National Ignition Facility Fires 192-Beam Pulse 438
An anonymous reader writes "The construction and test firing of the National Ignition Facility have been completed. NIF was designed as the first facility ever to achieve self-sustaining nuclear fusion and, in particular, to reach the point of ignition in which more energy is generated from the reaction than went into creating it. While the recent 192-beam pulse only produced 80 kilojoules worth of energy, all signs point to NIF being able to reach an order of magnitude higher (PDF) than that in the coming year."
hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, can't get worked up over it (Score:4, Insightful)
We have been about thirty years away from having fusion power for the last forty or so years. Seems like they pick thirty years because it is far enough out that those making the predictions probably won't be around to be held to account.
And the NIF webpage says nothing about trying to actually achieve a stable fusion reaction, just general high energy research stuff with some carrots dangled out to keep the funding going. So we are still probably thirty years away from fusion plants.
If we were really serious about energy independence (or if ya still believe in AGW) we would be building fission plants as fast as we could pour concrete and dumping serious coin into R&D on fusion. The idea being fission is what we can do NOW but be sure we have something in the pipeline lest we, in a hundred years or so, find ourselves running out of Uranium and back in the same energy crisis and by then demand would be so great burning dinosaurs would be pissin' in the wind.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right, we should just give up now. Obviously the fact that it's not ready for commercialization now is indicative of it's future potential as a technology.
Excuse me while I go reload my coal plant.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:5, Insightful)
what I keep hearing from people in the field of nuclear physics is that Fusion will be realized by the mid 2020s.
Commercial fusion reactors have been 20 years away for at least the last 40 years. It's good to hear that we're now only 15 years away.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:5, Insightful)
> When we have energy in surplus, at the (general) expense of no one, the world
> may move much more easily to peaceful respect and cooperation.
ROFLMAO! Energy abundance will more likely just shift the resource wars to different places. We won't need oil any more but we will need all sorts of rare minerals just like we do now, only with limitless energy we will develop all sorts of new exotic manufacturing processes. But telling the House of Saud to go pound sand will still be priceless.
Re:indeed (Score:3, Insightful)
because it's not going to be energy production, fusion has been 10 years off for the last 40 years.
Which clearly means it is never, ever going to work and we should just give up, right?
close but not quite (Score:4, Insightful)
a society is as rich as its values. this is the reason the west is so powerful, not because it has nike sweatshops in indonesia. the usa, in 250 years, has eclipsed civilizations thousands of years older, because its foundational values from the enlightenment are simply superior ways of organizing society in productivity and happiness, and valuing progress and tolerance
however, in its need for energy, the west rewards places like saudi arabia. therefore, saudi arabia has no incentive to get better values, or evolve, and remains a stultified insanity exporting (wahabbi islam) country. when soccer mom fills up her SUV, she funds ultraconservative madrassas in pakistan and indonesia via saudi arabia that teach the west is the devil and should be destroyed
if oil never existed on the arabian penninsula, the insane ultraconservative religious ideas would remain the enclave of the few tribes who remained in the desert, and the cities would be full of young progressive thinking muslims, modern-looking and clamoring for change, and achieving it. simply because there would be no artificially propped up old guard preserving medieval values that simply don't work, and keeping their young from having a society they can envision themselves as better than the one they have
oil money, petrodollars, it keeps saudi arabia frozen in time, without any need or desire to adapt better values, and it allows it to export social values which are toxic to progress and prosperity. it exports these backwards values, and funds the evangelizing of ultraconservative wahabbi islam throughout the muslim world. so when we have fusion, and the value of oil drops to squat, only then will saudi arabia begin to modernize, because only then will it have to modernize for the first time since the penninsula was united in the early 20th century and oil was discovered
but right now, saudi arabia doesn't have to modernize its value system, because it is rewarded insane amounts of cash simply for sitting on a lot of oil. to the detriment of saudi society, the detriment of poor muslim societies that are recipients of the evangelizing of well-funded ultraconservative thinking, and the detriment of the west, which is vilified by the people it pays to give them oil to run their gas guzzling cars
in this way will fusion promote peace: by stop rewarding feeble, backwards societies and their unhuman values, simply because they sit on a lot of oil
Re:Energy Independence (Score:2, Insightful)
The next big fight will be over fresh water.
Re:Inertial confinement vs. magnetic confinement (Score:4, Insightful)
Go to the NIF site [llnl.gov]. What are the first things you see?
