Omar A. Hurricane calls it a "Wright Brothers moment" in terms of producing energy from nuclear fusion.

I think he's getting carried away.

I've been to that "joint." A public tour. There were only a few of us on the tour. It's one gi-normous 'thingamajig.' They talk about how they use it to test ideas about producing energy from nuclear fusion, and also, about how it is part of the "stewardship" of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. That second part is more mystifying to me, but I guess there's more about that aspect of it that's Classified Information.

Post it up, why'don'cha?

"A national lab achieved a ‘Wright Brothers moment’ in nuclear fusion"

quote The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced a key achievement in fusion research on Tuesday, but experts say there's a ways to go before commercial viability.

Catherine Clifford for NBC News; August 17, 2021.
https://www.nbcnews.com/sci...ational-lab-rcna1697

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 08-17-2021).]

It's a pretty cool proof of concept though - 70% isn't the "self sustaining plus surplus" energy yield we need, but it's kinda the "flying a kite" phase of aircraft development. Like, look, it technically works, now we just have to scale it up and make it more efficient.

[This message has been edited by FieroSTETZ (edited 08-24-2021).]

Is just more Hype to Push/Justify another Very High $ Money Pit "Green" Project.
One of several "Fusion" Projects already costing Tax Payers Hundreds of Millions of $ at minimum each.

And MSM just barfs out whatever claims because they are pushing anything "Green" and doesn't care if is

"Science publishing" and "per review papers" often mean little or nothing too.
Same for many things pushed thru The Lancet and others for Medical papers/studies.
Even if they, publisher or author(s), retract a paper/study... MSM and worse still pushes same discredited crap to the rest of the world often to make a huge amount of Money thru Unregulated Food Supplements, "Diet" products, etc.

------------------
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
(Jurassic Park)

The Ogre's Fiero Cave

quote Originally posted by theogre: Is just more Hype to Push/Justify another Very High $ Money Pit "Green" Project. One of several "Fusion" Projects already costing Tax Payers Hundreds of Millions of $ at minimum each. And MSM just barfs out whatever claims because they are pushing anything "Green" and doesn't care if is "Science publishing" and "per review papers" often mean little or nothing too. Same for many things pushed thru The Lancet and others for Medical papers/studies. Even if they, publisher or author(s), retract a paper/study... MSM and worse still pushes same discredited crap to the rest of the world often to make a huge amount of Money thru Unregulated Food Supplements, "Diet" products, etc.

Well there's no innovation without experimentation. At a certain point all you can do is throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks, then investigate why it sticks and if it sticks better than other things you threw. And true, the academic "chasing of the dragon" looking for recognition is definitely annoying, but it goes hand in hand with information sharing. It's like open source stuff, you could keep everything to yourself, but putting what you learned out there really helps the community and fosters further development and innovation. I could charge to lead workshops on doing data analytics and stuff after being identified as a leader on that subject (it actually pays pretty well to sell courses on udemy and so on!) using those specific tools, but it was in my best interest to dump what I learned back into the community. I gained proficiency by reviewing and learning from what other people had already done, so I might as well give back.

[This message has been edited by FieroSTETZ (edited 08-25-2021).]

quote Originally posted by FieroSTETZ: Well there's no innovation without experimentation. At a certain point all you can do is throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks, then investigate why it sticks and if it sticks better than other things you threw. And true, the academic "chasing of the dragon" looking for recognition is definitely annoying, but it goes hand in hand with information sharing. It's like open source stuff, you could keep everything to yourself, but putting what you learned out there really helps the community and fosters further development and innovation. I could charge to lead workshops on doing data analytics and stuff after being identified as a leader on that subject (it actually pays pretty well to sell courses on udemy and so on!) using those specific tools, but it was in my best interest to dump what I learned back into the community. I gained proficiency by reviewing and learning from what other people had already done, so I might as well give back.

That assumes you think their doing "science." They Stop doing that a long time ago. Now it's a Con Game making Some People and Companies Very Rich. Same for many other Big Money "Science" and "Medical" projects.

Another "Fusion" Project, ITER Tokamak in France is expected to cost in excess of €22 Billion.[Approx 26B USD] (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER#Funding ) and hope to run 1000 seconds? Riiigght.....

Easier still w/ protects projects they know most won't work in their life or likely their gran-kids lives too. Unlike Hubble Telescope and others that actually work but still affect nearly no-one except free NASA pictures. 99+% of the public doesn't give a crap about Hubble and more but Pays For Everything.

And unlike 501c3 orgs in the US, no-one publishes the amount of money eaten by the "board" etc for most or all of these projects. (You want a rude wake-up call? Read Public Tax forms from your local PBS station and CTW makers of Sesame St. CTW repeating claim "near bankrupt" and still allow Theme Parks and more to play pay Tiny Fractions of Pennies for TM and © Licenses for Decades... So don't think your helping CTW or PBS buying Kermit, Bert & Ernie or Big Bird anything.)

And Save the World? Not. Sorry but you never see them build for Commercial Use and for most of exact same reasons you never get new safer nuke generation plus the old NIMBY by the public.
Sadly Many watch Oyster Creek and other Nuke plants Close yet NJ and others are just switching some Coal and Oil plants to Nat Gas that does little to protect the Climate. Now NJ and others have problems making/getting enough power adding Gas Turbines, Bloombox, etc, that uses Nat Gas too. Note that Bloombox Nat Gas generation is quietly classed as Alternate Energy same as wind/solar in some US States and other places.

Most medical papers and studies are Paid Output from "Schools" and more to publish claims and support whatever that Big Pharma and others pushes. Like Oxycotin et al "is safe to use" and yet Made many 10's of Millions of Addicts... That, Lyrica and more also "passes" FDA etc but have Big Problems and many Doctors now avoid them because of this. Many stopped trusting FDA and CDC way before Covid panic because of this including many Doctors that won't say so in public because goes against whatever narrative at the time.

[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 08-26-2021).]

German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder just release YT video basically saying publish numbers for "efficiency" and/or "power generated" are wrong and are on purpose... Including OP "Nat'l Ignition Facility's 1.3 megajoules!" (called NIF) and ITER above claiming generate 10x the input power...

How close is nuclear fusion power?


This doesn't even mention ITER expect to run 1000 seconds Total...

This is worth a look for anyone with an "elevated" interest in the National Ignition Facility.

"US achieves laser-fusion record: what it means for nuclear-weapons research"

quote Scientists are hopeful that the National Ignition Facility’s recent success will advance understanding of thermonuclear reactions.

Jeff Tollefson for Nature; August 27, 2021.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02338-4

The National Ignition Facility is not just about research on nuclear fusion as a power source--it's also about nuclear weapons and the actual U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal:

quote Housed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the $3.5-billion facility wasn’t designed to serve as a power-plant prototype, however, but rather to probe fusion reactions at the heart of thermonuclear weapons. After the United States banned underground nuclear testing at the end of the cold war in 1992, the energy department proposed the NIF as part of a larger science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program, designed to verify the [continuing] reliability of the country’s nuclear weapons without detonating any of them.

So partly about the "shelf life" of any weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal--are the weapons still reliable as they continue to age beyond their "BOD"--their Born On Date? (I got that phrase from Budweiser.)

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 10-02-2021).]

"Lawrence Livermore’s latest attempts at ignition fall short"

quote Researchers investigate the variables that have prevented them from replicating their near-ignition performance of a few months ago.

David Kramer for Physics Today; December 3, 2021.
https://physicstoday.scitat....6.2.20211203a/full/

quote Since achieving 1.3 megajoules of fusion energy in August, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been trying to repeat that breakthrough result. (See “Lawrence Livermore claims a milestone in laser fusion,” Physics Today online, 17 August 2021.) Three inertial confinement fusion experiments conducted since the August shot have fallen well short. Each one, however, topped the performance of prior experiments. Researchers will take their next shot at producing more fusion energy than the laser energy needed to start the reaction—the definition of ignition used by the lab—in January.

When I saw this, I was "infused" with an irrepressible urge to "bump" this forum thread.

quote In each case, as with the August shot, the NIF laser’s 192 beams fired 1.9 MJ of UV light onto a cylindrical gold target containing a BB-size capsule filled with deuterium and tritium (D–T) fuel. Inside the cylinder—known as a hohlraum—the UV is converted to x rays that implode the capsule and set off fusion in the compressed fuel. Because NIF is used to conduct other types of experiments relevant to the nuclear weapons stockpile, it is limited to 20–30 ignition shots each year. The August record occurred on the 177th try since ignition attempts began in 2009.

A reminder that the National Ignition Facility has another purpose, aside from pursuing the quest to generate electricity from Nuclear Fusion.

quote Bedros Afeyan, an expert on laser–plasma instabilities who has worked in laser-fusion programs at LLNL and at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories, says the results are “very encouraging,” but exactly where the fusion burn is occurring in the fuel isn’t known. NIF’s diagnostics indicate that the fusion reactions are “neither thermal nor isotropic.” More important, he says, even the record shot burned only 1.6% of the D–T [Deuterium-Tritium fuel] in the capsule. “That’s fizzling, in my opinion,” he says. “You want to know what limited that.” Burning half of the fuel would be “absolutely a success.”

Not even 2 percent. Just 1.6 percent. Imagine if you had a car or other road vehicle that converted only 2 percent of the chemical energy in your gas tank into motive power, with the other 98 percent of the energy in your gasoline going to waste.