Skip to main content

Near fusion?

http://dailyme.com/story/2010092000004225/livermore-lab-nears-launch-fusion-quest.html

Any comments on the article that appeared in the paper today?

Comments

Anonymous said…
This is a big experiment with many dangers including a rad component; thus thing may have to be done in a controlled process. People should realize this is an experiment with no guarantees of success even after a decade of work.
We (USA) have come this far and we need to work on the pending problems; else it will go the way of the magnetic fusion project…a great experiment that never happened.
fish said…
Fusion....the power source of the future! Always in the future!
Anonymous said…
1.1 MJ of laser light to target chamber center was followed up by a successful D-D shot campaign with deuterium fusion on the 1st shot and neutrons ~1E10. By the 4th D-D shot, the blast was spherical and met the compression ratio NIF anticipated in quest for ignition (or, was stated as such).

A D-T ignition target is approximately 10 Ci of tritium (unless that has changed) in HT, or about the same as in an exit sign.

LLNL use to release 100's and thousands of Ci's of tritium in HT in the past (1980's and prior).

Running a shot campaign of 4 or 5 ignition size targets (to see how well NIF works), which is done in vacuum containment, in an evacuated facility, with an elevated release point of some 30-35m shot at 3 o'clock in the morning does not seem like a huge danger to me.

Intentional slow boating?
Anonymous said…
Hmm, I'd heard that cryo-laying of the target was not successfull (really only a 33 1/3% probability that it will anyway), was this deuterium "fusion" done without layering, or did cryo-tarpos succeed?
Anonymous said…
"And credible means that we have no reason to believe it's not going to work," Thomas D'Agostino, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration , which oversees the Livermore lab, told Sen. Dianne Feinstein during Congressional testimony in March.6

What a joke, here's a guy defining "credible" when he has none. His statement "we have no reason to believe it's not going to work" is a weak, political, and waffle statement considering we paid several billion on this contraption. It typical of experiments to have grandiose oversold declarations to acquire money to build them and then have weak statements to undersell the product when we get ready to fire it. Come on D'Ago have some confidence in something we paid several billion on and stop defining credible for us.
Anonymous said…
Ah c'mon you guys, it will work, in a substantially equivalent way.
Anonymous said…
Just define "failure" as "success".

NNSA does it all the time.

Misson accomplished.
Anonymous said…
It depends on what the definition of "will" will be.

Popular posts from this blog

Plutonium Shots on NIF.

Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...

Trump is to gut the labs.

The budget has a 20% decrease to DOE office of science, 20% cut to NIH. NASA also gets a cut. This will  have a huge negative effect on the lab. Crazy, juts crazy. He also wants to cut NEA and PBS, this may not seem like  a big deal but they get very little money and do great things.

LLNL un-diversity

Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it.  Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!