Spectacular progress at NIF!
http://optics.org/news/5/8/23
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Oh my God, they achieved ignition!!! Oh, wait... What progress?
NIF won't achieve ignition until Moses (Ed) comes down from the mountain to wave his cain over NIF and "directs" the pellet to fuse.
But if and when that breakthrough comes, Dunne believes that it will be a relatively short time before real power plants based on the NIF technique could be put into operation. “It could be as short as eight years,” he said. (Article)
Using the NNSA labs common scaling factor of x5 with this 8 year figure and that gives a date 40 years from today.
Fantastic! Young scientist will be able to keep hyping the success of fusion energy generators that are "right around the corner " for their whole career at the lab. This is, indeed, fabulous news for those working at NIF.
This is a hard issue.
It could be done in 8 years if it was treated as a high national priority, and everybody lined up to make it happen (as in Apollo). That doesn't seem very likely, but to scientific types it's not impossible.
40+ years is much more likely, given how hard it is to get and maintain enough consensus to actually do anything.
So, if you're an honest scientist who really feels like this would be a good thing for mankind, what do you say? "8 years" damages your credibility, "40+ years" makes everybody loose interest immediately. So I guess you do as Dunne did: you state carefully that it "could be as soon as 8 years."
Personally, after 30+ years in the fusion business, I think the "8 years" is just laughably misleading. The US no longer has the guts for things like this, and we need to face that unfortunate fact.
It is 20 years away because people can't conceive of a time beyond 20 years. This is the time of active recall. Beyond that is hazy. Fusion power has been 20 years away since Toy Top under Fred and Charley.
The Spanish Christians took 800 years of constant war to throw out the Spanish Muslims. And that is an easier problem to solve that Fusion power production.
There is a lesson here for both Fusion Power salesmen and Middle East peddlers. We are only 60 years along in an 800 year campaign...
We don't have the resources to devote to the problem, no one does. It's unbelievably expensive. And it's not clear that inertial fusion is viable at all except with bomb drivers (read, not a power plant). Certainly it's not at all clear that even the NIF is big enough. Tokamaks, maybe, but they have their own (different) problems. It's Mosesesque hyperbole to talk of fusion as anything but a long-running science research project.
So.... it looks like NIF hasn't gotten much done in the last two years since they had the alpha heating milestone failure.
NIF is winning !!!! All you doubters are losers.
Now, go away and let the real scientists perform their ground-breaking work. There is a Noble Prize to be won.
And if all that money had been put into Solar energy research we would be basking in cheap clean energy all over the us today! We are such stupid stupid creatures!!!!!
"Anonymous said...
So.... it looks like NIF hasn't gotten much done in the last two years since they had the alpha heating milestone failure."
Students, here we have a perfect example of bloggian logic. By simply attaching the word "so" to the beginning of whatever statement you would like to make, in whatever thread you would like to make it, you can appear to have read and followed the previous discussion, and drawn an actual conclusion. It's just that simple. Your statement need not be based on any facts or any alleged facts, but can be manufactured from whole cloth to suit whatever purpose you wish.
So, it's apparent that the referenced posting is the product of a deviant and probably sociological cold-fusion scientist.
You put that much effort into responding to a troll? Getuhlifffffeeee.
Perhaps it could be rewritten to make 6:05 pm happy.
"So.... it looks like NIF hasn't gotten much done that is of significant worth weighed against the enormous costs in the last two years since they had the alpha heating milestone failure that remains a major failure despite any high-foot flag-waving
That makes 6:05 look like the troll.
NIF = No Issues Found
NIC = No Issues Corrected
It feels like "spectacular progress" or "milestone achieved" or "mission accomplished" is announced every time a butterfly farts.
Yes, that was a reference to George W.
goo.gl/BnKN8D
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