Breaking News: Fusion Energy

[CousinsCowgirl84]

4 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

I'm pretty sure that fusion is self-sustaining if there is enough fusionable matter.  Or the sun as we know it wouldn't exist.

 

the suns fusion is caused by the compression of atoms caused by gravity. No such luck here on earth.

 

4 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

The fact that got more energy out than they put in indicates that they have a self-sustaining process.  That's what they mean by ignition.  Achieving ignition means the process was self-sustaining.  I can't find a source that gives the percentage of their fuel that was consumed, but they are dealing with very small amount of fuel and I would assume that the vast majority of it was consumed.

 

It seems to me they fire the lasers off to accelerate (heat) the atoms, they collide, fusion occurs and energy is released. Once the lasers stop firing the atoms decelerate (cool).

 

 

4 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

 

They got more energy out than they put directly to the fusion reaction.  But that doesn't take into account all of the energy that they had to put in to get the fuel and deliver that energy.  With newer equipment, they could do better, but they are a long way from being net energy producing when you consider the energy/cost to build the equipment and gather the fuel.

 

Yea, I agree that once they get it to work the first time (which they have) it is easier to economize.

[Corcaigh]

This is mostly just puffery. The purpose of the National Ignition Facility (funded by the National Nuclear Security Agency Administration not directly by the Department of Energy who funds commercial fusion research) is to keep nuclear weapons designers and testers employed while there is a test ban in effect - protecting human capital so that they stay in the field while they can’t do what they are experts in.

 

The NIF cost about $3.5Billion and has an annual budget of about $400M.

 

However the DoE is willing to put a few tens of millions into inertial confinement research for commercial fusion power generation which uses the same principle. They separately fund research around magnetic confinement.

 

https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-42-million-inertial-fusion-energy-hubs#:~:text=WASHINGTON%2C D.C. — The U.S. Department,of the Department's researchers into

 

These NIF experiments are a dead-end for commercial fusion power generation. While they are producing a little more energy from fusion reactions than hit the target, several orders of magnitude more energy are required to initiate the experiment. 
 

And each experiment involved a single tiny highly-engineered target. And each experiment produces less energy than a shovel of coal.

 

 

 

Edited December 21, 2023 by Corcaigh

[PeterMP]

48 minutes ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

It seems to me they fire the lasers off to accelerate (heat) the atoms, they collide, fusion occurs and energy is released. Once the lasers stop firing the atoms decelerate (cool).

 

But there's not real reason for the atoms to cool.  The fusion process has generated more energy than the lasers were putting in.  The fusion will generate energy that can accelerate the atoms to cause fusion (until the fuel is consumed).

 

The definition of ignition is that the process is self-sustaining.  That the system is generating more heat than what was provided and that heat is enough to keep fusion going. 

 

"For a commercial fusion reactor, these fusion reactions need to be self-sustaining, meaning that they need to heat the plasma enough to induce additional fusion reactions. This self-sustaining condition is fundamentally what is meant by ignition, says plasma physicist Jeremy Chittenden from Imperial College London. But “it’s really difficult to diagnose directly what’s happening inside the fuel,” he says. So scientists have adopted more practical definitions of ignition based on the outgoing energy from fusion being greater than the incoming energy from external heating sources."

 

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202201/ignition.cfm#:~:text=For a commercial fusion reactor,Chittenden from Imperial College London.

 

When they say they've achieved ignition, they are saying the process is self-sustaining (until the fuel is consumed).

 

In their specific system, they've achieved sustainability.  That doesn't mean their system is at all economical/commercilizable.

Edited December 21, 2023 by PeterMP

[Corcaigh]

28 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

But there's not real reason for the atoms to cool.  The fusion process has generated more energy than the lasers were putting in.  The fusion will generate energy that can accelerate the atoms to cause fusion (until the fuel is consumed).

 

The definition of ignition is that the process is self-sustaining.  That the system is generating more heat than what was provided and that heat is enough to keep fusion going. 

 

"For a commercial fusion reactor, these fusion reactions need to be self-sustaining, meaning that they need to heat the plasma enough to induce additional fusion reactions. This self-sustaining condition is fundamentally what is meant by ignition, says plasma physicist Jeremy Chittenden from Imperial College London. But “it’s really difficult to diagnose directly what’s happening inside the fuel,” he says. So scientists have adopted more practical definitions of ignition based on the outgoing energy from fusion being greater than the incoming energy from external heating sources."

 

https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/202201/ignition.cfm#:~:text=For a commercial fusion reactor,Chittenden from Imperial College London.

 

When they say they've achieved ignition, they are saying the process is self-sustaining (until the fuel is consumed).

 

In their specific system, they've achieved sustainability.  That doesn't mean their system is at all economical/commercilizable.

 

The Lawson Criterion originated in the 50s describes this.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawson_criterion#:~:text=When the rate of production,is said to be ignited.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

38 minutes ago, PeterMP said:

 

But there's not real reason for the atoms to cool.  The fusion process has generated more energy than the lasers were putting in.  The fusion will generate energy that can accelerate the atoms to cause fusion (until the fuel is consumed).

 

yes, but we are trying to harvest the energy. That process would cause cooling because you are taking energy out of the system and using it elsewhere (though if a scenario where we aren’t harvesting energy, you are correct)

 

So I guess the energy we extract has to be less than any energy that is radiated away and is created.

 

 

 

[Corcaigh]

On 12/13/2022 at 8:14 AM, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

That is how a lot of technology works. 
 

https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html

 

Already working on it.

On a rainy weekend I was doing some reading on the current status of various fusion power projects. Lockheed shut this particular one down in 2019 after almost a decade of no real progress.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

26 minutes ago, Corcaigh said:

On a rainy weekend I was doing some reading on the current status of various fusion power projects. Lockheed shut this particular one down in 2019 after almost a decade of no real progress.

Perhaps once Boeing gets their doors figured they can take over for LM…

[Corcaigh]

2 hours ago, CousinsCowgirl84 said:

Perhaps once Boeing gets their doors figured they can take over for LM…

When Lockheed Skunk Works throws in the towel its acceptance that creating a viable fusion reactor is not in the realm of being an engineering problem with current knowledge. We need a big scientific breakthrough.

[CousinsCowgirl84]

5 hours ago, Corcaigh said:

When Lockheed Skunk Works throws in the towel its acceptance that creating a viable fusion reactor is not in the realm of being an engineering problem with current knowledge. We need a big scientific breakthrough.

Or they just found another shiny thing to work on…. Ofc it’s not just an engineering problem. No one said it was. No way to get the scientific breakthrough without working on it though. Thats how science works.

[Corcaigh]

The last experiment at the JET tokamak (which uses large magnetic fields to confine the fusion plasma compared to inertial confinement used by NIF)  in Oxfordshire, UK has been run. Onto the ITER experiment in France which should get going in earnest with full fusion plasmas in 2035 and beyond that the DEMO experiment in around 2050.

 

Maybe commercialization by the end of the century.

 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2415909-uk-nuclear-fusion-reactor-sets-new-world-record-for-energy-output/

[Corcaigh]

Some more good engineering progress out of the KSTAR experiment in Korea, providing good technical input to the ITER experiment in Cadarache France, which should be starting up in the next few years.

 

KSTAR sustained a magnetically confined plasma at over 100 million Kelvin for 48 seconds and operated in H-mode (high confinement) for over 100 seconds.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/01/climate/nuclear-fusion-record-korea-climate-intl/index.html