Laser fusion experiment yields record energy at Lawrence Livermore's National Ignition Facility

reply to post by dominicus


Have they managed to get to the self sustaining stage yet(where they can turn off the lasers)?
And when they acheive that,do they have to keep feeding the deuterium-tritium pellets in?

Also,when it is running properly,would it behave in a similar way to our sun in regards to solar flares(and potentially overload the machine),or have they a way to prevent this from happening?

Interesting stuff.

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


That is exactly the type of things I fear...... Look at fukishima and chernoble, when things go wrong, they go horribly wrong it seems. I think it would be smarter to harness the natural energy of the earth, that is my opinion.

reply to post by TKDRL


Good point-I mean they thought fission reactors would be totally safe and clean,but like you said..Fukushima.
And this tech is essentially about replicating what happens inside a star,so it sounds as though it has at least the potential to be very dangerous if it goes wrong.

I would go with salt pile thorium reactors myself,with a lot of solar banks in the deserts of the world.
Job done,energy for everyone,without the potential catastrophe.
(plus thorium reactors can "digest" stockpiles of spent mox fuel,rendering it safe)
No brainer or what???

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
reply to post by TKDRL

 

Good point-I mean they thought fission reactors would be totally safe and clean,but like you said..Fukushima.
And this tech is essentially about replicating what happens inside a star,so it sounds as though it has at least the potential to be very dangerous if it goes wrong.

I would go with salt pile thorium reactors myself,with a lot of solar banks in the deserts of the world.
Job done,energy for everyone,without the potential catastrophe.
(plus thorium reactors can "digest" stockpiles of spent mox fuel,rendering it safe)
No brainer or what???

It's default is to shut down - you would just have to stop feeding it to halt the process. It also needs to operate at specific pressure levels and temperatures for the process to continue. Unlike fission whereby a runaway reaction can take place - this is not possible with this method to the best of my limited knowledge.

reply to post by UmbraSumus


Thanks Umbra,
That is good to hear-The Thorium salt reactors are similar in that respect,they also cannot go into an uncontrolled reaction/meltdown.

Originally posted by RedGolem
reply to post by UmbraSumus

 

I personaly think this method will stand a greater possibility then the NIF. Still a long ways off but at least it is being built.

I agree. Tremendous promise. Those Tonamak reactors look incredibly futuristic. Some key decisions will have to be finalized regarding ultimate design but they are getting there.

Exciting stuff.

I would love to see megastructures do a documentary on how the potential tech would look like once up and running. Something like they did imagining what it would entail in bridging the berring straight.

The BBC did an interesting documentary on the state of current fusion technology. It was removed for youtube but can be found here if you haven`t seen it yet.
Here is the link:
BBC: Can We Make A Star On Earth ?
Can We Make A Star On Earth ?

Professor Brian Cox takes a global journey in search of the energy source of the future. Called nuclear fusion, it is the process that fuels the sun and every other star in the universe. Yet despite over five decades of effort, scientists have been unable to get even a single watt of fusion electricity onto the grid. Brian returns to Horizon to find out why.

Granted extraordinary access to the biggest and most ambitious fusion experiments on the planet, Brian travels to the USA to see a high security fusion bomb testing facility in action and is given a tour of the world’s most powerful laser.

In South Korea, he clambers inside the reaction chamber of K-Star, the world’s first super-cooled, super-conducting fusion reactor where the fate of future fusion research will be decided. Nuclear fusion is nature’s power source. From the Sun to the most distant stars, the energy that lights up the Universe is released by sticking hydrogen nuclei together to make helium. Since hydrogen is the most abundant element in the Universe, it seems sensible to ask whether we might endeavor to do the same and power ourselves out of our serious energy crisis by building stars on Earth. The problem of course is that stars are big and hot; the Sun is the size of a million Earths, and burns six hundred million tonnes of hydrogen fuel every second.

Originally posted by MDDoxs
reply to post by dominicus

 

Nothing like creating a miniature sun, because nothing bad could come of that

In all seriousness, its a interesting development.

I also agree with the post above, how long before someone decides to drop a self sustaining fusion bomb..

8

Yes and what is even scarier is as they ramp this up is one you start it you can't stop it. There is on switch to stop it. This should scare the hell out of everyone. Get it wrong, way wrong, and you are no longer talking free energy but end of the world stuff, lol.