You can't tell me that there isn't a very deliberate marketing plan being put into action here.
how is that racist? (Score:4, Insightful)
i have muslim friends. i have nothing against islam. there's a mosque down the street. doesn't bother me at all. i am a very tolerant person
what i don't tolerate is: intolerance. get it?
your problem is you are confusing my criticism of ultraconservative islam, with criticism of just plain islam. i am criticizing the ultraconservative, not islam
we are talking about a society where christians and hindus can't practice their religion: all the rough jobs in saudi arabia are done by indian and filipino laborers, because saudi men won't do jobs "beneath them". don't you consider freedom of religion a basic human right? and women: in saudi arabia, a woman's rights are about as good as the rights of a head of cattle
this is horrible intolerance. and its the law of saudi arabia
i can't criticize that without being a racist in your mind? really?
since when does tolerance mean you tolerate the intolerant?
since when are you a racist simply because you criticize another culture? i can't criticize saudi arabia at all? and if i do, that means i must be a racist? you really believe that?
Re:indeed (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:jump (Score:2, Insightful)
Has that meme gotten to the point where it gets associated with any article that has words like "beam" that can conceivably be related to lasers in it?
Because if so, I'm breeding sharks with frikkin' two by fours on their heads!
Re:Energy Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, I saw that Star Trek episode too.
Like any good Slashdot geek I can appreciate a little Star Trek humor. But in all seriousness, the original poster is only half right. Nearly infinite clean energy is practically useless without the replication technology that takes advantage of it.
If our ultimate goal as a species is world peace, like the original poster was talking about, then we are going to have to eliminate the planetary struggle and competition of scarce resources that marks our current existence. In order to do that we will need both technologies.
Re:indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
You're a fucking idiot. The time from the earliest nuclear experiments and commercial nuclear plants was almost a century. The time between finding out that black liquid from the ground burns and oil refineries was a thousand years. The time between fire and steam power was longer than all of recorded history.
The time it takes an idiot to turn a random brain firing into an unthought out Slashdot posting, however, is obviously much, much shorter.
Re:close but not quite (Score:2, Insightful)
When a 60 year old woman is sentenced to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation for having two unrelated men in her house and no one in the middle east really cares, then yes, our values are better than theirs.
When hundreds of thousands celebrate in the streets apon news of 3000 civilians killed in America, then yes, our values are better than theirs.
When men are allowed to beat their wives, restrict them to the house as a virtual slaves and concubines, then yes, our values are beter than theirs.
When men are allowed to kill their wives, sisters, or daughters becuase they "dishonored" the family and face little to no prosecution, then yes, our values are beter than theirs.
It has nothing to do with race. It is their society.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:5, Insightful)
So who says it doesn't have energy apps too? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are plenty of technologies that start out as a military primary (or even exclusive) purpose but yield benefits to the whole world. Sometimes it is direct, sometimes indirect, but it is very common.
Heck, take nuclear technology in the first place. Whole reason that shit got developed so fast was to make a big bomb. Los Alamos was not started for humanitarian reasons, it was started to blow some people the fuck up. Now the work they did there didn't have any direct civilian applications. Not much market for having a nuke in your yard. However, the research and engineering there was the basis for civilian applications like nuclear power plants.
As a more direct, and recent, example, take GPS. GPS was designed so the military could accurately blow some people the fuck up. They wanted an accurate, universal location system for ships, planes, and even bombs. Does great for that. However it was opened up for civilian uses and has now become the greatest navigational aid in history. It is the prime location method for basically all commercial traffic, land sea or air. They only fall back to older systems should GPS fail.
So sure, one of the uses of this facility may be nuclear weapons testing. Heck, might be the reason for it to exist. That doesn't mean the research there doesn't have civilian energy applications.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
[[ Ultra-cheap energy will create devices that require materials and technology which yield other shortages ]]
That's FAR from certain: ultra-cheap energy would allow to recycle materials better so external need for materials could be lessened too.
Beside which material are you talking about??
Re:Energy Independence (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, don't expect energy to stay cheap. Fossil fuels are obviously finite.
Did you skip the Article AND Summary? Well let me remidn you, this discussion is about the implications of Fusion power. Dwell on that one of a while my freind.
Re:close but not quite (Score:1, Insightful)
When a african american with an IQ of 10 is executed, your true values show.
When you boast proudly of your pound me in the ass prisons, frankly you are just as bad as those whom you speak of.
There are fundemental Christian groups who behave just as badly as you describe, but that doesnt suit your anti moslem agenda does it?
Did the US citzens celebrate in the streets the winning of the Iraq war, or the end of WW2 brought about by the only use of Nuclear weapons
in history? Were there not hunderds of thousands of civilian deaths caused by the US actions. You invented the term collateral damage to hide the truth from yourselves.
