Apparent breakthrough in nuclear fusion silenced by shutdown

yorkshirelad
reply to post by FryEvans

 

It's taken 50 years and trillions of dollars (worldwide) to get to a point where the net energy at the point of ignition is larger than the "ignition" beam but is still less than the gross (ie total) energy of the "plant".

What a phenomenal waste of money.....well actually not quite. It is trillions of dollars spent on nuclear research which can no longer be done via underground bombs......This is why this farce continues.

If the same money was invested in alternate technology western homes could be self sufficient by now with micro generation into the grid. Please don't feed me the intermittent excuse B.S. You handle that by storing the energy. Please don't give me the batteries are expensive B.S. excuse. We can store energy as potential energy, they are called lakes up a mountain !

We have the solutions we don't have politicians with a pair of...

It almost sounds like you are saying that this issue is sarcasm, despite being real and it was actually meant to be a weapon all along.

AmIrite?

maybe I am just very tired.

grey580
reply to post by FryEvans

 

I find this highly irregular.

They fired 192 lasers and got more out than they put in?

I'm skeptical.

No, although that is the goal and it's possible.

They got more out than hit the fuel. There is loss though between firing the laser and the amount of power that hits the fuel. So their total output was less than total input.

CalibratedZeus
reply to post by grey580

 

This has happened before, where they fired the lasers for a split second and for the split second got more power output than used to fire the lasers.

No. That has never happened, and it did not happen here.

This is the first time this has happened .. which is more power out than hit the fuel. The total amount of power out was still less than the total amount of power in.

thruthseek3r

pavil
reply to post by FryEvans

 

But how do you sell or package unlimited energy????

That is the beautiful part of it, you don't free energy for everybody as it should always have been.



Thruthseek3r

This is not free energy. It has a cost associated with it that you will be paying. It could even be more expensive.

yorkshirelad
reply to post by FryEvans

 

It's taken 50 years and trillions of dollars (worldwide) to get to a point where the net energy at the point of ignition is larger than the "ignition" beam but is still less than the gross (ie total) energy of the "plant".

Source that. You are full of crap. It has not cost trillions. The NIF has cost about 1% of that.

OccamsRazor04

yorkshirelad
reply to post by FryEvans

 

It's taken 50 years and trillions of dollars (worldwide) to get to a point where the net energy at the point of ignition is larger than the "ignition" beam but is still less than the gross (ie total) energy of the "plant".

Source that. You are full of crap. It has not cost trillions. The NIF has cost about 1% of that.

Indeed, the US apparently has only put a small fraction into Fusion research @22 billion.

There have also been significant developments in research into inertial confinement fusion. Construction of the $7 billion National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) , funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration, was completed in March 2009 and the first attempts at ignition have been made. LLNL announced in July 2012 that in "an historic record-breaking laser shot, the NIF laser system of 192 beams delivered more than 500 TW of peak power and 1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to its (2mm diameter) target" for a few trillionths of a second. The Laser Mégajoule in France's Bordeaux region iwas expected to be completed in 2010 with first experiments the following year.

world-nuclear.org...

ITER still comes in as top dog in cost and scope and the numbers are truly staggering. Although I don't think they have come even close to paying into their full budget, from what I am reading it is high.

www.iter.org...

ITER has a total capped budget of 6 trillion euros? Circa 2008

Europe’s contribution to ITER through Fusion for Energy (F4E) represents 45 % of the cost of ITER construction, with a total capped budget of 6 600 M€2008

Noted however, the only figures around for actual money spent so far has it in the billions, you have to take into account a lot of the numbers are projections which see nearly 50 years into the future.

www.iterbusinessforum.com...

And there is a project in the works for another trillion dollar reactor:

K-DEMO

In collaboration with the US Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New Jersey and South Korea’s National Fusion Research Institute (NFRI) K-DEMO is intended to be the next step toward commercial reactors from ITER, and would be the first plant to actually contribute power to an electric grid. According to the PPPL, it would generate "some 1 billion watts of power for several weeks on end", a much greater output than ITER's goal of producing 500 million watts for 500 seconds by the late 2020s. K-DEMO is expected to have a 6.65m diameter major radius tokamak, and a test blanket module as part of the DEMO breeding blanket R&D. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology plans to invest about KRW 1 trillion (US$ 941 million) in the project. About KRW 300 billion of that spending has already been funded. The government expects the project to employ nearly 2,400 people in the first phase, which will last throughout 2016. K-DEMO is expected to have an initial operational phase from about 2037 to 2050 to develop components for the second stage, which would produce electricity.

world-nuclear.org...

-

In short, I have not seen any credible source to suggest trillions have been spent (since this date) on fusion research.

reply to post by grey580

I find this highly irregular.

They fired 192 lasers and got more out than they put in?

I'm skeptical.

They fired the lasers at a small container of hydrogen fuel and fused enough to release more energy than they put into the lasers.

reply to post by boncho


Exactly. Then add in the fact this is about weapons as much as energy and it really becomes much more affordable.

It could basically amount to a "free" (as in the technology is free) source of energy production, as the money was spent on military research and energy production is a "free" byproduct.

Galileo400
reply to post by grey580

 

I find this highly irregular.

