Big announcement about fusion energy coming soon (Dec-2022)

[swampwiz]

https://nypost.com/2022/12/12/us-set-to-announce-major-fusion-energy-breakthrough/

The US Department of Energy is set to reveal a “major scientific breakthrough” this week after scientists were reportedly able to produce a fusion reaction that created a net energy gain for the first time.

The development — a major milestone in the pursuit of limitless clean energy — was made recently at the government-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, sources told the Washington Post.

The net gain reaction, which is considered to be a “holy grail” of zero-carbon power, is a major step towards being able to create a technology one day that could offer a clean and virtually limitless supply of energy.

 

[Trying2Learn]

OK, if this were to pan out and become a viable source of energy, what would that do to all the schools now currently investing in hydrogen-energy research?

 

[Astronuc]

https://nypost.com/2022/12/12/us-set-to-announce-major-fusion-energy-breakthrough/

It's merely an announcement that there will be an announcement. We await the claims and details.

what would that do to all the schools now currently investing in hydrogen-energy research?

Hydrogen research will continue.

 

[geordief]

It is only a breakthrough at the beginning of the path of development.

God only knows how long it will take before it can make a contribution towards providing clean carbon free energy.

As they say ,don't give up on the day job.

Let us cut down on (cut out) carbon et al emitting technologies as our immediate priority or we may eventually have nuclear fusion but no planet or human civilisation for it to benefit.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It's merely an announcement that there will be an announcement.

That's bold. To jump straight into the announcement announcement without a pre-announcement.

If this is an announcement of reaching the output exceeds the input milestone,. the real breakthrough goes back to August of last year, when they went from single digit percentages to 70%. 70 to 100 is less dramatic. It's a milestone, sure, but one that was bound to happen sooner or later.

 

[berkeman]

when they went from single digit percentages to 70%

But 70% of what?

 

[dlgoff]

Wow. I just heard this on the TV news:
The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain.
See: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/11/fusion-nuclear-energy-breakthrough/

oops I didn't see that there is already a thread about this:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/big-announcement-about-fusion-energy-coming-soon.1048101/

 

[PeterDonis]

oops I didn't see that there is already a thread about this:
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/big-announcement-about-fusion-energy-coming-soon.1048101/

The other thread by @dlgoff on this topic has just been merged into this one.

 

[Frabjous]

The other thread by @dlgoff on this topic has just been merged into this one.

Fusion?

 

[PeterDonis]

Fusion?

That was its title before I merged it, yes.

 

[Frabjous]

That was its title before I merged it, yes.

or fused the threads

 

[PeterDonis]

or fused the threads

Yes. Fortunately I didn't need to use huge lasers to do it--I'd hate to melt my computer.

 

[mesa]

I'm not holding my breath. The NiF has a history of talking about 'breakthroughs' in fusion to the media, for example:
https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-breakthrough-nif-uh-not-really
Where is the PEER REVIEWED publication for this announcement?

 

[nsaspook]

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...m-the-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory/
expert reaction to reports of advance in nuclear fusion from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

“Although positive news, this result is still a long way from the actual energy gain required for the production of electricity. That’s because they had to use 500 MJ of energy into the lasers to deliver 1.8 MJ to the target – so even though they got 2.5 MJ out, it’s still far less than the energy they needed for the lasers in the first place. In other words, the energy output (largely heat energy) was still only 0.5% of the input. An engineering target for fusion would be to recover much of the energy used in the process and get an energy gain of double the energy that went into the lasers – it needs to be double because the heat must be converted to electricity and you lose energy that way.
...
“Therefore we can say that this result from NIF is a success of the science – but still a long way from providing useful, abundant, clean energy.”

 

[mesa]

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...m-the-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory/
expert reaction to reports of advance in nuclear fusion from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

That's about what I expected, the NiF is a joke when it comes to fusion claims.

 

[berkeman]

Yes. Fortunately I didn't need to use huge lasers to do it--I'd hate to melt my computer.

Thank goodness. That would be *hugely* inefficient...

 

[russ_watters]

OK, if this were to pan out and become a viable source of energy, what would that do to all the schools now currently investing in hydrogen-energy research?

Hydrogen isn't an energy source (it's a carrier/battery), so a fusion breakthrough would not have any impact on that.

 

[PeterDonis]

Hydrogen isn't an energy source

It would be if we were living on Jupiter and could mine it from the atmosphere...

 

[TeethWhitener]

Yes. Fortunately I didn't need to use huge lasers to do it--I'd hate to melt my computer.

Now that would be worthy of a press release.

 

[pinball1970]

Now that would be worthy of a press release.

So to recap then, is this looking like it is a big deal? This reads like a big deal

"These results if true, are the first time in history that the fusion community have output more energy from the reaction than they put in."

I thought that was the biggest hurdle?

 

[pinball1970]

But 70% of what?

Nuclear energy.

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...uclear-fusion-a-role-in-the-climate-emergency

The "long sought after goal" (net gain) mentioned in the guardian article is goal reached in the latest announcement.

 

[topsquark]

(XKCD)

-Dan

 

[pinball1970]

When you find something that could be really good news, so much so that it could quite literally save the planet and be the next huge leap in human technology.

...but then find out it probably isnt.

 

[gmax137]

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/...m-the-lawrence-livermore-national-laboratory/
expert reaction to reports of advance in nuclear fusion from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Sounds like practical use of fusion might have gone from 30 years away to 29 years...

