Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

Message
Author
User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#1 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:11 pm

Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion.

Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.

But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.

Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion.

NIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world's most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.

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.

This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known "inefficiencies" in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel.

But the latest achievement has been described as the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion.

For half a century, researchers have strived for controlled nuclear fusion and been disappointed. It was hoped that NIF would provide the breakthrough fusion research needed.

In 2009, NIF officials announced an aim to demonstrate nuclear fusion producing net energy by 30 September 2012. But unexpected technical problems ensured the deadline came and went; the fusion output was less than had originally been predicted by mathematical models.

Soon after, the $3.5bn facility shifted focus, cutting the amount of time spent on fusion versus nuclear weapons research - which was part of the lab's original mission.

However, the latest experiments agree well with predictions of energy output, which will provide a welcome boost to ignition research at NIF, as well as encouragement to advocates of fusion energy in general.

It is markedly different from current nuclear power, which operates through splitting atoms - fission - rather than squashing them together in fusion.

NIF, based at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is one of several projects around the world aimed at harnessing fusion. They include the multi-billion-euro ITER facility, currently under construction in Cadarache, France.

However, ITER will take a different approach to the laser-driven fusion at NIF; the Cadarache facility will use magnetic fields to contain the hot fusion fuel - a concept known as magnetic confinement.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24429621
What is Ignition?
Fusion “ignition” refers to the moment when the energy from a controlled fusion reaction outstrips the rate at which x-ray radiation losses and electron conduction cool the implosion: as much or more energy “out” than “in.” Achieving ignition would be an unprecedented, game-changing breakthrough for science and could lead to a new source of boundless clean energy for the world.
https://lasers.llnl.gov/science/ignition
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

G-CPTN
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 7595
Joined: Sun Aug 05, 2018 11:22 pm
Location: Tynedale
Gender:
Age: 79

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#2 Post by G-CPTN » Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:19 pm

What happens if 'ignition' results in 'runaway'?

User avatar
Undried Plum
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 7308
Joined: Sun Jul 22, 2018 8:45 pm
Location: 56°N 4°W

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#3 Post by Undried Plum » Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:19 pm

Home by Christmas, either way.

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#4 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:02 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:19 pm
Home by Christmas, either way.

Cynical or realistic? ;)))

I doubt that there is any chance of a runaway, but nuclear fission has always been on the edge of a breakthrough since I became interested in these things about 40 years ago. We will all be home by Christmas being the best myth to characterise this "nascent" technology.
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
llondel
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 5913
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:17 am
Location: San Jose

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#5 Post by llondel » Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:57 pm

Undried Plum wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:19 pm
Home by Christmas, either way.
This is definitely true, provided you don't specify *which* Christmas.

User avatar
llondel
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 5913
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:17 am
Location: San Jose

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#6 Post by llondel » Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:59 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:02 pm
Undried Plum wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:19 pm
Home by Christmas, either way.

Cynical or realistic? ;)))

I doubt that there is any chance of a runaway, but nuclear fission has always been on the edge of a breakthrough since I became interested in these things about 40 years ago. We will all be home by Christmas being the best myth to characterise this "nascent" technology.
I think the point with fusion, especially when doing it with a small pellet, is that there's a limit to what it can achieve so you don't get any sort of runaway. With fission you've got way too much fuel around so when things go wrong it all joins the party. I assume a production reactor would have a way to deliver a stream of pellets to the ignition point.

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#7 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Aug 19, 2021 6:49 pm

llondel wrote:
Thu Aug 19, 2021 4:59 pm
TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 5:02 pm
Undried Plum wrote:
Wed Aug 18, 2021 4:19 pm
Home by Christmas, either way.

