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

[Grim5]

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.

Yea in the Q&A they did say that

But to be fair as they said, the lasers they are using are 40 years old and when they were built it was to simply output the most power humanly possible, this is entirely an experiment at any cost, profit is not considered simply proving the concept matters.

Now that they know how to do it, only now will they work on building a new reactor using efficient modern lasers, and cheaper efficient materials etc. apart from that, size matters - in the Q&A they said they've calculated that they could create a reaction using more of the DT fuel where it's able to output more power than the lasers used, even using these old inefficient lasers


Watch the video below, but for reference the lasers they use consume 300MJ at the wall, but due to how inefficient they are they only output 2MJ of energy, the DT fuel was ignited and produced 3MJ of energy. The laser they are using is only 0.6% efficient and they said there are already systems with lasers that have 20% efficiency which means by just replacing the lasers with new ones they would get wall consumption down from 300MJ to 10MJ and they aren't stopping there, there will be investment money flowing in from allnover now they make even better lasers. And it's not just lasers, this ignition reaction had an energy creation ratio of 1.5 and they can get that ratio higher by improving materials and the way the DT fuel is created


In the video below they talk a lot about nuclear weapons; apparently this experiment isn't just good for generating electricity, it can also be used to do nuclear bomb testing without doing explosions or releasing radiation and that hasn't been possible before so one of the big benefits is you can better store and make sure that your nuclear bombs are going to perform when needed which they currently don't know because some of these bombs are decades old and due to treaties they can't test any of them

 

[SPG]

Does anyone know what temperature it reached at ignition ?

 

[Grim5]

Does anyone know what temperature it reached at ignition ?

Just over 100 million degrees Celsius

 

[SPG]

******* hell stunning.

 

[Angilion]

******* hell stunning.

Quite low for fusion, presumably because there's pressure involved too. JET runs at 150 million degrees. For comparison, the core of the sun is ~15 million C (which is enough because of the huge pressure).

A common first thought is that it would be catastrophically dangerous if confinement failed. 100+ million degrees C certainly sounds mind-bogglingly dangerous. It's not, though. Not in this context. The temperature is enormous but the mass is tiny, so the amount of heat energy isn't as much as might be expected from the temperature. Confinement failure would cause minor damage to the internal shielding in the reaction chamber itself, nothing more.

Practical fusion would be such a game-changer. It would be problem solved, basically. No emissions, energy security for everywhere using locally sourced and very cheap fuel, no possibility of weapons proliferation, extremely high safety because everything is inherently failsafe. The only safety issue is that the easiest fusion reactions indirectly result in a slow accumulation of small amounts of low level radioactive waste and even that's theoretically avoidable.

 

[Angilion]

I thought this was interesting, although it lacks key information.

What's missing is information such as how much energy it uses and how much it produces and how they intend to make the latter bigger than the former. Can it scale, either directly in size or by using multiple units? Key information.

One interesting thing that was a bit glossed over was that they claim to have a viable way to produce Helium-3 in quantity. Tokamaks can be (and have been) run with a deuterium and Helium-3 mix and it has advantages. The scarcity of Helium-3 is why it hasn't been seriously considered for practical fusion yet.

 

[mrk]

60 minutes did an ep:

 

[ChroniC]

I'll happily watch it ASAP but I wonder if they will mention that whilst the energy to start the reaction was less than the output, the energy used to make the pellet was significantly higher than the total output.

I appreciate this is a proof of theory and apparently they can make the energy usage more efficient, but this might be the goose that laid the golden egg just yet.

 

[mrk]

60 Minutes video I posted mentions all factors yes. Probably the only mass media outlet that has basically covered all bases and leaves the viewer to make their own mind up by the end. It's the most thorough I have ever seen from such an outlet and all covered in relatively short time too lol.

Also keep in mind that this is all related to NIF's experiment, they are using laser confinement using laser tech from the 1980s. All private firms of which there are loads now working on fusion, are using the very latest tech and will pretty much 100% hit bigger milestones way ahead of NIF.

 

[LostCorpse]

there is other technology in the imidiate term that could solve much of the energy crisis. but a lot of it is bearied in red tape politics and big companies

 

[ChroniC]

there is other technology in the imidiate term that could solve much of the energy crisis. but a lot of it is bearied in red tape politics and big companies

Such as?

