Elusive fusion reactors to be commercialised by 2025-2030... Or so they say

Take it with a grain of salt. Its somewhat misleading on how its being reported.

Ultimately the power used to fire up the lasers and do this experiment was magnitudes more than the energy created.

It IS a huge accomplishment yes, but its a tiny part of a very large and complex puzzle.
 
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kindai said:
Take it with a grain of salt. Its somewhat misleading on how its being reported.

Ultimately the power used to fire up the lasers and do this experiment was magnitudes more than the energy created.

It IS a huge accomplishment yes, but its a tiny part of a very large and complex puzzle.
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The article (BBC) I just read suggested it actually produced 1.5 times the energy used to create it.....?
 
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Mint8 said:
The article (BBC) I just read suggested it actually produced 1.5 times the energy used to create it.....?
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You need to brush up on your reading comprehension, because the article on the BBC states

although the experiment got more energy out than the laser put in, this did not include the energy needed to make the lasers work - which was far greater that the amount of energy the hydrogen produced.
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You could have course correct me without the added obnoxious keyboard ****** snark.....:rolleyes:
 
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Maybe another way to look at it is, you got ignition from that point on it's just about keeping it ticking over, the initial kick is no longer needed. Ok so you need a separate power plant to fire the baby up but that's a easy thing.
 
robfosters said:
Stupid person question, but is this the thing that could eventually (long after we’re gone) be used to power starships?
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Theoretically, yes.

One of the biggest problems in anything to do with powering spaceships of any kind is the mass of the required fuel. It's far less of an issue in the context of something with a low mass that has already been put into orbit and just needs occasional adjustment, i.e. a satellite. But in the context of any ship going somewhere, it's extremely important and in the context of any ship that is going to take off from or land on a planet it's hugely important. For example, launching from Earth with current technology requires that the large majority of the mass of the rocket is the mass of the fuel. Then there's the mass of the rocket itself and the mass of the fuel tanks. The payload is a very small proportion of the total launch mass. That's for a single launch from 1g. It also places extremely heavy restrictions on the mass of the ship. Any crew accommodation will be small and cramped. Food will be an issue, both in mass and volume. Anything that has any mass or volume will have to be considered very carefully - is it really necessary? For example, the original Apollo missions didn't have any cameras because a camera and film had mass and volume and wasn't essential to the mission. They were scientists, not newspaper reporters. One of the astronauts applied for permission to use a camera and some film as the very limited amount of mass each astronaut was allowed to carry.

It wouldn't be as bad in the context of a spaceship built in orbit and which never entered any gravitational field stronger than what we'd call microgravity, but it would still be a big issue. The ship would still require the use of force to change speed and/or direction. Anything like the usual sci-fi spaceships would have a huge amount of mass and thus require a lot of force to change speed and/or direction in a timely manner.

So the energy density of the fuel and how and where refueling can take place would still be a factor in possible future spaceships, even if they go all the way to sci-fi style spaceships. Starship Enterprise sort of thing. With nuclear fusion, the energy density is extremely high, tens of millions of times that of any non-nuclear fuel. Refueling would also be far more practical than it would be for any chemical fuel. It would be possible to incorporate partial refueling into the sewage/water recycling system that any spaceship would have to have. Anything that contains water (e.g. urine) contains some deuterium. It would at least be a range extender and/or something to keep life-critical systems running in an emergency while you limp home or wait for rescue.

Starships would be a whole different kettle of fish, though. That implies interstellar travel and we've no clue how to do that apart from generation ships. Maybe it would be fusion power for running the ship's systems and for changes in speed and/or direction with a stellar system and some as yet unknown system for interstellar travel. The "warp drive" of sci-fi. Maybe the "warp drive" would power everything.
 
Mint8 said:
The article (BBC) I just read suggested it actually produced 1.5 times the energy used to create it.....?
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It did (EDIT: The article did suggest that, not that the experiment did produce 1.5 times the input energy), but at least the BBC were knowledgeable/honest enough to add a single sentence at the end of the article referring to the reality of the situation. Many media sources don't do that. I've been mentioning this for years now (including in this thread):

Angilion said:
Unfortunately, what some media outlets refer to as a "net gain" at NIF isn't really a net gain. It's still a net loss. Due to the way that the system works, most of the energy input is lost without reaching the fuel. The "net gain" reporting ignores that and counts only the fraction of the input energy that reaches the target.

A rough analogy would be if you paid £1000 to enter a casino, bet £100 on something and won £120 from that bet. A net gain...if you ignore the entry fee.

