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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe most important fact about the fusion breakthrough story. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS!!!!!
Last edited Sat Dec 17, 2022, 10:29 AM - Edit history (1)
This breakthrough was not done by some egotistical, psychopathic CEO "genius" wearing a black turtleneck while working out of his garage. This discovery was the direct result of government funding and research. This discovery came out of the US Department of Energy, a department that TX Gov Rick Perry wanted to shut down.
https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough
It's critically important for Democrats to champion and highlight the massive humanitarian benefits of government funded research and not let some bullshit CEO myth come in and steal the credit. Educate yourself about the National Ignition Facility & Photon Science and be prepared to discuss it with your family and friends:
https://lasers.llnl.gov/
https://lasers.llnl.gov/about
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Walleye
(44,797 posts)Hoping I live long enough to see woman walk on the moon
rubbersole
(11,221 posts)The missus already thinks she walks on the moo....oh, wait, that's water - not the moon. Sorry, I got confused 😜..
(That will happen before a woman potus, unfortunately.)
Walleye
(44,797 posts)GenXer47
(1,204 posts)the experiment's primary application was nuclear weapons.
For a fusion power plant design, my money's on the stellarator, like the Wendelstein 7x, which will run continuously for 30 minutes:
https://www.science.org/content/article/twisty-device-explores-alternative-path-fusion
Yavin4
(37,182 posts)
Handler
(339 posts)many amazing and useful advancements for our society. I believe this type of research needs to return in strength. Not all advancements need to be driven by profit.
Yavin4
(37,182 posts)Most advancements won't ever be driven by profits. Most major advancements require years of funding research most of which won't ever bear fruit. No profit-driven enterprise can sustain that level of investment without showing a profit.
Handler
(339 posts)
ancianita
(43,307 posts)I got Fusion Magazine for a couple of years back in '77 and '78, the whole of every issue related to testing, reactors, fusion uses and physics stuff; plasma fusion work happened to be the track they were on at that time. So we're looking at decades of dedicated effort and funding.
Maru Kitteh
(31,759 posts)
Humanity is better together.
Shermann
(9,062 posts)It's either a game-changer or a nothingburger. I think the biggest gotcha is that inertial confinement still isn't the most likely path to a commercially viable reactor. So, it is an interesting development, but not a game-changer.
Yavin4
(37,182 posts)Here's the point of my post:
Whether or not this discovery is a game changer, the research behind this is being funded by public spending, not corporations. It's important to remember this because if this discovery does indeed deliver on the results, the benefits will be attributed to some egotistical CEO, not the scientists who did the research which was funded by taxpayers.
Bear Creek
(883 posts)The story of Apple actually Micro Soft are just that stories. The technology was government funded and then handed to them. They were just at the right place at the right time. This is all the time in this country we pay for development. They hand it off to a pal then we get to pay for it again.
DENVERPOPS
(13,003 posts)than the Pharmaceutical Corporations..........
Federally funded development, handed over to a Pharmaceutical Corporation for free, the Corporation makes it and rapes the public on un-fathomable prices. Government + Corporations = Fascism at it's finest............
Yavin4
(37,182 posts)And wonder where these psychopathic assholes come from.
multigraincracker
(37,651 posts)This can not be said enough.
GenThePerservering
(3,367 posts)and know people who worked with Microsoft at the beginning, including people who developed the early 3.X system - the company was still relatively in its infancy - they slept under desks and practically lived in their offices working to develop the earlier OS's. I'm not crazy about Microsoft, definitely not about some of their culture, but I don't think those pioneers would appreciate their hard work and dedication dismissed as being 'handed to them'.
Tommymac
(7,334 posts)It was not a cake walk.
Bear Creek
(883 posts)Was given the technology
cilla4progress
(26,525 posts)he thinks it's a game-changer, so, I might just stick with his evaluation?
Shermann
(9,062 posts)
NNadir
(38,034 posts)...of a poorly educated media.
A cursory understanding of engineering would make it readily understandable that the issue is not the nuclear reaction, but the ability to recover exergy, usable work.