That's actually quite good news since it's been stuck at 30 for the past 50.

 

[russ_watters]

So to recap then, is this looking like it is a big deal? This reads like a big deal

It's a milestone of sorts in that it is a round number if you calculate it a certain way (1-1=0 if you ignore a bunch of other stuff) but it does absolutely nothing to bring us closer to fusion electricity. It isn't even on a path/timeline toward fusion electricity, so If anything it puts us further away if it redirects money away from projects that could move down the timeline.

 

[russ_watters]

Interestingly, this is currently the top story on CNN's website and has five additional supporting articles, but doesn't even appear on USA Today's homepage. The literal bottom line (last line of the last article):

“This will not contribute meaningfully to climate abatement in the next 20-30 years,” Friedmann said. “This the difference between lighting a match and building a gas turbine.”

 

[Astronuc]

LLNL’s experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by delivering 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output, demonstrating for the first time a most fundamental science basis for inertial fusion energy (IFE).

https://www.llnl.gov/news/national-ignition-facility-achieves-fusion-ignition

What is missing from the press release is the energy used to produce the 2.05 MJ, which apparently was on the order of 500 MJ (maybe more), as was alluded to in an earlier post.
See - https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...usion-energy-coming-soon.1048101/post-6831122

So yes, the achieved some net gain over the energy deposited in the Hohlraum, but a tiny fraction of the energy required to produced 2.05 MJ using 192 lasers. Assuming the energy is thermal, it would still need to be converted to useful electrical energy at a meaningful rate.

Current power reactors produce 0.9 - 1.2 GWe ( 900 - 1200 MW, or 900 - 1200 MJ/s) from 2.9-3.6 GWt. A power reactor based on IFE looks unattainable.

The announcement is a disappointment for a number of reasons.

 

[TeethWhitener]

If only they could somehow combine it with the wormhole the Caltech people just created…

 

[bob012345]

This is the kind of breakthrough that should have been achieved in the 1970's. What happened? It probably didn't help that there is no real pressure to succeed beyond the next funding cycle and publishing deadline. We're always hearing grand pronouncements about the future energy needs being met by fusion but then put the work in the hands of research groups. ITER isn't a serious fusion program, it's an international diplomacy program in my view.

Fortunately there are a number of startups and private groups working to make fusion practical.

 

[Astronuc]

A more honest assessment.

“We got out 3.15 megajoules, we input 2.05 megajoules in the laser,” said Mark Herrmann, who is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s program director for weapon physics and design, in an expert panel discussion that followed the announcement. “That’s never been done before in any fusion laboratory anywhere in the world.”

But, he added, the output was about 1% of the electricity used.

“I want to be clear, ultimately this experiment drew about 300 megajoules from the grid,” Herrmann said. “The laser wasn’t designed to be efficient. This laser was designed to give us as much juice as possible to make these incredible conditions happen in the laboratory. There are many, many steps that would have to be made to get to inertial fusion as an energy source.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/energy-d...-could-revolutionize-the-world-165844246.html

I'll wait for the data. I suspect the electrical input was considerably greater than 300 MJ.

 

[pinball1970]

If only they could somehow combine it with the wormhole the Caltech people just created…

I'm thinking Faraday or 1905 and 1945, the first computer - expensive, large, slow, ugly and unwieldy, not good for much besides Mark 2.

 

[bob012345]

In my view the NIF is a nuclear weapons research facility loosely disguised as a fusion research program and this is part of the PR to justify its existence. If the claim is that this concept will soon bring about commercial fusion it's deceptive advertising. If the claim is that this breakthrough proves some other concept will be practical that's also untenable.

NIF as an energy source makes solar power satellites look good.

 

[russ_watters]

ITER isn't a serious fusion program, it's an international diplomacy program in my view.

Did you mean NIF? This announcement is about NIF, which is a purely American enterprise. ITER, the international project, is believed to be on a path to viable fusion electricity. It's not the last step though, its successor is.

...though ITER appears to suffer similar hype/obfuscation of goals issue as NIF.

 

[bob012345]

Did you mean NIF? This announcement is about NIF, which is a purely American enterprise. ITER, the international project, is believed to be on a path to viable fusion electricity. It's not the last step though, its successor is.

...though ITER appears to suffer similar hype/obfuscation of goals issue as NIF.

Some of the pre-announcement articles led me to believe this was going to be about a tokamak in the UK. But my comment about ITER is my conviction after following the program for decades. It started out with great promise but the aims were downgraded over the years. It sucks the bounty of global fusion money and is the poster child of a big government research program. The concepts comes out of the 1970's. Yes, they do upgrade the technology over time but they are basically stuck in the past.

I am convinced practical fusion will happen but probably not through ITER or NIF or any other large public government research program. Probably through one of the many smaller, nimble new corporate or private concepts being actively pursued.

I will say ITER would have a chance if Elon Musk bought them out, fired most of the researchers (keep the engineers and technicians), brought on fresh people and focused the program on results.

 

[pinball1970]

It's a milestone of sorts in that it is a round number if you calculate it a certain way (1-1=0 if you ignore a bunch of other stuff) but it does absolutely nothing to bring us closer to fusion electricity. It isn't even on a path/timeline toward fusion electricity, so If anything it puts us further away if it redirects money away from projects that could move down the timeline.

It is certainly headline news. If they put my taxes up to fund it I am happy.
I am sure my hard earned money went to places I was not as keen on.