Cynical or realistic? ;)))

I doubt that there is any chance of a runaway, but nuclear fission has always been on the edge of a breakthrough since I became interested in these things about 40 years ago. We will all be home by Christmas being the best myth to characterise this "nascent" technology.
I think the point with fusion, especially when doing it with a small pellet, is that there's a limit to what it can achieve so you don't get any sort of runaway. With fission you've got way too much fuel around so when things go wrong it all joins the party. I assume a production reactor would have a way to deliver a stream of pellets to the ignition point.
The traditional toroidal plasma rotation tokamak relies on magnetic fluxes to align the plasma in concentic rings around the "doughnut". As soon as the plasma breaks out of that confinement the fusion reaction stops. Although the machine may be damaged there is nothing like the possibility of a runaway reaction as in a fission reaction runaway. The biggest risk to humans in the vicinity of such a fusion machine is ionising radiation.

The pellet design is even safer as you say but I can't see how such a machine will provide continuous power as the pellet has to be refreshed in between laser pulses. Such machines, or similar ones, as in the case of the Z machine or other pinch design devices, are really useful for theoretical physics but not really the basis for continuous power generation per se although there are designs in train that may allow this in the future.
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
llondel
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 5913
Joined: Wed Oct 03, 2018 3:17 am
Location: San Jose

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#8 Post by llondel » Thu Aug 19, 2021 7:20 pm

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Thu Aug 19, 2021 6:49 pm
The traditional toroidal plasma rotation tokamak relies on magnetic fluxes to align the plasma in concentic rings around the "doughnut". As soon as the plasma breaks out of that confinement the fusion reaction stops. Although the machine may be damaged there is nothing like the possibility of a runaway reaction as in a fission reaction runaway. The biggest risk to humans in the vicinity of such a fusion machine is ionising radiation.

The pellet design is even safer as you say but I can't see how such a machine will provide continuous power as the pellet has to be refreshed in between laser pulses. Such machines, or similar ones, as in the case of the Z machine or other pinch design devices, are really useful for theoretical physics but not really the basis for continuous power generation per se although there are designs in train that may allow this in the future.
If they're just using it to generate heat to boil water or other liquid, then it doesn't need to be continuous, just often enough. They just need a mechanism to deposit the pellets in the correct place quickly enough, of possibly have multiple places within the enclosed volume so that they can be igniting one while others are being reloaded. Of course, there's probably a shockwave of some sort as each one reacts, which might make moving the next one into place a bit problematic.

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#9 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Thu Aug 19, 2021 8:10 pm

In the case of inertial or pressure confinement, the engineering problems of designing some sort of timed carousel allowing multiple firings are significant due the the need for alignment, focussing the beams and the compression of the pellet , while taking account of shockwaves (as you note) etc. The z pinch design using wires to focus the enormous heat, and thus pressure, of x-rays is even more difficult to manage on a recurrent firing basis.

It is a fascinating subject and some of the designs out there are ingenious. Maybe we will see a significant breakthrough in our lifetimes but I am not apt to bet on that although I suspect magnetic confinement will work out in the end.

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#10 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Fri Aug 20, 2021 6:57 am

Firing the Z machine...



Of course, any country that has, or aspires to fusion weapons, such the H bomb will have a Z type machine. Sandia labs are at the forefront of fusion weapon research as well as fundamental particle etc. research.

We have CERN here in Europe, used for particle research . Oh, I am sorry, we in the UK decided to "leave" Europe!

CERN.png
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#11 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:54 pm

Fusion.JPG
In 8 August 2021, a laser-initiated experiment at the United States National Ignition Facility (NIF), based at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, made a significant breakthrough in reproducing the power source of the stars, smashing its own 2018 record for energy released from nuclear fusion reactions 23 times over. This advance saw 70% of the laser energy put in released as nuclear energy. A pulse of light, focused to tiny spots within a 10-metre diameter vacuum chamber, triggered the collapse of a capsule of fuel from roughly the size of the pupil in your eye to the diameter of a human hair. This implosion created the extreme conditions of temperature and pressure needed for atoms of hydrogen to combine into new atoms and release, kilogram for kilogram, 10m times the energy that would result from burning coal.