I agree though we will never see it, Livermore is the R and D arm for the military. Greed will make sure the people never get free energy.

The Bot

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


Yeah, I kinda feel like we should really be harnessing the sun's energy to full potential, before we are messing around trying to create our own "mini suns" with nuclear reactions and such. Imagine what kinda crazy tech we could come up with if the military complex was shut down, and half that money was diverted into energy research

Originally posted by dominicus
It's coming!!!! A world where we no longer rely on fossil fuels.

First you have to wait few decades for them to use this new 'weapon' on civilians and make few thousands of them, because .... just in case

Good find dominicus. I guess that means its about time for aliens to show up like they did when we dropped the a bomb.

reply to post by andy06shake


They're celebrating the fact that they did get a measurable output of about 8kj but it took an input like1.7Mj to achieve that so the overall efficiency is something like 0.5% or less. That's a very long way from break even, let alone overunity but it IS a result indicating fusion if only fleeting.

dlbott

Yes and what is even scarier is as they ramp this up is one you start it you can't stop it.
The Bot

Balderdash. In inertial confinement fusion, you drop in little pellets of fuel, and smack them with a laser. The pellet fuses (they would like that to happen, anyway) and you get a pulse of energy back. Hopefully more than you put in to ignite the fusion reaction in the pellet. You get to keep the difference.

If you want to stop it, don't drop the next pellet. The end.

baburak

Originally posted by dominicus
It's coming!!!! A world where we no longer rely on fossil fuels.

First you have to wait few decades for them to use this new 'weapon' on civilians and make few thousands of them, because .... just in case

It would seem impractical to drop a huge, expensive laser facility on someone, but I guess you would kill a few people that way.

Silcone Synapse
And this tech is essentially about replicating what happens inside a star,so it sounds as though it has at least the potential to be very dangerous if it goes wrong.

Not at all. Stars have huge amounts of fuel to work with. With ICF, you just stop dropping fuel pellets. With a Tokamak, you turn off the external heat and fuel feed. Or drop the magnetic field and let the plasma hit the wall. There's not that much hydrogen in a Tokamak, it's not like it can become some sort of standalone Sun out in Sheboygan or something.

Silcone Synapse
Have they managed to get to the self sustaining stage yet(where they can turn off the lasers)?
And when they acheive that,do they have to keep feeding the deuterium-tritium pellets in?

There is no self-sustaining stage where you turn off the lasers. Each pellet is smacked with a laser pulse, and with any luck, fuses, giving you more energy back than you put in. Maybe. One day.

And each little pellet makes one (1) bang. No pellets, no bang.

NIF isn't supposed to be a production facility, anyway. What they're trying to do is find out how to get ICF to work at all. What are the problems? What secondary effects are preventing this from working? How much energy do you have to put into the thing to get it to work? What's the best pellet design?

On and on. There is just a metric crap ton of research that has to be done, and to do it, you have to have a really trick facility that can meet or exceed the energy and precision that ends up being required. If it's not at least that good, the facility is worthless, since you'll never achieve an end result to optimize.

So, hopefully, NIF is an overkill. They'll work out the bugs, find what you minimally need to pull this off, and THEN it's time to build a test power plant. Because NIF ain't that.

OTOH, if NIF isn't sufficient to do the job, it's an expensive paperweight.

8000 joules---enough energy to power 40 light bulbs for 2 seconds. From 192 lasers? Doesn't sound very promising.

It's never going to work because what they are doing is based on a flawed model for the mechanism behind stars. The electric sun models are more likely correct, that it is why they are using huge amounts of electricity to get their fusion. It will always be a net loss, and they will blindly waste billions more chasing the elusive overunity fusion reaction.
Not much different when they claimed they "created" a "blackhole" at CERN, how much electricity did that failed experiment take?

Tusks
8000 joules---enough energy to power 40 light bulbs for 2 seconds. From 192 lasers? Doesn't sound very promising.

They will get much better results, if they dilate the time
of their entire contraption.

PplVSNWO
It's never going to work because what they are doing is based on a flawed model for the mechanism behind stars. The electric sun models are...

total bollocks. For further reference, see any photo of a thermonuclear explosion. Also, if you've got the time, energy, and money, you can build your own home fusion reactor. It's heinously inefficient, but it'll fuse, and you can use it for a kickass neutron source. Putting the immediate lie to the "electric universe".

At one time, you could cross Daimler's palm with some silver and buy one commercially: