Ignition achieved! Nuclear fusion power now within reach

[RV_]

Our grandkids and their kids at the latest will will have clean unlimited power. We are on the downhill slope for Fusion. Just not in the house or car. Reality, what a concept!

Nuclear fusion has long been seen as the future of energy. As the NIF now passes the breakeven point, how close are we to our ultimate goal?

Excerpt:

"Nuclear fusion has been studied very seriously with a view toward commercial-scale power production for over 60 years, but it’s this experiment that marks the very first time in history that the vaunted breakeven point has been passed.

However, that doesn’t mean the climate/energy crisis is now solved. Quite to the contrary, although this is certainly a step worth celebrating, it’s just another incremental improvement toward the ultimate goal. To be clear, here are the steps that must all be achieved in order for commercial-scale fusion power to become viable.

1. Nuclear fusion reactions must be achieved.
2. More energy must arise from those reactions than was inputted to trigger those reactions.
3. The energy that arises must then be extracted, and transformed into a form of energy that can then be either stored or transmitted: in other words, put to good use.
4. The energy must be produced either steadily or repeatably, so that it can provide power-on-demand, the way we’d demand it for any other type of power plant.
5. And the materials and equipment consumed and used/damaged during the reaction must be replaced and/or repaired on timescales that don’t hinder the recurrence of that reaction.

After being stuck on step 1 for over half-a-century, this recent breakthrough finally gets us to step 2: the achievement of what we call “ignition.” For the first time, the next steps are not subject to scientific doubt; they’re simply a matter of the engineering details needed to bring this now-proven technology to life.

If you’ve thought about fusion power, chances are you’ve encountered the old adage, “Viable fusion power is 50 years away… and always will be.” But according to Professor Don Lamb at the University of Chicago, that’s definitely no longer the case. When I asked him about this issue, he stated:

“That was then and this is now. As long as there were physical processes that we didn’t understand until we did it robustly, no one could be sure that we’d be able to [achieve ignition]. The physics of plasmas is incredibly rich, as is [the physics of] lasers.

Nature fought back hard; as soon as you dealt with one physical process, nature said, ‘A ha! Here’s another!’ Because we didn’t understand all the physical processes that stood in our way, we’d think, ‘Oh, I handled this problem, so it’ll be 50 years from now,’ and it just kept going like that ad infinitum. But now we can say, ‘Oh, nature, you’re out of tricks, I’ve got you now.'”

In other words, before we achieved ignition — i.e., before we passed the breakeven point — we knew there were going to be fundamental science issues we had yet to uncover. But now those issues have been identified, dealt with, and are behind us. There are still plenty of developmental issues to face and overcome, but from a scientific perspective, the problem of passing the breakeven point and generating more energy than we put in has been overcome at long last.

There are a myriad of takeaway points from this new development, but here’s what I think everyone should remember about nuclear fusion as we move forward into the future.

• We really have passed the breakeven point: where the energy incident on a target — the key energy that triggers a fusion reaction — is less than the energy we get out of the reaction itself.
• That threshold is just over 2.0 megajoules of incident laser energy, far less than many who asserted 3.5, 4, or even 5 megajoules would be required to achieve the breakeven point.
• A new facility, one with lenses and apparatuses designed to withstand these new energies, must be constructed.
• A prototype energy-generation plant will need to leverage still-developing technologies: safely chargeable capacitor banks, large systems of lenses so that successive fusion-generating shots can be fired with a new set of lenses while the recently used set can be “healed,” the ability to harness and convert the released energy into electrical energy, energy storage systems that can hold and distribute the energy over time, including during the time between successive shots, etc.
• And the dream of a home fusion plant that lives in your backyard will have to be relegated to the far future; residential homes cannot handle megajoules of energy being pulsed through them, and the needed capacitor banks would create a substantial fire/explosion hazard. It won’t be in your backyard or anyone’s backyard; these fusion generating endeavors belong in a dedicated, carefully monitored facility.

Overall, now is the perfect time for a substantial investment in all of these technologies, with this achievement giving us every reason to believe that we can completely decarbonize the energy sector worldwide during the 21st century. It’s a tremendous time to be a human on planet Earth; it’s now up to us to make our investments count."

