General > General Technical Chat

Do we have a Fusion thread?

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RoGeorge:
It's good progress but not good enough to produce energy yet.

My understanding is that it gets more thermal energy out than the optical energy pumped in by the lasers.  However, the lasers takes 10-100 times more energy to output that light needed for fusion.  Overall the whole installation needs 100 times more energy to put in, than it gets out.


--- Quote ---Although the latest experiment produced a net energy gain compared to the energy of the 2.05 megajoules in the incoming laser beams, NIF needed to pull 300 megajoules of energy from the electrical grid in order to generate the brief laser pulse.

Other types of lasers are more efficient, but experts say a viable laser fusion power plant would likely require much higher energy gains than the 1.5 observed in this latest fusion shot.

“You’ll need gains of 30 to 100 in order to get more energy for an energy power plant,” Dr. Herrmann said.
--- End quote ---
Source:  https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/13/science/nuclear-fusion-energy-breakthrough.html

tom66:
Are there any promising alternatives to the NIF lasers that combined with improvements in efficiency could make NIF a practical demonstration of power generation?    Some lasers can reach 60-70% efficient, but it's hard to imagine they could supply the pulse power required.

It does look like they have begun to make progress:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Ignition_Facility#/media/File:NIF_output_over_10_years.png

But, it's still likely to be at least a few decades from commercial power production.

Infraviolet:
Very good news, a great way to solve all the climate bothers without resorting to diasastrous (and ineffective) draconian measures. If only governments and corporations would put their money* in to getting fusion fully up and running rather than burning it on pointless bureaucracy.

Nuclear fusion really is the energy source of the future, and with this latest improvement it might be a viable energy source within the next two decades, though part of me suspects tokamak (ITER) or projectile type (First Light) fusion reactors might be more ideal for commercial power generation than NIF's lasers. I've always been a bit mystified as to how they would get the energy out and in to electrical form from a tiny pellet being collapsed at the centre of a large chamber.

I think we can now call this the break-even point for the fusion process itself, more energy came out of the pellet than went in to it, but clearly there is much work yet to be done for break-even in the full process from powering the lasers to extracting useful work.

*I saw a statistic that the US populations spends more per year on dog grooming than the US invests in to fusion research.

BrianHG:

--- Quote from: Infraviolet on December 14, 2022, 11:06:31 pm ---*I saw a statistic that the US populations spends more per year on dog grooming than the US invests in to fusion research.

--- End quote ---
This.....

Hydrogen and it's isotopes which makes fusion easier radiate a good chunk of their energy in spare neutrons flying out as well as the remainder of the fusion products.  Block these in a barrier material/fluid to capture the heat.  This shield barrier which will become neutron rich isotope is what eventually becomes radioactive for a good 50 to 100 years.

Helium 3 fusion radiates out protons.  Protons can be magnetically steered and drive a magnetic field to directly produce electricity as well as the ability of having no radioactive byproducts.  Helium 3 may be given off by our sun and our moon's surface may be peppered in it, but on earth, it is super-rare as it breaks apart in an oxygen rich environment.

(I'm not an expert, but I hope I got most of my specs correct.)

boz:
Sabin Hossenfelder did a great recent video on why we need to get magnitudes beyond break-even before we can do anything realistic (Hint Still a way to go)

 

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