The result is tantalisingly close to a demonstration of “net energy gain”, the long sought-after goal of fusion scientists in which an amount greater than 100% of the energy put into a fusion experiment comes out as nuclear energy. The aim of these experiments is – for now – to show proof of principle only: that energy can be generated. The team behind the success are very close to achieving this: they have managed a more than 1,000-fold improvement in energy release between 2011 and today. Prof Jeremy Chittenden, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London, said last month that “The pace of improvement in energy output has been rapid, suggesting we may soon reach more energy milestones, such as exceeding the energy input from the lasers used to kickstart the process.”

If you’re not familiar with nuclear fusion, it’s different from its cousin, nuclear fission, which powers today’s nuclear plants by taking big, unstable atoms and splitting them. Fusion takes small atoms and combines them to forge larger atoms. It is the universe’s ubiquitous power source: it’s what causes the sun and stars to shine, and it’s the reaction that created most of the atoms we are made of.

Scientists have long been excited about fusion because it doesn’t produce carbon dioxide or long-lived radioactive waste, since the fuel it requires – two types of hydrogen known as deuterium and tritium – is plentiful enough to last for at least thousands of years, and because there is zero chance of meltdown. Unlike renewables such as wind and solar power, plants based on fusion would also take up little space compared with the power they would be able to generate.

However, because the NIF’s breakthrough is about demonstrating the principle only, the total amount of energy generated is not very impressive; it’s only just enough to boil a kettle. Nor does the gain measurement account for the energy used to run the facility, just what’s in the laser pulse. Despite this, it is nevertheless a landmark moment in the decades-long quest to produce fusion energy and use it to power the planet – which is, perhaps, the greatest scientific and technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken.

Although the experiment may have happened in a vacuum, NIF’s advance has not, and the pace of progress in fusion may surprise some long-time sceptics. Even Dr Mark Herrmann, head of the NIF’s fusion programme, says the latest development was “a surprise to everyone”. Many recent advances have been made with a different type of fusion device, the tokamak: a doughnut-shaped machine that uses a tube of magnetic fields to confine its fuel for as long as possible. China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (East) set another world record in May by keeping fuel stable for 100 seconds at a temperature of 120m degrees celsius – eight times hotter than the sun’s core. The world’s largest ever magnetic fusion machine, Iter, is under construction in the south of France and many experts think it will have the scale needed to reach net energy gain. The UK-based Joint European Torus (Jet), which holds the current magnetic fusion record for power of 67%, is about to attempt to produce the largest total amount of energy of any fusion machine in history. Alternative designs are also being explored: the UK government has announced plans for an advanced tokamak with an innovative spherical geometry, and “stellarators”, a type of fusion device that had been consigned to the history books, are enjoying a revival having been enabled by new technologies such as superconducting magnets.

For now, publicly funded labs are producing results a long way ahead of the private firms – but this could change
This is a lot of progress, but it’s not even the biggest change: that would be the emergence of private sector fusion firms. The recently formed Fusion Industry Association estimates that more than $2bn of investment has flooded into fusion startups. The construction of experimental reactors by these firms is proceeding at a phenomenal rate: Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has its origins in MIT research, has begun building a demonstration reactor in Massachusetts; TAE Technologies has just raised $280m to build its next device; and Canadian-based General Fusion has opted to house its new $400m plant in the UK. This will be constructed in Oxfordshire, an emerging hotspot for the industry that is home to private ventures First Light Fusion and Tokamak Energy as well as the publicly funded Jet and Mast (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) Upgrade devices run by the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

Some of the investors in these firms have deep pockets: Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Legal & General, and Chevron have all financed enterprises pursuing this new nuclear power source. For now, publicly funded labs are producing results a long way ahead of the private firms – but this could change.