More and related stories here:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/nuclear-fusion-breakeven/

 

[docj]

Although the experiment at NIF did achieve "ignition", IMO we are still a long way from achieving any form of commercial power production.  

Here's quote from an article in Science, which is a bit more of a mainstream science source:

If gain meant producing more output energy than input electricity, however, NIF fell far short. Its lasers are inefficient, requiring hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the 2 MJ of laser light and 3 MJ of fusion energy. Moreover, a power plant based on NIF would need to raise the repetition rate from one shot per day to about 10 per second. One million capsules a day would need to be made, filled, positioned, blasted, and cleared away—a huge engineering challenge.

Here's a link to the full article:  https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough

In 1942 Fermi demonstrated the first controlled nuclear fission reaction at the U of Chicago.  The first reactor on the power grid was brought online at Shippingport PA in 1958.  Commercial nuclear power was rushed into commercial use by the Atomic Energy Commission which was both the developer of the technology and its marketing agent--a bad combination.  If those first generation reactors had been run through a full life cycle, many of the technology problems that were subsequently experienced could have been found and solutions developed.  Instead, the first generation nuclear power plants were rushed online and became known for their unreliable performance.  Even before Three Mile Island or Chernobyl or Fukishima nuclear power was judged to be "problematic" at best.

Hopefully, we will have learned from this and will allow fusion power plants to develop in accordance with normal engineering practice.  Unfortunately, that may not be fast enough for those who see fusion as a path to great wealth.  Even though few remember them today, hucksters have been part of the fusion community since the beginning.  In many respects the inertial confinement fusion program owes its existence to one such huckster, "Kip" Segal who founded KMS Fusion in Ann Arbor and promised Congress that commercial fusion power was "just around the corner" if only he was given a bit more money.  This was in the mid-70's and Segal was able to bank several years posthumous funding after dropping dead while testifying to Congress about the funding he needed. (not a joke, this really happened). 

The inertial confinement fusion program, the "owners" of today's NIF, got its initial funding from the nuclear weapons program at AEC/ERDA/Dept of Energy which realized that Segal wasn't just a huckster.  That was the period in which I was involved in the program.  The inertial confinement program at Lawrence Livermore Lab grew through the management of yet another huckster by the name of Emmett who promised Congress that he could achieve ignition if he was given "just a bit bigger laser!"  From those promises came the Shiva laser system, followed by the NOVA system, followed by NIF.  Emmett didn't die while testifying, but he was just as good at getting funding!

I agree with RV that fusion could well be the energy source of the future, but I caution that achieving safe, commercial power production will turn out to be significantly more difficult than it might seem to some.  For example, claims that fusion is free of radioactivity are false, when, in fact, the fusion reaction itself releases 10 MeV neutrons which are the "energy" of the process.  Those neutrons are powerful enough to induce radioactivity in many of the materials we might use to build a fusion reactor.  How to create a reactor that, itself, doesn't become highly radioactive will be one of the major engineering challenges we will face.  I'm sure we will discover other problems to solve that we haven't yet thought about.

I'm not sure my grandchildren will see wide-spread fusion power in their lifetimes, but maybe the next generation will.  JMO.

Edited January 31, 2023 by docj

[RV_]

1 hour ago, docj said:

I'm not sure my grandchildren will see wide-spread fusion power in their lifetimes, but maybe the next generation will.  JMO.

From my post:

"Overall, now is the perfect time for a substantial investment in all of these technologies, with this achievement giving us every reason to believe that we can completely decarbonize the energy sector worldwide during the 21st century."

We agree. We had four generations in the 20th century in my family. My grandparents in 1902, my parents 1930, me 1952, my kids 1973/1976, our grandkids were born in the 90s. Our grandkids have  already produced three great grandkids.

By the same token it was just 15 years ago that the smart phone was developed in its present form by Apple and Google in 2007.

To use your phrasing Joel, and not arguing, we "may" find it easier than we thought, where you believe it "may" be harder.