It's unbelievable the press this laboratory finding, interesting though it is, has gotten.
All it will generate is wishful thinking.
Shermann
(9,062 posts)And does any of that cross-pollinate the tokamak efforts?
I'm leaning towards nothingburger as well.
NNadir
(38,034 posts)...that is, pure physics applications. It's definitely useful science in a whole lot of areas, not limited but including electromagnetic optics, specifically laser physics. High powered lasers, I personally believe, are an important technology in giving humanity its increasingly deteriorating chance of not collapsing in an vast tragedy, from climate change and its many effects.
I note that while I certainly support tokamak research, and fusion research in general - I avail myself of the wonderful lectures offered each winter at the Princeton Plasma Physics lab, a few of which are always on fusion - the Tokamak faces the same difficulty, how to make the energy usable.
(Another issue is access to tritium, and I'm not entirely sanguine that they will necessarily be able to breed it with lithium blankets.)
The whole matter, as far at the media goes, reminds me of the once famous Fukushima tuna fish, a finding connected with studying the migration patterns of tuna in the Pacific, that was so badly mangled by our "but her emails" media, that the authors of the original paper felt it necessary to publish a follow up paper demonstrating exactly how badly educated our media is with respect to science.
Nicholas S. Fisher, Karine Beaugelin-Seiller, Thomas G. Hinton, Zofia Baumann, Daniel J. Madigan, and Jacqueline Garnier-Laplace
Evaluation of radiation doses and associated risk from the Fukushima nuclear accident to marine biota and human consumers of seafood PNAS 110 (26) 10670-10675 (2013)
The full paper is open sourced.
"But her emails..."
Fusion energy will not be here in time to address a climate disaster, because a climate disaster is well underway now and fusion energy isn't here. It's not clear to me that it will be superior to the cleanest form of available energy that is here, fission energy. Unfortunately, in part to secure funding, the fusion community, at least a part of it, finds it necessary to badmouth fission, as do all of the other inferior and rather dirty forms of intertwined energy, solar, wind, dangerous natural gas, dangerous petroleum, dangerous coal, and dangerous biomass combustion. It's easy and popular to do; but what is easy and popular is in no way contiguous with what is wise.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)NNadir
(38,034 posts)I do think it's a bit over hyped, and my personal view is that the uranium/plutonium cycle has more to recommend it, particularly in the next century when we will need to scale up nuclear energy much faster than the thorium/U-233 cycle will allow.
Although thorium can be used in a thermal neutron cycle as a breeder, the doubling time is much longer than it is for the uranium/plutonium cycle.
This said, we have lots of "waste" thorium from the tailings of lanthanide mining, so I believe this material should be incorporated into the nuclear fuel cycle, in particular in CANDU type heavy water reactors. The recent refurbishment of the Darlington CANDUs and the decision to do the same with the Pickering reactors in Canada should be available for a switch to a thorium cycle. CANDUs however are designed for low burn ups, and it may be necessary to consider changes to the fuel cladding, although I'm not sure this is the case.
But we have more highly purified uranium, enough, if converted to plutonium, to provide for all of humanity's energy needs for centuries, no coal mines, no oil or gas fields fracked or otherwise, no wilderness converted into industrial parks for wind turbines and solar arrays.
The comparatively high solubility of uranium in seawater with respect to thorium means that uranium is essentially infinitely sustainable, whereas there is a limit to how long thorium reserves will last, probably limited to a few millennia.
I'm not against thorium; it's a niche fuel of some value; but overall I'm a uranium/plutonium fuel cycle kind of guy.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Sadly I'm afraid too many people have bought into the "wind/solar is our savior" nonsense & the govt is going to continue to push us down that road even though it puts us in a very dependent situation.
But I'm glad to be hearing more people start asking about nuclear.
NNadir
(38,034 posts)President Biden is no idiot. We're still in the nonsense phase where one is compelled by public imagination to trash wilderness for wind and solar junk, but my feeling is that political posture aside, the administration is aware of reality.
