Nuclear Fusion

[Rhinocrates]

I’ll take that over Malthusian Misrablists forcing us into sackcloth and ashes after cutting off our opposable thumbs and having us kneecapped so to lose our upright and bipedal stance like Greta wants…the Constitution replaced with the Unabomber Manifesto. When you get back to your cave, tell Alley Oop Gore I said hi, honey…

Space Based Solar Power or bust.

You'd be surprised by what James Lovelock thinks of nuclear energy.

 

[publiusr]

He’s great.

 

[Forest Green]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGHuLVagKhA

 

[Justo Miranda]

Can you imagine that ships would have tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean for seventy years without succeeding even once? Can you imagine that the Wright Brothers would have dedicated their entire lives and that of their children and all their money to perfecting an airplane that never flew?

In my opinion, all those scientists who use our tax money in very expensive experiments that do not obtain any practical results are behaving like officials who do not know how to solve a problem that exceeds their capabilities, but continue to move forward to keep their jobs.

Whenever I read something about fusion energy, "it's twenty years away."

Perhaps the time has come to use artificial intelligence and dispense with the services of some scientists pour encourager les autres.

 

[Forest Green]

Can you imagine that ships would have tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean for seventy years without succeeding even once? Can you imagine that the Wright Brothers would have dedicated their entire lives and that of their children and all their money to perfecting an airplane that never flew?

In my opinion, all those scientists who use our tax money in very expensive experiments that do not obtain any practical results are behaving like officials who do not know how to solve a problem that exceeds their capabilities, but continue to move forward to keep their jobs.

Whenever I read something about fusion energy, "it's twenty years away."

Perhaps the time has come to use artificial intelligence and dispense with the services of some scientists pour encourager les autres.

People were sailing ships for a long time before Trans-Atlantic trips were made.

Viking Ships Timeline

Explore the timline of Viking Ships.

www.worldhistory.org

Vikings settled in North America in 1021AD, study says

Scientists say they have precisely dated a camp in Newfoundland, Canada, thanks to a new technique.

www.bbc.co.uk

As for people trying to fly, ditto.

Timeline of Flight - The Dream of Flight | Exhibitions - Library of Congress

A chronology of events related to man's flight from 1000 B.C.E.–2000 A.D.

www.loc.gov

Relatively speaking, people have only just started attempting fusion power.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Can you imagine that ships would have tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean for seventy years without succeeding even once? Can you imagine that the Wright Brothers would have dedicated their entire lives and that of their children and all their money to perfecting an airplane that never flew?

In my opinion, all those scientists who use our tax money in very expensive experiments that do not obtain any practical results are behaving like officials who do not know how to solve a problem that exceeds their capabilities, but continue to move forward to keep their jobs.

Whenever I read something about fusion energy, "it's twenty years away."

Perhaps the time has come to use artificial intelligence and dispense with the services of some scientists pour encourager les autres.

People were sailing ships for a long time before Trans-Atlantic trips were made.

Viking Ships Timeline

Explore the timline of Viking Ships.

www.worldhistory.org

Vikings settled in North America in 1021AD, study says

Scientists say they have precisely dated a camp in Newfoundland, Canada, thanks to a new technique.

www.bbc.co.uk

As for people trying to fly, ditto.

Timeline of Flight - The Dream of Flight | Exhibitions - Library of Congress

A chronology of events related to man's flight from 1000 B.C.E.–2000 A.D.

www.loc.gov

Relatively speaking, people have only just started attempting fusion power.

That is true, but these were not initiatives with a very well-defined purpose financed by the governments and tax payers of the time, as is the case now. I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

 

[publiusr]

There are some spiral designs, yes? The 86' MN tornado had a very intense, single suction vortex just below a bubble of 'vortex breakdown' which could mean that not just magnetics can be looked at-by AI if need be.

 

[Hobbes]

Can you imagine that ships would have tried to cross the Atlantic Ocean for seventy years without succeeding even once? Can you imagine that the Wright Brothers would have dedicated their entire lives and that of their children and all their money to perfecting an airplane that never flew?

In my opinion, all those scientists who use our tax money in very expensive experiments that do not obtain any practical results are behaving like officials who do not know how to solve a problem that exceeds their capabilities, but continue to move forward to keep their jobs.

Whenever I read something about fusion energy, "it's twenty years away."

