Is the NIF a ignition achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize? I have my own options but didn’t want to bias the question.
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No. I just do not see this as any kind of important discovery. Now the Nobel prize can given out for tech achievements, such as the integrated chip, the CCD camera, specialized lasers but the tech winners are generally for something that had a big impact. NIF is not a discovery and will have no practical impact for like 30 years. Even if fusion becomes viable I doubt it will with the NIF approach because it simply is not that well controlled and hard to get usable energy out of it. NIF was done mainly for weapons science not energy. I get that it sounds nice to say endless energy to put a nice spin on it but that is just hype to get more money.
The only way I can see it win is for political reasons to show that world that fusion is possible and they only way we can save ourselves form climate change or something with free clean energy, even is this is bs it will inspire this type of work so let us just pretend that this is free energy That would taint the prize in my opinion but we are living in a post truth world so it is possible. I suppose one could give out a prize for general plasma work which could include NIF and maybe some other approaches. It just does not seem like a NIF as a prize that is very exciting in terms of science. It could one way to give the field a prize.
Now with all that being said important and impactful work does not have to lead to a Nobel prize. NIF could well be important for the purpose it was made. It is not impossible that this approach could lead to useful energy sources with followup machines, lots of good science could be done but give it 10, 20 or so years to see what happens.
I would love to hear someone else take.
No. The whole announcement was ruined by the marketing of clean energy. It was a great achievement, but also emblematic of everything wrong with modern science.
I would love to hear someone else take.
12/28/2022 11:28 PM
I hesitated to post my opinion, but I totally agree with you, especially your contrast with the CCD Nobel. That had incredible real world impact. ICF ignition also is known physics and the achievement is an ICF centric milestone: more energy out than put in by the laser. Also, the connection with nuclear weapons is probably disqualifying and against Alfred Nobel’s intentions. This does not diminish the achievement though.
No. Nothing new or revolutionary was demonstrated or discovered. NIF remains an extremely expensive, and oh so esoteric playground. In short, as others have indicated, it is a model of how NOT to do science.
"Also, the connection with nuclear weapons is probably disqualifying and against Alfred Nobel’s intentions"
Good point. They keep spinning this as if NIF was only built for the commercial use of fusion energy.
Maybe the Pulitzer Prize…for fiction.
Alfred Nobel was actually in favor of weapons, I believe, as a way to prevent war. This was mentioned in Linus Pauling's acceptance speech:
I remember Alfred Nobel’s statement in 1892, as reported by Bertha von Suttner: “Our factories may well put an end to war sooner than your (peace) congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate one another in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops”.
Alfred Nobel owned Bofors, a weapons company, they were eventually bought by BAE:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2019/december/gun-fought-all-sides
https://www.baesystems.com/en-us/our-company/inc-businesses/platforms-and-services/locations/sweden
Nobel invented dynamite. So what? Weapons are most often used to prevent war, not start war.
The prizes were established in Nobel's will, "prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind," or in Swedish "som under det förlupne året hafva gjort menskligheten den största nytta."
Also from the will (the Economics prize was established later):
The interest is to be divided into five equal parts and distributed as follows: one part to the person who made the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics; one part to the person who made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction; and one part to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses.
Also from the will (the Economics prize was established later):
As I understand it the Economics prizes is not even a Nobel prize but by the bank of Norway, it just sort of gets lumped in with Nobel prizes but I think they even have their own ceremony. It is a odd prize to be sure. The peace prize may be something else as well.
One thing is some prizes have been given out for political reasons. This has not really been the case for physics but the world is changing. If NIF can be spun as free fusion energy to combat climate change they may give it to NIF, even if they know that this is not true it will be seen as showing how serious science is and is our only solution to climate change. Oddly enough many economists think economic considerations will be what drives solutions to climate change and only when we faced with a real everyday problem will a innovative solution be found and right now there is simply no real issue to force that. In other words if the US got off fossil fuels and China did not there is no economic value to the US to do so and China would have the advantage. The only way is that climate gets so bad that China would know it would be wiped out or some solution is so good that have to have to keep up. Currently fossil fuels beat everything and although you can argue about the current climate or where it will go it is simply not very convincing to a nation like China or India to change at this point. Maybe a Nobel prize to NIF can convince China that fusion is the thing that replaces fossil fuels as the "must have" energy source so if we give the Nobel to NIF China they will finally jump onboard the united climate change approach.
I got your break even fusion right here: The first man-made demonstration of fusion with more power out than power in was performed over seventy years ago on 11/1/52. This experiment was called Mike. The energy input was provided by a fission device rather than lasers. The resulting energy output was much larger than that due to lasers. The fission device was called an A bomb. The resulting fusion fusion from the experiment was called the H bomb. It has about much relevance to a power plant as does the recent work. The experiment was performed on an island in the Pacific. Its energy was 10.4 megatons.