The massive, expensive, and very dirty failure of so called "renewable energy" in Germany is causing the world to wake up.
The German program has lost all legitimacy. Climate threatened Netherlands announced last week an intention to build new nuclear reactors.
In the US, the Vogtle reactors, our first in 30 years, will fire up soon. These are there from the efforts of Steven Chu, the Nobel Laureate scientist who served as President Obama's first Secretary of Energy.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)Construction began NINE YEARS AGO. And I blame everyone; Ga Pwr, the govt; and whoever ELSE is involved.
It took 6 years to build & commission the HW Bush aircraft carrier
NNadir
(38,034 posts)The United States built more than 100 nuclear reactors in about 25 years while supplying the cheapest electricity in the world under the supervision of highly competent engineers who worked with computers that were less powerful than today's wrist watches.
Because of sheer stupidity and selective attention, the manufacturing infrastructure to build the safest, scalable, and reliable source of climate change gas energy was destroyed in this country.
We conduct our lives in contempt of all future generations, which is why we are unwilling to build nuclear power plants, why we bitch and moan about them, and why we are unwilling to leave sustainable infrastructure for them to use.
My father's generation built nuclear reactors that provided electricity to me for most of my adult life without driving climate change.
The Vogtle plants will be operating most likely as the 22nd century approaches. They are a gift to future generations, just as the Oyster Creek Nuclear Plant here in New Jersey was a gift to mine.
If the lights are staying on in Georgia in 2092 because Vogtle is still operating, long after every wind turbine in this country will have been landfill for six decades, the citizens benefiting from its power will not be whining about how long it took to build, or how much money it cost to build. They'll be happy to have electricity.
It doesn't matter where you live, the fact is that nuclear energy is the only sustainable form of energy there is.
It is possible to build weapons systems quickly - a dubious proposition at best - because regrettably the infrastructure to do so was maintained.
If we care about the future, we will rebuild nuclear manufacturing infrastructure.
oldsoftie
(13,538 posts)paleotn
(22,211 posts)So, in some ways, it is the reaction that's the problem. Without tritium, there's little usable energy produced in contained fusion. And it's one of the rarest and most expensive materials on earth. A few hundred grams produced annually at best. There's ideas to make it outside of the fission power industry, but that too involves the relatively rare elements Beryllium and Lithium 6 plus a bunch more theoretical engineering. Feels like a bunch of rabbit holes to me and still probably 20 years out. Just like it was 20 years ago and 20 years before that and.............
uponit7771
(93,532 posts)NNadir
(38,034 posts)The original hydrogen bombs used liquid deuterium and tritium produced by neutron irradiation of lithium.
uponit7771
(93,532 posts)... US innovation is still a level kickass relative to other places ... well, other than socially.
paleotn
(22,211 posts)Oh, sure, we can breed tritium in the conventional fission power industry, but that makes people irrationally freaky. Ironic that it's the only PROVEN method for creating the fuel absolutely vital for fusion power generation.
So, whenever fusion junkies say cheap energy from abundant hydrogen, call bullshit. The hydrogen isotope tritium is difficult to come by, immensely expensive and in very short supply. If they think they can compete with the maintenance of thermonuclear weapons, forget it. Even without the nukes, there's no where near enough tritium to power your state, much less the planet. Fusion breeding its own tritium is just one more herculean engineering and scientific hurdle that may or may not be crossed.
https://www.science.org/content/article/fusion-power-may-run-fuel-even-gets-started#:~:text=The%20dwindling%20tritium%20supply,when%20ITER%20begins%20burning%20tritium.
https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/03/06/commentary-the-looming-crisis-for-us-tritium-production/
Kennah
(14,578 posts)
Sogo
(7,190 posts)
republianmushroom
(22,323 posts)Yavin4
(37,182 posts)paleotn
(22,211 posts)Hard to admit sometimes, but few things drive scientific advancement more than military applications.
CloudWatcher
(2,127 posts)This is more like passing an early mile-marker on a very very very long journey to build something that would be useful.