Perhaps the time has come to use artificial intelligence and dispense with the services of some scientists pour encourager les autres.

Fusion is difficult. When we started working on fusion, it was far beyond the state of the art in several areas, so we started R&D on the pieces we need to achieve fusion. Once one problem is solved, we can tackle the next.
When we started out on this path, we didn't have a good overview of all the problems we'd encounter. This explains the sliding timescale: every time we encounter a new problem, the end date gets pushed further into the future. This should not be surprising, or a cause for concern.

If anything, we're not spending enough money on fusion:

In 1976, the Energy Research and Development Administration, or ERDA–the predecessor to the Department of Energy–published a chart showing various policy and funding options for the magnetic fusion energy research program. Each option, called a Logic,described how the level of funding for the research would determine when practical fusion power would become available. The most aggressive profile, Logic V, proposed that a budget of approximately $600 million per year would put the fusion program on a path to operate a demonstration reactor by 1990. At the other end of the scale, Logic 1, set at a level of about $150 million per year, was the option colloquially described as “fusion never,” because the funding never reached the level where the remaining challenges in fusion could be overcome. The U.S. fusion program has been at that “fusion never” equivalent level, or below, for the past 30 years.

Every fusion experiment so far contributes to our knowledge, advances the state of the art and gets us closer to a practical fusion power plant. If you want results faster, be prepared to increase your investment.

 

[Forest Green]

That is true, but these were not initiatives with a very well-defined purpose financed by the governments and tax payers of the time, as is the case now. I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

The ships were.

 

[Justo Miranda]

That is true, but these were not initiatives with a very well-defined purpose financed by the governments and tax payers of the time, as is the case now. I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

The ships were.

Ships have always been useful but have always been profitable. Now we are talking about expensive experiments like the Great Eastern or the Titanic. I am concerned that this gigantic funding is harming the development of other techniques that are simpler and more effective but less profitable for intermediaries.

 

[Hobbes]

I don't know where you got the idea we're spending 'gigantic' amounts of money on fusion. The actual amount is tiny.

 

[Archibald]

Or maybe we should do it Project PACER - style: Edward Teller's unique way.

"We need thermonuclear civilian power !

"But we can't master thermonuclear fusion except for freakkin' H-bombs. Lasers, Tokamaks ? can't ignite yet. "

"Well then build an H-bomb nuclear power plant, you dummy !"

"Yeah, dude. And how do we do that ?"

"Not complicated. Just detonate an H-bomb into a subterranean lake. The blast will vaporize the water into steam; channel that into turbines - TADAAAAM ! thermonuclear power ! Who needs ITER, really ?"

Edward, you old whacko... more seriously: I do now it was proven to work in theory - but not economically, as aparently they ran into the cost of manufacturing the H-bombs - and more annoyingly, the A-bomb triggers...

 

[Dilandu]

That is true, but these were not initiatives with a very well-defined purpose financed by the governments and tax payers of the time, as is the case now. I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

You can not demand from physical laws. Objective reality is not on your payroll. No matter how do you dislike the idea of falling, it's pointless to threaten to sue the gravity.

 

[Justo Miranda]

I don't know where you got the idea we're spending 'gigantic' amounts of money on fusion. The actual amount is tiny.

1932-2021 research, 20 seconds life

 

[Justo Miranda]

That is true, but these were not initiatives with a very well-defined purpose financed by the governments and tax payers of the time, as is the case now. I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

You can not demand from physical laws. Objective reality is not on your payroll. No matter how do you dislike the idea of falling, it's pointless to threaten to sue the gravity.

That's true but if a team of scientists doesn't get results it can be traded for another, with new ideas or with more luck, that's what you do with sales executives and generals on the battlefield, although I'm not talking about executing them.

 

[Dilandu]

I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

And? You realize, that fusion happened on under extreme conditions, which are pretty hard to achieve - and with such a complex object as plasma, which properties are still not fully understood? Using your analogy -

Can you imagine that the Wright Brothers would have dedicated their entire lives and that of their children and all their money to perfecting an airplane that never flew?

- if each Wrights experiment required airplane capable of flying in Venus conditions, they would still be experimenting.

 

[Dilandu]

That's true but if a team of scientists doesn't get results it can be traded for another, with new ideas or with more luck, that's what you do with sales executives and generals on the battlefield, although I'm not talking about executing them.