They fired 192 lasers and got more out than they put in?

I'm skeptical.

They fired the lasers at a small container of hydrogen fuel and fused enough to release more energy than they put into the lasers.

How many times must it be said? Once again .. this is incorrect.

More energy was released than hit the fuel. Due to inefficiencies in the system the full amount of power does not make it to the fuel. LESS energy was produced than was used to power the lasers.

FryEvans

BBC News - Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

BBC Knows Something...

This is definitively international.

"The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world."

The experiment data needs to be made public, for verification or disproof. Please fill out a petition to ensure this happens.

Petition Timer

Blank Petition Form

They can't deny everyone...

reply to post by FryEvans


Your post makes no sense. Literally. You obviously did not read the thread.

pavil
reply to post by FryEvans

 

But how do you sell or package unlimited energy????

Easy. No problem at all. It's not like Joe Snuffy can go build an ICF plant in his backyard.

AbleEndangered
There are 2 high energy yielding laser experiments.

The other was a boron laser

Not at all. It's a Boron 11-proton fusion reaction. Not a boron laser. There is a huge difference.

pavil

thruthseek3r

pavil
reply to post by FryEvans

 

But how do you sell or package unlimited energy????

That is the beautiful part of it, you don't free energy for everybody as it should always have been.



Thruthseek3r

You're so cute....... you actually believe that..........

Ask Tesla how that worked out.

Tesla did not have the benefit of the interwebz to spread the word to every man, woman, and child not living in a remote jungle. If so, we would all be powering our homes with our Tesla coils.

Cuervo

pavil

thruthseek3r

pavil
reply to post by FryEvans

 

But how do you sell or package unlimited energy????

That is the beautiful part of it, you don't free energy for everybody as it should always have been.



Thruthseek3r

You're so cute....... you actually believe that..........

Ask Tesla how that worked out.

Tesla did not have the benefit of the interwebz to spread the word to every man, woman, and child not living in a remote jungle. If so, we would all be powering our homes with our Tesla coils.

Well, lucky you, you do have the interwebz, power away with your Tesla coils!

I know the world is coming to an end the one day an energy thread on ATS can go two pages with a completely useless reference to Tesla being posted.

-sigh-

OccamsRazor04

Cuervo

pavil

thruthseek3r

pavil
reply to post by FryEvans

 

But how do you sell or package unlimited energy????

That is the beautiful part of it, you don't free energy for everybody as it should always have been.



Thruthseek3r

You're so cute....... you actually believe that..........

Ask Tesla how that worked out.

Tesla did not have the benefit of the interwebz to spread the word to every man, woman, and child not living in a remote jungle. If so, we would all be powering our homes with our Tesla coils.

Well, lucky you, you do have the interwebz, power away with your Tesla coils!

I have more respect for you than to think you actually missed my point intentionally but I'll reword it for clarity. I was speaking to the typical response that's given every time something like this comes out like "It will never be allowed to get to the public" or "He gonna git kilt!"

We no longer have that excuse. If a private party came out with free or near free energy, the world would know. If it falls off the radar and the inventor is still living, obviously it didn't work. I have long held the belief that free energy, anti-gravity, and other crazy inventions will be discovered (or disproved) by shade tree mechanics on Youtube (or ATS, heh) and not by university or government scientists.

boncho
I know the world is coming to an end the one day an energy thread on ATS can go two pages with a completely useless reference to Tesla being posted.

-sigh-

Apparently you've never played Red Alert. Tesla coils fry the enemies like a fly zapper. What's funny is that game was made before everybody's assumptions of Tesla free energy came in and the faction that has Tesla coils actually power their army with nuclear power plants. So... yeah, the "Tesla invented unlimited safe free energy" thing wasn't always so much a part of conspiracy pop culture.

I think people bring him up mainly because of his strange history and connections. For all we know, his "suppressed" technology could have been a weapon that ignites our atmosphere or shrinks everybody's penises. The jump in logic that it immediately has to do with free energy has always seemed off to me.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04

OccamsRazor04
How many times must it be said? Once again .. this is incorrect.

More energy was released than hit the fuel. Due to inefficiencies in the system the full amount of power does not make it to the fuel. LESS energy was produced than was used to power the lasers.

Occam, you are correct; thank you. But, my goal was to help those who thought that they got more energy out of the lasers than they put in; which of course is absurd and is a violation of physics. Also, for the non-science types, the extra energy released in the experiement was not created from nothing. A helium atom weighs less than Four hydrogen atoms. It's this loss of mass that is converted into energy according to the most famous equation in the world, E=mc^2.

Now, before anyone corrects me again, they did not use four "light" hydrogen atoms in the experiment, as in hydrogen atoms with no neutrons, because that would take even more energy input. Instead, they used "heavy" hydrogen with a proton and neutron in the nucleus.

But, a hydrogen atom can be conveted into a neutron by some complicated interactions that changes the proton into a neutron which releases a positron (anti-electron) and some other stuff. The positron then annihilates the electron. This is how four hydrogen atoms with their four electrons can be converted (by a star) into a helium atom with two protons, two neutrons and two electrons.

news.sciencemag.org...

Well they are making progress.