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Post by wvengineer on Dec 15, 2022 22:35:15 GMT
Scientist at National Ignition Facility claim to have produced the first net profitable fusion reaction. Using 2.05 MJ of laser power, they were able to get 3.15 MJ of energy out of it. The 1.1Mj is about as much energy as a sick of dynamite. www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthroughPardon me if I am a bit skeptical. How many major breakthroughs have we had that turned out to be duds? Cold fusion in the 90's. It was deliberately faked. EM drive? Miss-understanding of reaction with the earth's magnetic field. Faster than light at CERN, cable setup error. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Dec 16, 2022 0:13:16 GMT
They are going to have to do a lot better than one M Joule . Like maybe 1 million times better. We have literally spent billions on fusion research and never seem to have much to show for it. Wonder where we would be if they put that kind of money into improving fission reactors.
I believe the answer to our energy problem is SMR’s (small modular reactors.). They can be mass produced in a factory and shipped where they need to go by truck. They are intrinsically safe and the nuclear waste can be easily recycled.
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Post by the light works on Dec 16, 2022 2:25:28 GMT
even just recycling waste, which can be done with traditional reactors, would be an improvement on our current models.
but yeah, controlled fusion is way far away from mature.
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Post by wvengineer on Dec 16, 2022 17:22:15 GMT
I was doing some additional reading on this and yeah, it is a deceptive article. They state it took 2.05MJ of laser energy to get this reaction. What they left out is it took 400Mj of power from the grid to generate that 2.05MJ of laser energy. So yeah, not so net positive after all. Not to mention the fuel pellet that was used itself was very complicated to build. So yeah, while it may be progress, we are still nowhere near fusion power being a thing. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/department-of-energy-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-nif-livermore/672439/In the end, not much to see here. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Dec 17, 2022 1:04:52 GMT
I was doing some additional reading on this and yeah, it is a deceptive article. They state it took 2.05MJ of laser energy to get this reaction. What they left out is it took 400Mj of power from the grid to generate that 2.05MJ of laser energy. So yeah, not so net positive after all. Not to mention the fuel pellet that was used itself was very complicated to build. So yeah, while it may be progress, we are still nowhere near fusion power being a thing. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/department-of-energy-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-nif-livermore/672439/In the end, not much to see here. There was some concern that the National Ignition Facility could actually create a black hole. I believe it has. One for money. |
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