There is fundamental difference: physicist are working with something they did not knew or understood, trying to understood it. You could replace as many scientists as you wish, but they still would be unable to square a circle.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Or maybe we should do it Project PACER - style: Edward Teller's unique way.

"We need thermonuclear civilian power !

"But we can't master thermonuclear fusion except for freakkin' H-bombs. Lasers, Tokamaks ? can't ignite yet. "

"Well then build an H-bomb nuclear power plant, you dummy !"

"Yeah, dude. And how do we do that ?"

"Not complicated. Just detonate an H-bomb into a subterranean lake. The blast will vaporize the water into steam; channel that into turbines - TADAAAAM ! thermonuclear power ! Who needs ITER, really ?"

Edward, you old whacko... more seriously: I do now it was proven to work in theory - but not economically, as aparently they ran into the cost of manufacturing the H-bombs - and more annoyingly, the A-bomb triggers...

Or with Heinlein style: atomic typewriter!

 

[Justo Miranda]

That's true but if a team of scientists doesn't get results it can be traded for another, with new ideas or with more luck, that's what you do with sales executives and generals on the battlefield, although I'm not talking about executing them.

There is fundamental difference: physicist are working with something they did not knew or understood, trying to understood it. You could replace as many scientists as you wish, but they still would be unable to square a circle.

Neither the generals nor the executives know what they are doing but it works to change them from time to time for the same reason we do with babies' diapers.

 

[Justo Miranda]

I'm tired of paying, the time has come to demand results.

And? You realize, that fusion happened on under extreme conditions, which are pretty hard to achieve - and with such a complex object as plasma, which properties are still not fully understood? Using your analogy -

Can you imagine that the Wright Brothers would have dedicated their entire lives and that of their children and all their money to perfecting an airplane that never flew?

- if each Wrights experiment required airplane capable of flying in Venus conditions, they would still be experimenting.

In that case, the smart thing to do would be to progress in another direction such as airship balloons until the engineering advances made by others in other parts of the world created the right solutions to continue the work. What they are doing now is how to hit their heads on a wall.

 

[Hobbes]

That's true but if a team of scientists doesn't get results it can be traded for another, with new ideas or with more luck, that's what you do with sales executives and generals on the battlefield, although I'm not talking about executing them.

You do realize there isn't one single team of scientists working on one project, there's a bunch of research going on all around the world? Different approaches are being tried. Research gets published and peer-reviewed so teams can learn from each other's setbacks and mistakes.

Just because there's no huge headline "Fusion breakeven achieved" doesn't mean there's no progress.

 

[Justo Miranda]

That's true but if a team of scientists doesn't get results it can be traded for another, with new ideas or with more luck, that's what you do with sales executives and generals on the battlefield, although I'm not talking about executing them.

You do realize there isn't one single team of scientists working on one project, there's a bunch of research going on all around the world? Different approaches are being tried. Research gets published and peer-reviewed so teams can learn from each other's setbacks and mistakes.

Just because there's no huge headline "Fusion breakeven achieved" doesn't mean there's no progress.

There was already a huge headline when Clinton announced that there was life in the Martian meteorite or when the speed of light was exceeded in the LHC, then come the denials... time passes and everything remains the same. What would happen to one of these scientists if he declared that it is not really possible to do so? There are too many interests in all this. Remember fracking and its political consequences.

 

[Flyaway]

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) announced it has closed on more than $1.8 billion in Series B funding to commercialize fusion energy. This includes capital to construct, commission, and operate SPARC, the world’s first commercially relevant net energy fusion machine. In addition, it will enable the company to begin work on ARC, the first commercial fusion power plant, which includes developing support technologies, advancing the design, identifying the site, and assembling the partners and customers for the future of fusion power.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems Raises $1.8 Billion in Funding to Commercialize Fusion Energy

The world's largest and leading commercial fusion energy company

cfs.energy

 

[Hobbes]

What would happen to one of these scientists if he declared that it is not really possible to do so?

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison

 

[Forest Green]

Ships have always been useful but have always been profitable. Now we are talking about expensive experiments like the Great Eastern or the Titanic. I am concerned that this gigantic funding is harming the development of other techniques that are simpler and more effective but less profitable for intermediaries.

Ships have been around for so long that it's difficult to say whether the earliest attempts were useful or not because nobody here was around back then and history isn't well documented as regards failed attempts at vessels several millennia ago. Early rockets weren't too useful either, neither was the Kettering Bug.

There simply aren't more effective ways. Fusion power isn't just for grid electricity, it's the future of space travel. We'll need to leave here some day and fusion power and beyond is the only way we'll go anywhere beyond this solar system in a sensible length of time.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Ships have always been useful but have always been profitable. Now we are talking about expensive experiments like the Great Eastern or the Titanic. I am concerned that this gigantic funding is harming the development of other techniques that are simpler and more effective but less profitable for intermediaries.

Ships have been around for so long that it's difficult to say whether the earliest attempts were useful or not because nobody here was around back then and history isn't well documented as regards failed attempts at vessels several millennia ago. Early rockets weren't too useful either, neither was the Kettering Bug.

There simply aren't more effective ways. Fusion power isn't just for grid electricity, it's the future of space travel. We'll need to leave here some day and fusion power and beyond is the only way we'll go anywhere beyond this solar system in a sensible length of time.

Imagine a race of intelligent aliens that has evolved into an ocean world, they cannot have technology because they cannot use fire and they lack metals. They know that fire exists because it is produced by underwater volcanoes but they lack the power to do so. We can because we have metals and a surface industry, we know that there is fusion in the sun, but we lack the power to work inside the sun. In my opinion it is not possible to do so with our technological level, but I admit that research can generate useful advances in the control of magnetic fields.

 

[Justo Miranda]

What would happen to one of these scientists if he declared that it is not really possible to do so?

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison

You can fail many times in the attempt to build a light bulb or a phonograph using the inventor's own resources, but it is not the same as building a Tokamak using other people's resources.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

Attached is a good, easy to follow explanation of the significant development challenges facing a practical fusion power plant, in particular the problem of gain;- with fifty years work a gain of just over one has been demonstrated for a slow pulsed process……. A practical system will need a gain of 30.

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U


This seems to be another good subject for defrauding investors as the technical claims can be made to look very plausible despite being totally irrelevant to delivering a product.

Lots of people are now selling impossible dreams to investors, creating Billion Dollar but alas product-less companies, with no income apart from a spiralling valuation based on investors ignorance of what’s really required …… a big crash on the way when passing time exposes the grim reality me thinks.

 

[zen]

Mastering fusion is not just 'another technology', it is equivalent to mastering fire and will have as profound an impact on humanity's future.

 

[Forest Green]

Are we talking about gain in the actual fusion process or the net system though. One interesting solution described in the above video is using deviations in the magnetic field to actually produce the electricity, rather than harvesting the heat via a turbine.

 

[Zoo Tycoon]

Are we talking about gain in the actual fusion process or the net system though.

Here you go, this nice lady will explain it. The gain story appears worse than I thought.

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY

 

[Flyaway]

New promo video from Helion:

View: https://youtu.be/CB8LV9zyeZ8

 

[Orionblamblam]

Edward, you old whacko... more seriously: I do now it was proven to work in theory - but not economically, as aparently they ran into the cost of manufacturing the H-bombs - and more annoyingly, the A-bomb triggers...

A-bombs are only expensive because they are built in such small numbers, a few hundred to low thousands per design. For an H-bomb powerplant, you'll probably set off several to several hundred per *day.* And part of the standard process will be to recycle and filter the water, recovering a good amount of fissionables. And one of the byproducts of this will be to place non-fissionable materials near the A/H-bomb, hit them *real* hard with a flood of neutrons, and convert a good fraction of said material into weapons-grade fissionables. Suddenly your powerplant also makes more A-bomb triggers. Huzzah!

One way to do this: dissolve depleted uranium in water. Whether metallic uranium dust, or uranium oxide, or some other form, dunno. Suspend your H-bomb in the middle of a vast underground cavity. Don't fill the cavity with water, but with *rain,* showering down from above. And even then, carefully calibrate and time the sprinklers: the sprinklers directly over the bomb release a specific "spurt" of uranium-water. As that shower of U-water passes the bomb... blammo. The neutrons from the bomb hit the uranium, converting some amount of it to plutonium. The plutonium and unconverted uranium is captured and processed; the rest of the "rain" in the chamber flashes to steam, runs turbines, passes through heat exchangers, gets recycled. Unconverted uranium gets fed back in.

