I offer two exceptionally clear-eyed examinations of the laser-triggered nuclear fusion announcement from the Department of Energy, about that latest "shot" at the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility.

"So, Does Nuclear Fusion Work Now?"

quote "Sun in a Bottle" author Charles Seife takes the National Ignition Facility’s big announcement down a peg.

Nitish Pahwa for Slate; December 14, 2022.
https://slate.com/technolog...-climate-change.html


"What Comes After a World’s First in Fusion Research"
Peter Coy for the New York Times; December 14, 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/202...fusion-research.html

quote At this point I want to stop with the superlatives and mention a prosaic number: 25 cents. Two fusion experts told me separately that for fusion to become commercially practical, the cost of the fuel targets will need to fall to around 25 cents each, since a commercial-scale plant will need to use them up at a rate of about 10 a second. We’re a long way from that. It’s not just the gold and diamond. It’s mainly the labor-intensive fabrication process, which today takes seven months. The spherical targets that Livermore uses must be almost perfectly smooth: A flaw the size of a single bacterium can degrade their implosion.

Peter Coy

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-15-2022).]

They still have a long way to go- especially if you want the "Mr. Fusion" for your car. I went on a tour of that NIF in Livermore (I believe you went on that same tour, Rusty) it was really amazing, but the best- and most amazing part of the tour was as we finished walking along that laser setup (800 feet long), we were shown a 30 foot long device that could do the same thing...Mind blowing (In another decade they WILL be making "Mr. Fusions")

To give you a basic understanding of what they are doing, they have a bunch of lasers, but they want them MUCH more powerful, so they run them through mirrors that allow the beam in then reflect it back and forth while adding power (The distance between mirrors may be 30-100 feet...Think how many times a second a laser beam would go back and forth)

I don't fully understand how this works- basically, as the laser passes through a special pane of glass, light is added to the edges of the pane which adds power to the beam.

When the beams all reach the proper amount of power, they are focused onto a pellet which is super-heated and COMPRESSED (By just the laserbeams) till the Heavy Hydrogen (Deuterium) inside it is ignited.

Was it a fusion energy milestone... or just the world's most expensive Lava Lamp?

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-15-2022).]

The flying car of energy..........

Fusion power generators as soon as 2024! This is a 23-minute video.


A two and a half-minute summary of it.

Helion Energy "First to Fusion"
https://www.helionenergy.com/

The animations and photographs that accompany this rather brief text are "primo" eye candy.

The article banner is "Five things to know about nuclear fusion and if it can power your home."

I'll narrow it down to just one thing: "Not anytime soon."

Pranshu Verma for the Washington Post; December 21, 2022.
https://www.washingtonpost....r-source-challenges/

Isn't just huge amounts of time & money to make the Target...

National Ignition Facility claim make more power out then power in is 100% Fraud.
2.05MJ is only for Laser power.
They Ignore the Lasers need 400MJ More power to run.
quick overview see today's news from Sabine Hossenfelder @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr0Q_LGrQcg

Their taking your tax money on this giant scam alone for Decades.
And MSM again just spews out same crap whatever LL post and don't bother to their only research because "Fusion will save the world" to push the Green Agenda. Same MSM that still props up Bill Nye as a Scientist.
see https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum6/HTML/126764.html

------------------
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: Isn't just huge amounts of time & money to make the target...

The National Ignition Facility or NIF at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is known to the public for the research and experimentation of laser-triggered nuclear fusion.

NIF has another purpose: "Stewardship" of the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. I've never had a clear idea of how this works (as the government likely intends) but this facility is important in monitoring the safety and readiness of U.S. nuclear bombs and warheads as this hardware ages.

The NIF is housed within a building so large that it could enclose three of the National Football League's playing fields.

I toured it once, several years ago. It was actually a small event that I organized for the Golden Gate Fieros. There were just a handful from the group that turned out for the docent-led tour. It was exclusively for us.

Construction began in 1997.

I've read that if they were going to build it again today, it would be way way smaller. Like the size of many a smaller company's industrial warehouse or manufacturing facility. Or maybe even the size of a shipping container. (I'd have to go back online and try to find what I read.)

It would be so much smaller—and so much less costly, I would think, to build and maintain--because of the technological advances in more recent years in so far as the miniaturization of the "smokin' hot" super powerful lasers that it's built around.

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 12-22-2022).]

quote Originally posted by theogre: ... Their taking your tax money on this giant scam alone for Decades ...

They really figured out how to keep milking the same cow (likewise with the High Energy Physics folks and all their beam lines). Ever since I was a kid reading science articles in the 70's, commercially viable fusion has always been presented as being 'just 15-20 years away!' I would LOVE to see an article that details all the useful technology that has come to be as a side-benefit of this research. There WAS a good example of this type of analysis with the US Space Program (but I can't find it right now.) Anybody know?

NASA often Did Not Invent things... Huge amount of things and "law" required them to use standard things to mod'ed normal items when possible.

But Many Still Think NASA invented Velcro, Tang and "Space Pens..."
In super short:
Velcro developed in the 50s by a Swiss engineer. Later had many types for different uses like an Air Seal type to attach sections of inflatable buildings for US Mil and others.
Tang drink mix is old and NASA just make a big order.
Fisher Sealed Pressurized pens was made for other things and NASA just make a big order, again.

Tang and Fisher made a deal so they could slap a space label on them.

Tang was crap and still is. Is Worse then Orange Crush and other drinks made of all chemicals. Only a bit better then nothing to mask the crap taste of water stored for weeks to months.

Velcro was already started making stuff for mil and other big players and wasn't easy or cheap for use by general public back then. I only had Velcro when got scraps from family that worked for Air Cruisers etc. (Some may know Air Cruisers makers of inflatable life vest, escape slide, rafts and other items for most aircraft makers. Was bought by Zodiac Aerospace in ~ 1987.)

[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 01-11-2023).]