With such progress, interest, and investment – and net energy gain perhaps just one or two more improvements away – perhaps it’s time to retire the old joke, so cliched it has been banned by editors at the Economist, that “fusion is 30 years away… and always will be”.
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#12 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:55 pm

But it does depend on what we mean by “fusion” in that context; the scientists and their backers are now focusing on the bigger objective of fusion as a viable power source like fission, solar or wind. This requires far more than just “breakeven” in energy: a functioning fusion power plant would probably need at least 30 times the energy out for energy put in. However, scaling up the gain in energy is but one difficulty in making fusion a viable power source. A commercial reactor will have to solve several tricky engineering problems such as extracting the heat energy and finding materials that will withstand the relentless bombardment the reactor chamber will receive over its lifetime. Fusion reactors must also be self-sufficient in tritium, one of the two types of hydrogen that are fed in as fuel. For this, it is necessary to surround the reactor chamber with lithium because its atoms are converted to tritium when struck by the most energetic products of fusion – and this process has yet to be demonstrated at scale.

Those pursuing fusion have long known of the obstacles, but – with limited resources – achieving the immediate goal of gain has been a bigger priority. That’s beginning to change as fusion scientists and engineers look beyond scientific proof of principle. Around the world, several recently opened facilities are dedicated to solving these problems and, although they’re not trivial, everyone in fusion is confident that the obstacles can be overcome: progress depends on investment and will.

To find examples of how these two factors can be transformative, look no further than the pandemic. A sudden shot of both investment and motivation transformed the use of mRNA to fight disease from a wild idea to an accepted technology in the form of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Katalin Karikó, whose foundational work on mRNA has been key to the success of the technology, had the will to persevere for many years with little recognition and even less funding. Her dedication, and that of her colleagues, combined with a massive investment in development, testing and deployment is what enabled the vaccines to be ready in record time. The world wanted this, and we made it happen.

Global heating has made the need to turn carbon-free fusion energy into a usable power source ever more urgent. The world’s response thus far has been lackadaisical: it’s 2021 and more than 80% of global primary energy consumption still comes from coal, oil and gas. Fossil fuel consumption actually increased between 2009 and 2019 (though it fell in 2020 as most of the world locked down to help prevent the spread of Covid-19). While progress to date has been slow, most nations have pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Dr Ajay Gambhir, a senior policy research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London, says most electricity generation needs to come from near-zero carbon sources as soon as 2030 in order to achieve this. Dr Michael Bluck, also of the Grantham Institute, expresses serious doubts that commercial fusion energy will be ready in time, saying that it is “very difficult to see this [conventional tokamaks] happening until after 2050” and that laser fusion has “another 50 years to go, if at all”.

Those working in fusion do recognise that time is of the essence, and it’s part of what is motivating the recent acceleration. The startups’ vision necessarily sees fusion power being deployed at an unprecedented rate. “If we want to contribute to net zero by 2050 we need to be building plants, multiple, in the 2040s,” Nick Hawker, CEO of First Light Fusion, tells me. And who says the fusion firms couldn’t do it with the right tailwind? We would never have believed that a vaccine, let alone the first mRNA vaccine, could be developed and approved within a year instead of over decades.

The scale of the climate challenge is so immense that we need to throw the kitchen sink at it. That means renewables, fission, energy storage, carbon capture, and any other lifeline humanity can grab. If the world doesn’t have the will to at least try to deploy fusion energy too, it would be a missed opportunity. Fusion could afford people in developing countries the same energy consumption opportunities as people in developed nations enjoy today – rather than the global cutbacks that may be necessary otherwise. And we are likely to need fusion well beyond 2050, too: as a source of large-scale power to extract the carbon dioxide we’ve already put into the atmosphere, and because it’s the only feasible way we can explore space beyond Earth’s immediate vicinity.

Whether commercial fusion energy is ready in time to help with global warming or not depends on us as a society and how badly we want – no, need – star power on our side.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -emergency

Arthur Turrell is the author of The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£20).
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Quantum tunneling keeps the fusion process in our sun...

#13 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sat Aug 28, 2021 6:06 pm

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#14 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Aug 29, 2021 3:55 am

It is interesting to read how much optimism is bubbling away in the fusion industry about the likelihood of hitting the "power in", "power out" break even point soon. Thing is that these Livermore experiments, while fascinating, are cooking the energy books to a large degree, and basing the "power in" on that that of the power of the laser beams that finally ignite the fusion reaction in a little capsule, but ignore the losses in the system on the way to producing that beam, and the laws of thermodynamics being what they are, these losses are significant. In fact is is widely acknowledged that to operate commercially, any such fusion reactor would have to produce anywhere between 30 and 300 times more energy out than in, to operate in a viable way. This implies scaling up the fusion reaction significantly, and this has been the issue all along with this technology. Optimism is fine, but I wouldn't bet on seeing this technology working on an industrial scale any time soon.

