Z Machine Advances Fusion Race 220
Sandia Labs has announced a new milestone in Linear Transformer Driver technology that aims to solve one of the biggest obstacles to practical fusion reactors. Getting the current needed to "spark" a burst of fusion is doable; getting a constant series of sparks going to create a continuous chain of fusion bursts has never been achieved. The LTD, which allows the Sandia Z machine to fire once every 10.2 seconds, makes it look achievable. The press release (which has been picked up in a few places, but with no further analysis) says that practical fusion power could now be 20 years off.
See the Z Machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Millions of Dollars Away (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:20 year off == 20 good funding years (Score:3, Interesting)
So all the countries of the world that's economically hogtied to the Middle East doesn't like the idea of vast, cheap energy sources. Right... From what I've understood, getting it started is only a very tiny part of the problem, the biggest problem is "Here's the particles that'll fly out of a fusion reactor. Make electricity out of it". If there really was a clear consensus that it'd be a godsend if we just got it started, it'd have happened long ago.
Re:ICF, not MCF (Score:5, Interesting)
The plasma in a fusion reaction does not fall apart due to gravity. The effects of heat (and thus pressure) is much higher than those of gravity.
ICF in this form may work, but do they have a method to harvest energy yet? are they close to break even? In theory one could capture emitted alpha particles (they have an energy/speed of several million electron volts, which translates to a very small current of a few million volts), but AFAIK, nobody has done such a feat yet.
I worked in that department for 3 summers (Score:5, Interesting)
I also wouldn't want to live anywhere near there; it feels like a moderately strong earthquake in the area everytime they fire that thing; it seems like the ground beneath and around a rapid-fire facility would quickly weaken and collapse.
So yes, the Z machine is an excellent source of x-rays, and those x-rays can definitely be used to collapse a fusion capsule, but how applicable is it for fusion power?
it's a steam engine (Score:2, Interesting)
Wood, Coal, Fission, Fusion
Has the efficiency of steam turbines progressed much in the last 50 years?
After fusion would it be better to focus on Steam turbines or the removal of the steam cycle from the power generating equation?
Thermocouple technology would probably be better in the long run than steam technology moving turbines around.
Re:I worked in that department for 3 summers (Score:2, Interesting)
If they can get the rate of firing to 1 in 10 seconds that means they have automated it, and don't have to manually rebuild the target every time which would be an advance. None of this means that fusion is just around the corner, but it does mean that some building blocks for controlled inertial fusion are happening. This isn't "development" (the D in R and D) it is still just research. The Z machine is NOT a powerplant and never will be nor anything directly based on it. The technology it demonstrates could well be incorporated in a different design of a powerplant someday. (Ob. I have never worked for Sandia or ever got any money from them).
Re:Teller's Classical Super and the tritium proble (Score:3, Interesting)
Why spend billions re-creating something on earth which already exists 93 million miles away -- the sun.
It has been keeping us warm and feeding for millennia. The fossil fuels we now burn are nothing more than stored solar energy. This means that all that carbon we are now releasing must have been on the surface of the earth at one time in order to participate in photosynthesis. For that reason alone, all this global warming BS is just that BS and should be ignored. If living plants and animals flourished in such abundance, to create all these fuels, then why exactly would the return to a warmer, more life filled planet be such a terrible thing? Living things, especially people, are very much able to adapt to changing environments, if the changes are gradual. Would growing oranges in Alaska or Siberia be such a terrible thing?
There is this yet poorly understood, yet ubiquitous process called photosynthesis in nature for capturing the free energy this giant thermonuclear fusion device sends our way. It has ben working for untold amounts of time. We figured out already how to refine common sand to make devices to convert some of this energy for our needs. There is a band of wind called the jet stream circling the earth at high velocities. Utilizing only 1% to 2% of its energy would meet all human needs all by itself. Learn how to fly a windmill kite 7 miles up and get the power down to earth.
It seems to me that developing these partially working, known technologies should bear fruit much sooner than pie in the reactor fusion.
Re:20 year off == 20 good funding years (Score:4, Interesting)
But...
If you think Plutonium is a weapon proliferation problem you haven't seen nothing yet. Tritium is the key to making really powerful small nuclear weapons. Buy injecting Tritium gas into the core of a nuclear bomb you can boost the yield a lot.
Re:Teller's Classical Super and the tritium proble (Score:3, Interesting)
Care to cite your sources on this? Because the IPCC report that was published recently suggests almost the opposite. Already warm climates will become warmer and drier, not more humid; in those climates, water tables will drop as soils are dried out (which also contributes to topsoil erosion due to wind).
As someone else said, who cares if you can grow oranges in Alaska if the bread basket can't continue producing enough for everyone?
In Arizona, we've been seeing abbreviated monsoon seasons and dropping water tables for over a decade. Granted, some of this is attributable to the burgeoning population... but somehow, I don't think the reduction of monsoon rains is completely attributable to population growth. We're also seeing fewer hard frosts in the winter, which means some pest populations (like ticks) are growing out of control.
Again, care to cite a source or provide an argument to support your claims? Because the IPCC report predicted that, for example, a 2 degree C temperature increase might benefit crop yields in North America overall, but any increase beyond that was almost certain to have a negative impact.
The effects in Africa and Central America are predicted to be the most profound, since agriculture in those areas is tied to rainfall, and rainfall patterns will most certainly be disrupted by higher temperatures. Combine that with drier soils that get blown away, a la the Great Dust Bowl, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Of course, this is starting to get WAAAAY off topic. Bringing it all back to the original article, and to your comments upon it: Yeah, practical fusion may be a long way off, but the technological benefits just from trying to achieve it are going to pay off big-time. I am particularly heartened by the fact that the approach taken by the researchers in TFA is substantially different from the magnetic confinement approach taken by the tokamak proponents (e.g., ITER). More teams trying various different ways of achieving fusion means an increased probability that one of the approaches will bear fruit.
In the meantime, there are other sustainable energy sources we can exploit, and still be carbon-neutral. Yeah, it's possible that humans could adapt to some dramatic climate shifts, but what would happen to most civilizations on our planet? What would happen to our cultures? These impacts need to be weighed too.