Carbon-free fusion power could be ‘on the grid in 15 years’

NIF has other functions, but once in awhile they have to do what it was officially intended for to make it all less ominous.

that method of fusion would have never led to widespread use. There's a lot that can be learned from it, but its ability to displace existing energy sources is even less useful than ITER

 

I just saw the Energy Secretary say they "Hope to scale clean energy breakthrough within a decade".

She doesn't seem to think it's going to become the singular answer to energy needs though, it will only be another tool along with solar and wind to meet needs.

.

 

And it won't until it's cheap and easy. Wind and sun are far cheaper and easier and will be for quite some time even after the first fusion plant that can power a cul-de-sac or a city goes online.

 

Yeah. The last two days have seen the airwaves filled with all the usual sunshine and rainbows about our finally being saved! Energy woes are finally coming to an end, soon!

Some of us remember the same once upon a time hype before. Blowing smoke.

 

fusion may not (I Think it will be a big chunk of the answer), but a spinoff of the technology could:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rel...chnology-innovator-ga-drilling-301513139.html

geothermal has enough potential to power this world for millions of years at present levels, if we could get to the heat everywhere. This might be the way to do it.

 

All we need to do is build our very own Narada!

But yes, this new laser-based fusion is an important step which could unlock further progress. I also wouldn't underestimate the value of hype: it would continue to bring in much needed investments to further fusion research and engineering. I remain cautiously optimistic that fusion will be a big part of energy generation in the future.

 

Another advantage of deep geothermal may be that with all the superheated steam, there's a possibility to capture distilled water on the upcycle , with minimal treatment, that can be used at least for agricultural purposes. Depending on where one is, that could be extremely useful.

 

they seemed to have achieve their goal, though I am still not sure if it can be called ignition. I'm probably the most annoyingly positive fusion fan on earth, but NIF always struck me kind of being not-the-answer-even-if-it is.

The cynic in me thinks they finally went with the uranium coated hohlarum to get this result and put themselves in the history books before Helion, the MIT group or the Brits beat them to breakeven. Either way, this can finally get some of the "twenty years away and always will be harr harr harr" crowd to shut the fuck up.

 

Helion's process is direct electric output, no conversion losses, so hopefully that will work.

 

I would like to see a combination of that and this technology for lateral drilling:
https://singularityhub.com/2021/12/...by-blasting-it-with-a-jet-of-superheated-gas/
I can see Great Lakes water moved to California..doing work along the way.

Lasers are getting faster with plasma mirrors
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-relativistic-mirror-plasma-kilohertz-repetition.html
A key element for this progress is the in-house developed kilohertz repetition rate terawatt laser, providing pulse durations down to <4 femtoseconds .

Still, this method of fusion will take awhile---but I think could be used for propulsion more quickly. As I am still bullish on space solar power---I can see that beaming energy to a back to back sail with a feed-horn emitter rod through it--a deformable Medusa type sail

-perhaps made of this:
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-team-protein-based-material-supersonic-impacts.html

Now there would be no on-board magnets or laser machines---just a sail with that pellet rifle rod through the middle off it. The beam focuses on a single point, which also pushes the sail reflector combo---the pellet rifle rod also acting as a feed horn.

The back sail can ride beams normally---or focus the energy on pellets and do a Johndale Solum Medusa----a Fusion Sail.

Being lightweight, this could achieve high speeds. Or maybe not...

As for fusion, old fashioned tin smithing could lead to cooling
https://phys.org/news/2022-12-mitigating-corrosion-liquid-tin-cooling.html

https://phys.org/news/2023-01-cooling-million-degree-plasma-hydrogen-neon.html

The SUNVOYAGER fusion spacecraft
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.A35539
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2023/01/11/sunvoyagers-pedigree-on-the-growth-of-interstellar-ideas/

Fusion really burns money for fuel—not helium 3, Princess
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-03-fusion-future-dollars-cents.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-fusion-simulations-reveal-multi-scale-nature.html

In the news
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-physicists-superconductivity.html

 

A New Way to Achieve Nuclear Fusion: Helion

 

Yeah, Europe had cheap and easy gas from Russia for decades, so cheap and easy that they slowed their own journey towards energy independence because it was cheap and easy.

But the wind is not authoritarian with designs on rebuilding a dead empire and the sun is not a despot.

 

Nature is driving green and carbon free policies because doing what has always been done is literally unsustainable.

So, sure, until every home can be Star Trek and have its own fusion reactor for power, the EU is probably going to have to supplement its resources with something from someone, somewhere.

But the cost of that being Russia is too high, no matter how cheap that gas station that only had the GDP of Italy before it lit its future on fire sells it for.

 

Now to me---this is a bigger announcement than the NIF deal:
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-power-plasma-gigajoule-energy-turnover.html

Now the researchers have even achieved 1.3 gigajoules and a new record for discharge time on Wendelstein 7-X: the hot plasma could be maintained for eight minutes.

 

Six gigajoules is roughly the energy obtained by combusting 1 barrel (159 litres) of petroleum. 3.6 gigajoules is the equivalent of one megawatt-hour of electricity. 1.3 gigajoules is about 360 kilowatt-hours, so the average power output in this run was 2.7 megawatts over eight minutes. A typical nuclear (fission) power station has a power output of 1 gigawatt. Some way to go still...

 

Weak now…but the duration shows some stability. Not just a NIF pulse. Duration is what you need for power generation. O/T…I saw a 600 second RS-25 test recently.

New fluid flow laws
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-uncover-fluid-laws-straws.html

Plasma news
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-scientists-laser-heated-plasma-doppler-weather.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-successful-visualization-two-dimensional-electron-gas.html

 

Do you know if the fusion energy gain factor (Q) was stated for this run? I agree 480 seconds is impressive, but how did the output energy produced compare to the input energy used to achieve that duration?

 

Nothing that I could see in the article.

They are probably focused on just ruggedizing the tech before attempting anything more….as opposed to just getting an over-unity result and trying to find a way to contain it later.

Getting to meet in the middle? Well…
How tall and narrow can a torus be?
Can you maybe feed a pellet stream into that?

I still wonder if vortex breakdown might be an answer. Seeing how narrow and intense tornadic suction vortices can be with no magnetic fields to contain them.

Fusion may need a combination of approaches.

 

It's easiest if you have the gravity of a star to contain the reactions. Even so, in a star such as the Sun, the fusion energy produced per cubic metre per second in the core is surprising low - about 275 watts per cubic metre. It helps that the core is darn big - its radius is about one quarter that of the Sun - so about 1/64th of the volume.

ETA: Somewhat counterintuitively, the net gravitational attraction at the centre of the Sun (or any spherical body) is zero, but the surrounding mass serves to ensure that the pressure, density, and temperature are high enough to support fusion containment.