 

[LostCorpse]

Such as?

would thorium reactors not be something to look into? research abandoned because it didnt creat nuclear weapon grade materials.

 

[D.P.]

Such as?

Renewable energy can already do that with current technology and a ROI of 6 years , construction tile within 10 years.

Switching The World To Renewable Energy Will Cost $62 Trillion, But The Payback Would Take Just 6 Years - CleanTechnica

Mark Jacobson and his team have published renewable energy study in which they argue the payback time is just 6 years.

www.cleantechnica.com

This is why both Fission and Fusion research and investment is just wasted money.

 

[Malevolence]

there is other technology in the imidiate term that could solve much of the energy crisis. but a lot of it is bearied in red tape politics and big companies

You can't just post a comment like that without telling us exactly what technology you know is being hidden.

 

[LostCorpse]

You can't just post a comment like that without telling us exactly what technology you know is being hidden.

i never said anything about being hidden. just delayed / slowed / shelved / adandoned.
look at how long renewable energy has taken to get to were it is now.
look at when thorium reactors were first investigated and then shelved.
look at what companies tried to stop these technologies and now investing in them.
technology ignored infavour of weapons. expediaence or profites <- the way of the world.
its criminal the waste of the wind turbines once they reach there enf og life age and just left to rot instead of looking at better ways to use them, re-design them or reuse them.

i am indeed hoping fusion comes along but it seems a few decades away, when we could have more imidate options available to cover shortfull untill it does.
we may have acheived a 5sec burn time or 30seconds for Korean (i've seen people question this) but thats not close to what we would actually need for production, its just a step in the right direction.
we are still looking at something like an estimation of 2060s / 2070s 40-50years away when we should also be looking at intermidate short term and alterantives not just hoping fusion works.

 

[ChroniC]

Renewable energy can already do that with current technology and a ROI of 6 years , construction tile within 10 years.

Switching The World To Renewable Energy Will Cost $62 Trillion, But The Payback Would Take Just 6 Years - CleanTechnica

Mark Jacobson and his team have published renewable energy study in which they argue the payback time is just 6 years.

www.cleantechnica.com

This is why both Fission and Fusion research and investment is just wasted money.

It can't though... It's a proven fact that we don't have the battery technology to keep up with usage. No energy generation during the night and barely any during winter when we have low light and constant clouds.
That leaves wind and that's irratic.l and unreliable. It would be fine if we could store excess but we can't.

The nation grid is 30% or so renewable and always backed up by gas and coal.

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

grid.iamkate.com

Today for instance Wind was strong, 45% is way more than I've ever seen, but there are days where there is no solar and barely any wind... What do you propose we do then?

Fusion is fine for the future but we really really need to sort batteries.

 

[D.P.]

It can't though... It's a proven fact that we don't have the battery technology to keep up with usage. No energy generation during the night and barely any during winter when we have low light and constant clouds.
That leaves wind and that's irratic.l and unreliable. It would be fine if we could store excess but we can't.

The nation grid is 30% or so renewable and always backed up by gas and coal.

National Grid: Live

Shows the live status of Great Britain’s electric power transmission network

grid.iamkate.com

Today for instance Wind was strong, 45% is way more than I've ever seen, but there are days where there is no solar and barely any wind... What do you propose we do then?

Fusion is fine for the future but we really really need to sort batteries.

Try actually reading the original source paper and all your unfounded questions will be answered

 

[Rimsy]

Try actually reading the original source paper and all your unfounded questions will be answered

That source paper contains an awful lot of caveats and assumptions about the general population shifting their behaviours in a pretty significant way for his vision to actually work.
It's hardly bullet proof.

 

[D3K]

This is why both Fission and Fusion research and investment is just wasted money.

What nonsense. Fusion is the holy grail for energy production.

 

[ChroniC]

Try actually reading the original source paper and all your unfounded questions will be answered

I mean I know your not a rocket scientist but do the math and come up with your own assumption rather than pedelling crap.
The article suggest we would only need small batteries.
Let's take a real world usage, to prove that to be complete toss. The largest battery storage device on earth is the being built at them moment to be 1.6GW.

How in the world are we gona get from a huge shortfall on days of low renewable by 50x
The answer was Nuclear but its too late now, to slow to build, and vilified.

That article is too vague to be true.