Friday, April 19, 2013
How America’s latest attempt at fusion power fizzled
How America’s latest attempt at fusion power fizzled
By Andrew Grant
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
If all goes according to Mike Dunne’s plan, the United States will build its first nuclear fusion power plant by the end of the next decade. Sixteen times a second, as the National Ignition Facility's program director for laser fusion energy envisions it, a two-millimeter-wide capsule of cryogenic hydrogen will drop into a steel chamber and get zapped by a 384-beam laser. Matter will transform into energy, driving a turbine that injects up to a gigawatt of clean power into the electrical grid.
But all is not going according to plan. To be viable, a fusion power plant would need to generate more energy than it consumed. Yet except in nuclear weapons, scientists have never produced a fusion reaction that does that. For a half-century they have strived for controlled fusion and been disappointed, only to adjust their theories, retry and be disappointed again.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/349381/description/Ignition_Failed
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21 comments:
LLNL can't be trusted to run a large program for the government. They are far too comfortable with lying to congress, the media, their NNSA sponsors, and the public, about the failures in the science programs under NIF.
The Russians will get ignition first, and not through laser based ICF.
Sorry, but LANL got ignition first. There is no award for second place.
Sorry, LANL didn't, but LASL did!
Poor taste warning!!!
I don't know, I think the Japanese got bot 2nd and 3rd place awards.
I don't know, I think the Japanese got bot 2nd and 3rd place awards.
April 25, 2013 at 12:48 PM
Wrong. Both were fission-only devices.
Thank you for playing.
And not even boosted.
In the late 1940's, it was known as the "Los Alamos Weapons Laboratory." LASL came later.
1951:Greenhouse George and Item 1952:Ivy Mike
LASL
To think that NIF managers and employees were actively talking about winning the Nobel Prize and how people there would be the progenitors for future generations of fusion scientists and engineers.
They have absolutely no incentive to throw in the towel, or even to admit even the smallest defeat or failure, considering how high they set the expectations for themselves. That's an invitation for confirmation bias right there.
Bruce Goodwin is out.
So is Ed Moses.
Buh-bye, NIF thread (again). Yay!
But it won't be gone for long. NIF can't stay out of the news. Too many screw-ups.
NIF can't stay out of the news. Too many screw-ups.
April 30, 2013 at 2:44 PM
NIF hasn't been in the news. Just on the blogs. If you confuse the two, you are under 30 years old. And very naive.
NIF is in the news all the time. The failed milestone was mentioned on the radio today in conjunction with Ed's move. They even referred to it as a demotion on the radio.
Local news only. No one else gives a crap.
Local to LLNL. That's all that matters.
Pretty sure that posters are saying that NIF news is unimportant purely for the purpose of evoking a response and wider interest, readership and engagement on these subjects. And it is clearly working. You deserve kudos for your efforts to bring more attention. Very nice.
NIF is irrelevant to the world. Or else the world would know what it is.
I am new to the blog and llnl. Please explain to me all the failures that NIF has been complicit in?
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