It's promising, but it's not what it's often portrayed as being.
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It's not a secret. It's just that almost all media sources either know nothing about the subject or don't care about truth because views are far more important. It's a very common problem when it comes to reporting anything to do with science or technology other than stuff that's already in commercially available products on sale to the public right now. It's a real problem because it creates unreasonable expectations and it creates conspiracy beliefs and it does harm. The worst example at the moment is climate "activists" who have been misled into thinking that it's anywhere near possible to go 100% renewables. It's not. The tech doesn't exist and won't exist any time soon. But a whole slew of view-getting false claims in numerous media outlets add up to saying that it does exist. Believe what you're told and you must conclude that it's being suppressed by <insert target here>. Oil companies, governments, illuminati, secret world order, aliens, whoever.

NIF has been doing some...let's say "creative accounting"...for years. They can claim q=1.5 but the reality is that their q=0.001. The intention is that at some point in the future they can create a self-sustaining fusion reaction. If so, then the main energy input system (which uses 1000 times as much energy as the fusion reaction produces) could be turned off afterwards and then they would have a net gain in power (if the required conditions for the reaction can be maintained with a far lower energy input). But they can't do that yet. This latest announcement in not that or anywhere near that.
 
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robfosters said:
Its a great achievement, but in the grand scheme of life, I was still more amazed by the doctors at Great Ormond Street who cured a terminally ill girls leukaemia by editing her DNA to create cells that hunted down and killed all the cancer cells. That was pure miracle stuff.
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Definitely off topic but we've (GOSH) pushed this story hard for obvious reasons - it's ground breaking and so impactful on her life. The family must be so relived after exhausting all other treatment methods.

Back on topic. Will the energy needed for ignition always remain in the same ball park figure? Or are one of the pieces of the puzzle, to get this down?
 
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Sankari said:
Only another 200 years to go before it's viable!
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*10

I will return to this thread in a decade to say I told you so
:p

It will not be NIF or ITER, these are experimental projects designed to prove that the technology works, which we now know yes, it does work. The question now for NIF is how do they compact down the initial power requirements to charge up the lasers. They cannot change the lasers without rework, since the lasers are based on 1980s tech. This is how long they have been working on the project.

The viable in 10 yrs will come from private sector since it is way ahead of NIF.

doodah said:
Definitely off topic but we've (GOSH) pushed this story hard for obvious reasons - it's ground breaking and so impactful on her life. The family must be so relived after exhausting all other treatment methods.

Back on topic. Will the energy needed for ignition always remain in the same ball park figure? Or are one of the pieces of the puzzle, to get this down?
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As with all things, it will become smaller and smaller as time goes on. They now know that it works with 192 lasers at 300MJ. The goal over the next 10-20 years is to make those lasers efficient, maybe even replace them. 192 is always going to be needed for NIF's reactor though since that is the number of lasers needed to stop the little point they are all aimed at from escaping the confinement when they fire.

Magnetic and other methods of confinement will have their own requirements to keep the plasma from escaping.

once ITER goes live I get the feeling they will see progress much much faster than NIF and things will really be heating up withing the fusion space. The late 2020s onwards is really going to be a fantastic time to be alive. First manned mission to Mars, first samples brought back from Mars, new missions to explore Venus/Mercury and some of the proposed water/active moons of Jupiter/Saturn, fusion energy.... Half-Life 3!
 
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mrk said:
*10

I will return to this thread in a decade to say I told you so
:p

It will not be NIF or ITER, these are experimental projects designed to prove that the technology works, which we now know yes, it does work. [..]
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I think ITER is somewhat different to that. NIF was a proof of concept thing, but ITER is further along the road than that. The goal of ITER isn't to prove that the technology works (that was done decades ago). The goal of ITER is q>1. Really >1, i.e. output power greater than the total input power and not just counting a tiny fraction of the input power like NIF. So while ITER is an experimental project, the goal isn't to prove that the technology works but to prove that the technology can produce a net energy gain. A very large net energy gain and on a much larger scale than has been attempted before. The goal is q=10 and a 500MW output. That's a much bigger step than merely reconfirming that the technology works. That's a big step towards proving that the technology can be made into a power station rather than a research facility. Not the whole way (that would require being able to sustain the reaction indefinitely) but a big step towards it.

mrk said:
once ITER goes live I get the feeling they will see progress much much faster than NIF and things will really be heating up withing the fusion space. The late 2020s onwards is really going to be a fantastic time to be alive. First manned mission to Mars, first samples brought back from Mars, new missions to explore Venus/Mercury and some of the proposed water/active moons of Jupiter/Saturn, fusion energy.... Half-Life 3!
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Steady on! You're getting a bit carried away with the optimism at the end there. :)
 
SPG said:
Maybe another way to look at it is, you got ignition from that point on it's just about keeping it ticking over, the initial kick is no longer needed. Ok so you need a separate power plant to fire the baby up but that's a easy thing.
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That got me thinking...does anyone know how the required input power scales with the output power using NIF's approach? You'd need at least 100 times as much output power to make a reasonable power station...so how much input power would that take?
 
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