Of course there is no domestic violence in the enlightened US is there?
And students in the moslem world are always taking automatic weapons to school and killing as many kids as possible-oh wait thats in the US isnt it?
Self righteous hypocrite.
Re:I'll give you a hint (Score:2, Insightful)
It depends. How much energy is used to refine that 2mm nugget of beryllium? It's almost certainly a specific isotope mix, which would require a pretty sophisticated refining process (i.e. could be moderately energy intensive aside from the 2MJ ignition burst). You might think that you've got a lot wriggle room with an order of magnitude power output, but keep in mind that Gasoline has an energy density of about 45 megajoules per kilogram, so it wouldn't take much for that refining energy cost to be higher than the ignition energy costs. You have to look at the whole process (for instance look at the costs of corn-based ethanol [ethanol-gec.org]).
Secondly, how much of the 20MJ output can be captured in a useful manner (i.e. electricity) versus capture/conversion losses? With a modern Internal Combustion Engine, after more than a century of refinement, it's less than 30%.
If the beryllium extraction/refining energy costs are close to the same as ignition input and the conversion efficiency to electricity is under 30%, you don't gain that much.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Energy Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
but the amount of wars per year has decreased for many many years now.
Citation needed.
Re:indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear experiments in 1855? Surely you joke. Nobody in 1855 knew what a nucleus was, or was even convinced about the atomic theory of matter.
In fact, nuclear fission was discovered in 1938, and large scale full production systems were operating by 1945 (Hanford), with commercial utility turn-on by mid 1950's.
Nuclear fusion was discovered in early 30's, I think, before fission.
The reason why nuclear fission went from discovery to exploitation immediately, and fusion is still really hard, is due to the laws of physics.
Specifically:
1) neutrons have charge zero, but nuclei don't.
2) strong force is very short range
These will never change.
And yes, the original poster is right, NIF isn't helping much for energy production.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Energy Independence (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it amusing that you assume that we are still in the 60s with plasma and fusion technology without reading up on any of it first.
Re:Still problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. What do you think particle colliders are for? (Of course, turning helium into iron is a fairly boring affair, and particle colliders are expensive, so they're mostly used for interesting stuff, like producing transuranic elements, exotic isotopes or subatomic particles).
However, if you were asking if we have the technology to turn Helium into Iron _and_ harvest some of the energy released the the process ... then no, we can't do that right now.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have effectively free and infinite energy, practically any other resource problem can be solved with today's technology.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
What governs humanity's motivation often goes beyond just the quest of plentiful resources.
No, it doesn't.
The radical religious factions tearing nations apart are a symptom of lack of resources. Not that there won't be fanatics, regardless, but without a large population of hungry, dissatisfied people with no opportunities and nothing to look forward to but a life of grinding poverty, the fanatics have very limited power.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of your examples are fueled by legions of people who want a slightly better life for themselves, even if it is in the afterlife. If you take care of their needs, they'll be less likely to go along with it. They'll have more to lose by being part of a destructive mission, rather than feeling like there is nothing to lose and a chance for personal gain.
Re:I'll give you a hint (Score:3, Insightful)
and how much energy goes into getting gas to the pump? (Hint: A lot more) why do people, always ignore that with gasoline when they are poo-pooing a different technology.
People like you just really hate change, don't you?
And why are you comparing this to a combustion engine efficiency? you should be comparing this to power generation efficiency.
When talking abut electric engines, then talk about the efficiency of engines.
Of course in that comparison, combustion looses, badly.
Re:Energy Independence (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and a global outbreak of selflessness and common sense.
I fear we'll get infinite clean energy waaaay before we get that.
Re:how is that racist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, calling the US a "nation of immigrants" is not something those evil multiculturalists just made up, its a freakin' fact. Wave after wave of immigrants from almost every continent at one time or another during the first century and beyond, at a rate that often exceeded the natural population increase in the main population.
The difference in that the previous waves of immigrants tended to Anglicize their names, give their children "English" names, speak English in the home if possible, etc, to assimilate their children as quickly as possible.
Now it seems the opposite is happening.
ISTM that if your country-of-origin is bad enough that you want to pick up everything and leave, and that America is good enough that it's the place where you want to drop yourself in, that you'd want to leave as much of the past behind, and embrace American culture. Otherwise, stay in your CoO because you obviously think it's better than America.
Re:It's not pure science (Score:3, Insightful)
You're confused. The scientists there are conducting experiments for the sake of science. That is pure science.
The people who fund them see the benefit. That does not, however, make the science "impure". It just means that there are additional reasons for conducting these experiments.
They're observing nuclear fusion. That is as pure as science gets.