It's an important milestone, but the journey ahead is long and difficult. And we don't have a clear map to avoid lots of
dead-ends on the way.
And the challenges are engineering ... not that much basic science. It's not like they're just discovering fusion, they're
just getting better at trying to wrangle it to do what's wanted.
The biggest problem is over-hype. I prefer research that under-promises and over-delivers. But fusion research is so
extremely expensive the the researchers feel the need to wax poetic about this technology being used to fight global
warming and talk about how green it is. We can't wait for fusion to fix global warming. It won't be ready to actually
be used in a power plant for a long long time.
calimary
(90,002 posts)SOONER than later!
aggiesal
(10,799 posts)
NoMoreRepugs
(12,073 posts)KPN
(17,374 posts)
yonder
(10,293 posts)NullTuples
(6,017 posts)Last edited Fri Dec 16, 2022, 09:49 PM - Edit history (1)
He's an engineer, and as such has pretty much always wore collared dress shirts in public. Same for Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett.
...It's the marketing "geniuses" you have to look out for. They're the ones who create a personal style (see: black turtleneck) and tend to play fast and loose with the truth, but that is the crux of their chosen field.
paleotn
(22,211 posts)Couldn't agree more. Seen it myself. The sales guys, with enough knowledge to be dangerous, ignore my important caveats and tell a customer something that isn't quite true or leave out important details. Guys like me end up cleaning up the mess when we can't deliver on what was blurted out.
bronxiteforever
(11,212 posts)
burrowowl
(18,494 posts)
grantcart
(53,061 posts)
leftstreet
(40,664 posts)
Thank you for this fascinating thread. You always bring good stuff here
homegirl
(1,965 posts)future profits go to the taxpayers who funded this research and development!
rolypolychloe
(57 posts)The big government programs have lost their way. The goal is supposed to be to generate power more economically than wood, coal, gas, wind, solar, fission etc. The laser projects offer no advancement to a commercially economical reactor. The tokamak projects offer no advancement to a commercially economical reactor. There are several privately funded companies that are working on alternatives that were designed from the start to become commercially viable reactors. This is where your Mr. Fusion is going to come from, not the big government projects. Very, very recently the government has offered some grant money to these alternative approaches, but it is a pittance compared to what the tokamak and NIF guys are getting. I guess they are technically government assisted now, but hardly.
A company I have been following for quite sometime is lppfusion.com. Their device fits inside a maintenance garage and costs $500,000 to build. Will be using pB11 fuel which doesn't give off radiation causing neutrons like deuterium. They capture the energy directly from the ion beams and x-rays, so don't have to convert water into steam first. They are close. About a year or two before getting it done or giving up. None of this always 20 years from now stuff. The head scientist doesn't wear black turtlenecks but he definitely gives off that mad scientist vibe. So, um, I think a working fusion solution is going to come from one of those geniuses.
orthoclad
(4,728 posts)We've been doing government-funded fusion experiments since the 1950s.
Many governments, many experiments.
Since the Manhattan Project, most cutting-edge research in physical sciences has been conducted by weapons labs, like the topical fusion experiment.
The Apple-II-in-a-garage ( inagaddadaApple? ) was engineering tech, not science; it was made possible by the team of physicists at Bell Labs who created transistors in 1947. In general, modern science is a team effort, even when not government-financed.
I'd love to see clean fusion energy happen, but this single-shot reaction which took many, many times as much input energy as the yield is still pretty far from Mr. Fusion.
ecstatic
(35,074 posts)The Man Who Fell to Earth?
czarjak
(13,639 posts)For science too?
Aussie105
(7,914 posts)And a safe and reliable way of capturing that energy.
The first is the Sun.
The second are solar panels.
But if you want a small fusion reactor to power your city, your home or your car, you are going to have to wait a bit.
But I agree with the premise that only a Government like the US has can fund this level of research.
Or a conglomerate of European countries.
The Jungle 1
(4,552 posts)That folks is the big question.
Just think about how our economies would work without buying and selling dinosaur grease.