Talking of the little capsule, it is a most amazingly engineered piece of technology.
The bath of X-rays fills the cylinder and, fourteen nano-seconds in, they reach a capsule at its centre. The capsule is about the size of the pupil in your eye and so perfectly spherical that if it were as big as the Earth, the largest imperfection would be just 10 per cent the height of Mount Everest. Making a sphere so small and so perfect took hours of dextrous work with futuristic tools. The outer layer of the capsule is, incredibly, made of diamond. There’s a middle layer of cold, solid hydrogen, and an inner layer of gaseous hydrogen. X-rays vaporise the outer layer, pushing hot material away from it. Just as a rocket expels hot material in one direction to move in the opposite direction, the rapid vaporisation of the outer layer in one direction forces the capsule to contract. The speed is dramatic; the collapse of the capsule proceeds at a pace in excess of 350 kilometres per second (800,000 miles per hour).

The solid layer of hydrogen and its gassy centre accelerate inward on themselves. They eventually reach just a thirtieth of the original capsule radius; it’s as if the Earth shrank to a ball 260 miles across – much like trying to squeeze a football down to the size of a pea. The solid layer of hydrogen becomes so tightly squeezed that a teacup full of it would have a mass of over two hundred kilograms. In the capsule’s gas centre, the implosion ratchets up the temperature. The atoms in the capsule may be different, but the temperatures, pressures, and densities are similar to those found in the Sun: a tiny star has been lit. The pressure alone is 300 billion times what we experience on Earth. At the temperatures within the capsule, ripped-apart hydrogen atoms crash into each other so energetically that their nuclei begin to react. But not in the chemical reactions that you might have seen in school science classes. These are nuclear reactions, nuclear fusion reactions.
Turrell, Arthur. The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Fire and Ice

#15 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Aug 29, 2021 4:27 am

I am in awe of the technology in the combustion chamber(s) of a jet engine that contain a continuous state of combustion at temperatures well above the melting point of the chamber itself. As we all know, this is done by bleeding in a layer of cold compressed air though holes in the outer wall of the chamber, which confines the high combustion reaction temperature to the inner part of the chamber and provides the alchemy that energises the whole wonderful cycle. Well if one considers the temperatures involved in a jet engine's combustion chamber which are usually in the order of +- 1727 degrees Celsius, which is +- 27 degrees above the melting temperature of the alloys that consitute the chamber wall, there is the thin margin between success and disaster on your average commuter flight. The fact that this trick is completed again and again, over thousands of hours of operation, is the most amazing part of the trick. Now scale this trick up using inertial or magnetic confinement to prevent a fusion reaction impacting the walls of the confinement torus or chamber of a reactor (which are held at a temperature very near absolute zero) , and your are talking about keeping a genie that is +- 150,000,000 degrees Celsius, from touching and significantly heating that fragile, super cold, wall. That is a temperature at least 10 times hotter than the core of the sun (see video on quantum tunnelling to see why so high) in very close proximity to a wall of magnets held close to absolute zero. It is truly amazing! Like the jet engine, this trick will need to be repeatable again and again over thousands of hours of operation to be commercially viable.

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
unifoxos
Capt
Capt
Posts: 959
Joined: Mon Aug 31, 2015 10:36 am
Location: Twycross Zoo, or thereabouts
Gender:
Age: 78

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#16 Post by unifoxos » Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:00 am

All very exciting - BUT - we have been producing energy (i.e. heat) on a small scale for the last few hundred years by burning (mainly) fossil fuels that took millions of years to be produced using only power from the sun. Fortunately the amount of heat produced was very small compared to the heat arriving from the sun, and did not have the force to affect the ecosystem (much). Our ecosystem can only stay in natural balance while we use the power that arrives from the sun (and possibly a little more). IF fusion becomes a reality, the prospect of endless amounts or power being generated all around the world, as the 90% or so of the population who now use little or no power aspire to access the power usage of the developed world, brings with it the high likelihood of REAL global warming and unwanted effects on the ecosystem.