The non-uranium water might be "tainted" with carbon black or some such to aid absorption of light, but I don't know that it'd make a whole lot of difference. Other materials could be added to the rain or the bomb casing to generate other useful isotopes.

 

[Nik]

Harking back to when fusion power, from a 'stellarator in your cellar', was reckoned but a decade or two away, as was AI, the snag was getting some fusion neutrons turned out to be real-easy. Too easy, in fact, just 'Science Fair' tech, Getting any-where near the density-temperature 'product' where fusion becomes 'positive balance', never mind self-sustaining, turned out to be horrendously harder. I've seen analogies made between the BCE-ish Aeolipile and the steam turbine, with detour via Watt's clunky whatsits...

Aeolipile - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The laser/beam induced fusion approach also had a long history of false dawns. Remember BIS' Daedalus ? Its zapped-pellet pulsed-fusion propulsion ? Rather than Orions' mini-bomb thrower ??

IIRC, the Daedalus team took advice from eg Culham on bang-stuff, made what seemed reasonable extrapolations...

Tangential, I'm told there's still on-going research into 'Cold Fusion', usually by other names, and perhaps some-one will figure WTF was actually happening.

My feeling is 'commercial fusion power' will need a hybrid approach. Already part-way as Tokomaks tend to have lasers, ion-guns etc etc in addition to the mag-systems etc. Akin to a blow-lamp for starting 'Lancashire' boilers, a glow-plug or spark-plug for IC engine...

Snag is I still cannot see more than 'experimental' fusion power delivered to utility grids before mid-century. I hope I'm wrong.

Wild card could be one or more of the 'inertial confinement' approaches. Development of an efficient mu-meson 'factory' would empower that route, and a 'Polywell-ish' design may yet scale unto 'Yay !'
YMMV...

 

[jsport]

Understanding Nazi uranium cubes may help weapons tracking efforts

Washington DC (UPI) Aug 24, 2021 - Researchers are working to uncover the origins of uranium cubes created during World War II as part of nuclear weapons development, tracing some back to German projects, they said during a presentation Tuesday.

www.spacewar.com

 

[jsport]

Confirming the pedigree of uranium cubes from Nazi Germany's failed nuclear program

Atlanta GA (SPX) Aug 25, 2021 - During World War II, Nazi Germany and the U.S. were racing to develop nuclear technology. Before Germany could succeed, Allied forces disrupted the program and confiscated some of the cubes of urani

www.spacewar.com

 

[Flyaway]

A 24-year-old nuclear-fusion record has crumbled. Scientists at the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, announced on 9 February that they had generated the highest-ever sustained energy from fusing together atoms, more than doubling their own record from experiments performed in 1997.

“These landmark results have taken us a huge step closer to conquering one of the biggest scientific and engineering challenges of them all,” said Ian Chapman, who leads the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE), where JET is based, in a statement. JET is owned by the UK Atomic Energy Authority, but it’s scientific operations are run by a European collaboration called EUROfusion.

In an experiment on 21 December 2021, JET’s tokamak produced 59 megajoules of energy over a fusion ‘pulse’ of five seconds, more than double the 21.7 megajoules released in 1997 over around four seconds. Although the 1997 experiment still retains the record for ‘peak power’, it was over a fraction of a second and its average power then was less than half that of today, says Fernanda Rimini, a plasma scientist at the CCFE who oversaw the latest experimental campaign. The improvement took 20 years of experimental optimization, as well as hardware upgrades that included replacing the tokamak’s inner wall to waste less fuel, she says.

JET’s latest experiment sustained a Q value of 0.33 for five seconds,

Nuclear-fusion reactor smashes energy record

The experimental Joint European Torus has doubled the record for the amount of energy made from fusing atoms — the process that powers the Sun.

www.nature.com

 

[Grey Havoc]

Britain takes 'huge step' towards nuclear fusion power

Oxfordshire facility conducts record-breaking experiment, raising hopes that clean energy could be a reality in 10-20 years' time

www.telegraph.co.uk

Major breakthrough on nuclear fusion energy

A lab in Oxfordshire takes a big step towards harnessing the energy source of the stars.

www.bbc.com

 

[Flyaway]

Helion has a new video out. It gives a few more details about how their device works:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlNfP3iywvI

 

[Flyaway]

Are We Finally on the Road to Fusion Power?

View: https://youtu.be/tLBxZZ5rqKg