The scientists involved should get any Nobel; unfortunately, Nobels are not awarded to the deceased.
Sorry for the sarcasm.
There actually were schemes to produce electricity from fusion by doing just that:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/peaceful-nuclear-explosions.aspx
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/non-power-nuclear-applications/industry/peaceful-nuclear-explosions.aspx
1/02/2023 5:30 AM
The numbers do not work out, a total failure to understand modes of dissipation, how things scale and thermodynamics. There are countless examples of nonsense like this such as nuclear weapons blowing up a hurricane, free energy, and so on that can be shown to be junk by doing simple multiplication. You see this all the time the news as well. The best way to understand the world is with mathematics, one you do that so many things will become clear about crime, experts analysis, economics, energy, and so on.
There are documents claiming that was the original inspiration for ICF fusion energy:
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/658936
This recent Livermore paper makes claims that fusion concept might be indeed workable. It could save the environment!
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.13182/NSE90-A23734?src=recsys
Getting back to the Nobel question, is it possible that Sweden joining NATO, and the reasons for it, will alter the outlook of the Nobel committee on what benefits humanity the most? (gjort menskligheten den största nytta). In fact, I believe, Putin and the Russian media made various claims that Sweden, as well as of course Ukraine, Alaska, Poland, Central Asia, and Finland and the Baltics, belonged to Russia, just as Saddam claimed Kuwait was a historic part of Iraq. There is also of course, a dispute with Japan about some islands that was never resolved, and so on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ba_VY7bHi8
There are documents claiming that was the original inspiration for ICF fusion energy:
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/658936
In 1958 or so ICF could be seen as possible energy source if you could have a very small scale version with 1KJ need to get out 100 times more energy, but these calculations made some very dubious assumptions however you never know how close or far you are until some experiments are done because there could be additional features of the experiments that may go in you favor, however the assumptions left out all the other sources of dissipation and many other features that work against you. In some sense the basic idea is straightforward which is what made the concept so appealing but as we have seen it is much more complex. The ideas of some form of mechanical flight by humans goes back to 1600s with some designs that could in principle work but the numbers for the power needed, drag, materials strength where off.
I do not have a problem with the initial ideas not getting the numbers right I have and issue with people in 2020 saying how hydrogen bombs could be a good energy source or even say the current version of NIF is viable energy source. We now have enough knowledge to put in the additional numbers into some very simple calculations to show this is not the case. For NIF it of course may be possible to get better energy outputs, followup machines may get to scales where you can enough extractable energy it could start to be practical and so on but the field is going to need several more big breakthroughs but it also possible that such breakthroughs will never happen.
Maybe someone has already noted this. But is this result repeatable? Has it been done? Attemtped? Scheduled?
Maybe someone has already noted this. But is this result repeatable? Has it been done? Attemtped? Scheduled?
1/03/2023 1:35 PM
The recent result has not been repeated however about a year ago they got a lot of energy out of a shot latest shot not only repeated this but got even more energy. At this point I believe the result and the interpretation. It looks they sort of figured out what they need to get the fusion so I would guess it very probable they can repeat it. Of course the next steps is how good can they get it, can they do with lower energy, what are the new diagnostics you can do now get more information and so on. However do not expect that during the next blackout in San Fransisco that they are going to call LLNL and ask if they can some extra energy from NIF to cover the shortfall.
I actually believe that NIF could not repeat the shot from last year. The fact that this shot had an even larger yield does indicate that the the large experimental parameter space been considerably narrowed. But it does not meet the true definition of repeatability required of any scientific discipline. Controlled fusion must be duplicated and thouroughly understood to mark this as an advancement to further the goals of stockpile stewardship and (maybe?) even fusion energy.
In what sense is laser fusion "controlled"?
The prize for NIF is continued funding.
5:20 The timing is exquisitely controlled. Every time Livermore runs out of money a “breakthrough” occurs. It is almost magical.
If not NIF this year then what? If the prize is given annually then what is to compare Or do we say none warrant the honor?
If not NIF this year then what? If the prize is given annually then what is to compare Or do we say none warrant the honor?
1/08/2023 3:23 PM
Lets see, I can think of about 20 off the top of my head.
At this point I have not found a single person who thinks NIF should win a Nobel prize, yet I give it 50% it will win as a political statement about needing free energy for climate change.
No one needs "free energy for climate change." People need ideas and plans for mitigating the effects of climate change since it cannot be stopped.
Anonymous wrote previously "The numbers do not work out, a total failure to understand modes of dissipation, how things scale and thermodynamics. There are countless examples of nonsense like this such as nuclear weapons blowing up a hurricane, free energy, and so on that can be shown to be junk by doing simple multiplication."
Here is a popular paper that performs the "multiplication" available for free download from Vixra. The references therein performed the same calculations and draw the same conclusion: free energy from fusion "can be shown to be junk." https://vixra.org/author/les_g_miklosy
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