You have been warned.
Sent from my tatty old Windoze PC.

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#17 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:15 am

unifoxos wrote:
Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:00 am
All very exciting - BUT - we have been producing energy (i.e. heat) on a small scale for the last few hundred years by burning (mainly) fossil fuels that took millions of years to be produced using only power from the sun. Fortunately the amount of heat produced was very small compared to the heat arriving from the sun, and did not have the force to affect the ecosystem (much). Our ecosystem can only stay in natural balance while we use the power that arrives from the sun (and possibly a little more). IF fusion becomes a reality, the prospect of endless amounts or power being generated all around the world, as the 90% or so of the population who now use little or no power aspire to access the power usage of the developed world, brings with it the high likelihood of REAL global warming and unwanted effects on the ecosystem.

You have been warned.
You make a very good point about the laws of unintended consequences. As ever, as in nature, society, physics etc. there is a no such thing as a free lunch, and humanity will need to control itself, its expectations and its population footprint on this good earth. Fusion, like fission before it will not be a panacea for all the world's ills and will bring with it new challenges.
Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#18 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:55 am

TheGreenGoblin wrote:
Sun Aug 29, 2021 3:55 am
are cooking the energy books to a large degree, and basing the "power in" on that that of the power of the laser beams that finally ignite the fusion reaction in a little capsule, but ignore the losses in the system on the way to producing that beam, and the laws of thermodynamics being what they are, these losses are significant. In fact is is widely acknowledged that to operate commercially, any such fusion reactor would have to produce anywhere between 30 and 300 times more energy out than in, to operate in a viable way. This implies scaling up the fusion reaction significantly, and this has been the issue all along with this technology. Optimism is fine, but I wouldn't bet on seeing this technology working on an industrial scale any time soon.
Actually the issue of efficiency, i.e. efficiently transforming heat into electrical power is even worse upstream in the fusion reactor, where the laws of the Carnot heat engine pertain, with only between +- 30% and +- 48% of the heat energy being transformed into mechanical power, and thence into electricity in these kinds of designs, although the electrical generators themselves are very efficient in the electromagnetic sense, if one excludes the mechanical losses due to friction, noise, vibration, heating, etc.

The Livermore Laboratory has looked at the Direct Conversion of Heat into Electrical Energy to circumvent the power losses noted in the case of Heat Engines.

Focus Fusion is just one proposed solution...

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#19 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:37 am

No comment here about ITER so I thought I would post this link to a diagram of the monumental scale of the tokamak.


https://www.iter.org/mach

The word “tokamak” comes from. It’s actually a Russian acronym. Tokamak stands for toroidalnaya camera magnitsnaya katusha.This means “toroidal chamber magnetic coils”, which I rather like because it describes exactly what a tokamak is. A torus is the mathematical name for a ring-doughnut shape. So a tokamak is a ring-doughnut-shaped (toroidal) vessel surrounded by magnetic coils that make the trap for the hot plasma and keep it from touching the walls.
Windridge, Melanie; Windridge, Melanie. Star Chambers: The Race for Fusion Power

Tokamak.JPG

I am currently reading the book noted above by this lady...

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

User avatar
TheGreenGoblin
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17596
Joined: Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:02 pm
Location: With the Water People near Trappist-1

Re: Lawrence Livermore on the brink of break even with Nuclear Fusion

#20 Post by TheGreenGoblin » Wed Sep 01, 2021 10:02 am

How hot? 15 million degrees Celsius, only +- 1/10 of the temperature needed to keep a reaction going (self sustaining).

Though you remain
Convinced
"To be alive
You must have somewhere
To go
Your destination remains
Elusive."

Post Reply