the plasma to thermonuclear burn temperatures..

2) Engineering break even - when the reactor generates more energy than was used to power it, including the power needed for ignition and confinement, and conversion losses to convert the resulting heat to electricity. They are still far from this, probably a decade or more.!

You can claim the energy released within the hotspot is greater than the energy directly compressing the hotspot.

No country has a grid capable of handling the kind of power levels fusion is likely to produce and substations take time to build.

We need to be building out the infrastructure now and upgrading what exists to be able to support this new technology, or we'll acquire fusion but be unable to use it for 10-20 years.

I wouldn't go as far as predicting when we'll have commercial power generation, but kudos to these scientists for getting ignition

The amount of helium produced by fusion in any foreseeable future is not going to be enough to solve the global helium shortage

Awaiting the time here is enough energy for aneutronic fusion like Boron+Hydrogen, the Tokamak produce high energy neutrons

But a good portion of the hydrogen on this planet is already bonded to other elements, much of which the most easily released are in fossil fuels

Massive amounts of energy produced by a small amount of hydrogen

Have you ever seen photos of hydrogen bomb explosions

Massive amounts of energy produced by a small amount of hydrogen

We can't fuse ordinary hydrogen in these devices, you need something the size of star to do that

A mere cubic mile of water has enough deuterium to power the Earth's energy supply for 1,500 years

We can't fuse ordinary hydrogen in these devices, you need something the size of star to do that

Pedantic nitpick: You can fuse ordinary hydrogen with boron in an aneutronic fusion reaction [wikipedia.org]

We've hydrogen to spare

No sane person thinks fusion power can make a dent in that

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