A word of caution – there is a long way to go, between a lab demonstration of energy production, and a viable commercial nuclear fusion reactor. The break even claim only applies to the amount of energy pumped into the fusion target, vs the amount emitted, not the total energy expended to perform the experiment. Vastly greater amounts of energy were used to generate the final 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy which struck the target, to produce 3.15MJ of fusion energy. And that 3.15MJ of fusion energy was only enough to keep a 2KW plug in home heater running for 25 minutes.
To turn this into a fusion generator, the energy emitted by the target would need to be vastly scaled up, and the process would have to fire multiple times per minute, likely multiple times per second, rather than a single shot after hours or days of preparation.
Nevertheless this milestone is critically important – it provides a focal point of motivation, to solve the remaining problems.
It is very important. And I'll make a couple of wagers:
The enviroweenies who crap themselves at the words 'nuclear' and 'radiation' will try to delay this as much as possible, because a lot of them- besides the ignorant fears- do NOT want people to have cheap, abundant energy. Remember what a couple of their idols had to say:
… the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child,” Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says. Laments Washington-based author-activist Jeremy Rifkin, “It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.”
Second, this will have a bunch of them now saying "See, we don't need new refineries and drilling, because we have FUSION POWER!" Not caring that this being an actual thing is A, probably at least a decade- likely more- away, and
B, there's a LOT of things we need oil and gas and coal for.
Update: From Science News:
But this latest fusion burst still didn’t produce enough energy to run the laser power supplies and other systems of the NIF experiment. It took about 300 million joules of energy from the electrical grid to get a hundredth of the energy back in fusion.
“The net energy gain is with respect to the energy in the light that was shined on the target, not with respect to the energy that went into making that light,” says University of Rochester physicist Riccardo Betti, who was also not involved with the research. “Now it’s up to the scientists and engineers to see if we can turn these physics principles into useful energy.”
So a looong way to go. Which brings me to C on 'what the enviroweenies/anti-humans will say:
The enviroweenies who crap themselves at the words 'nuclear' and 'radiation' will try to delay this as much as possible, because a lot of them- besides the ignorant fears- do NOT want people to have cheap, abundant energy. Remember what a couple of their idols had to say:
… the prospect of cheap, inexhaustible power from fusion is “like giving a machine gun to an idiot child,” Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich says. Laments Washington-based author-activist Jeremy Rifkin, “It’s the worst thing that could happen to our planet.”
Second, this will have a bunch of them now saying "See, we don't need new refineries and drilling, because we have FUSION POWER!" Not caring that this being an actual thing is A, probably at least a decade- likely more- away, and
B, there's a LOT of things we need oil and gas and coal for.
Update: From Science News:
But this latest fusion burst still didn’t produce enough energy to run the laser power supplies and other systems of the NIF experiment. It took about 300 million joules of energy from the electrical grid to get a hundredth of the energy back in fusion.
“The net energy gain is with respect to the energy in the light that was shined on the target, not with respect to the energy that went into making that light,” says University of Rochester physicist Riccardo Betti, who was also not involved with the research. “Now it’s up to the scientists and engineers to see if we can turn these physics principles into useful energy.”
So a looong way to go. Which brings me to C on 'what the enviroweenies/anti-humans will say:
"We don't need to build any nuclear reactors, because we'll have FUSION POWER! In just a few years/decades/next century..."
5 comments:
This will never happen. There's way too many politicians and government swamp dwellers that are getting money from the current system, not to mention the oil and coal industries that could be upended with this technology. I believe this is another method to get better funding for the "clean energy" grifters.
Fusion has been "right around the corner" since I was a wee lad decades ago. And I suspect it will always be "right around the corner".... probably forever. Too force two atoms together to make a bigger atom releases lots of energy.....but requires lots of energy AND pressure to overcome the natural forces that keep atoms apart. The only place where that temperature and pressure occurs is in the heart of a sun and it exists there due to the enormous gravitational forces a sun has. Unless/until we learn to manipulate gravity I suspect fusion will always be a boutique force only available to us via nuclear warheads. We can barely even measure gravity waves. We have NO clue how to even try to manipulate it.
Shocked
Scorched earth when they figure it out.
One thing that is missing is gravity.
That is in short supply on this planet.
Heltau
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