But you say "I'm sure we will discover other problems to solve that we haven't yet thought about."

I am also sure we will discover some problems to be much easier than we thought.

I am excited to see it happening and neither of us can say we are sure of anything in the future except death and taxes. N.Korea, China or Moscow could EMP the US and set us back to the 1800s or result in MAD.

I do believe that now emerging AI will accelerate everything that requires modeling and research. We are preparing to have a colony on the moon and another on Mars today! It has only been 120 years since the first self-propelled flight at Kitty Hawk in 1903. In 1903 everyone but a very few rode horses, steam engines, wind powered sailboats and livestock powered the world's commerce. We did not have AI or quantum physics to help then. And we have folks who believe the Earth is flat and that we never were in space it was all faked!

Regardless of our progeny's experience I agree that it will likely be done commercially before the end of the 21st century, 77 years, if we survive past 2200 when I'll only be 148 years young and already returned my borrowed stardust. 😉

Edited January 31, 2023 by RV_

[sandsys]

How is this related to the nuclear power plants we already have here in Minnesota? 

Simple words, please.

Linda

[Darryl&Rita]

4 minutes ago, sandsys said:

How is this related to the nuclear power plants we already have here in Minnesota? 

Simple words, please.

Linda

Fusion, which is what we're using now, involves splitting atoms. Fusion, as above, involves combining atoms. Less harmful byproducts, less chance of a runaway. There's more big words, but that's the 10 second version.

[RV_]

24 minutes ago, Darryl&Rita said:

Fusion, which is what we're using now, involves splitting atoms. Fusion, as above, involves combining atoms. Less harmful byproducts, less chance of a runaway. There's more big words, but that's the 10 second version.

Darryl is right but with a word mistake. He meant to say "Fission, which is what we're using now, involves splitting atoms. Fusion, as above, involves combining atoms. Less harmful byproducts, less chance of a runaway. There's more big words, but that's the 10 second version."

We use fission now, totally different! Fusion will be much cleaner

Edited January 31, 2023 by RV_

[Darryl&Rita]

TyPiNg FAsTeR tH4n braNe W0rK

[Kirk W]

2 hours ago, Darryl&Rita said:

TyPiNg FAsTeR tH4n braNe W0rK

You might want to edit your post to say fission.   😊 I have learned to make it a practice and read what I post, then go back and edit it to fix my typos and mistakes. 

[RV_]

3 hours ago, Darryl&Rita said:

TyPiNg FAsTeR tH4n braNe W0rK

🤣 Been there done that. I adopted a dyslexic keyboard and am giving it a forever home! 😏

[Darryl&Rita]

3 hours ago, Kirk W said:

You might want to edit your post to say fission.   😊 I have learned to make it a practice and read what I post, then go back and edit it to fix my typos and mistakes. 

Personally, I think it's bad forum practice to edit a post that's been pointed out as having an error, and corrected. I will let it remain as a stain on my record, rather than try to scrub the shame.

[Kirk W]

10 hours ago, Darryl&Rita said:

Personally, I think it's bad forum practice to edit a post that's been pointed out as having an error, and corrected

The edit function also provides a place for you to note why it was edited. 😉

[justRich]

An example of small, tiny, tiny achievements turning into gigantic success stories is the Haber-Bosch process.
 

Quote

They demonstrated their process in the summer of 1909 by producing ammonia from air, drop by drop, at the rate of about 125 mL (4 US fl oz) per hour.

This led to the food on our table today (and a world population of 8 billion people).  
Small but significant achievements are notable for that reason.

 

[sandsys]

21 hours ago, RV_ said:

🤣 Been there done that. I adopted a dyslexic keyboard and am giving it a forever home! 😏

Love it!

Linda

[sandsys]

On 1/31/2023 at 12:59 PM, Darryl&Rita said:

Fusion, which is what we're using now, involves splitting atoms. Fusion, as above, involves combining atoms. Less harmful byproducts, less chance of a runaway. There's more big words, but that's the 10 second version.

Thank you for this and the correction of the first word to fission. I actually understood it!

Linda