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Tuesday, July 5, 2016
Ignition question
Not including the NIF in Livermore, CA, what other ignition facility or scalable module to ignition proposals is DOE reviewing (if any), and what are their construction costs?
14 comments:
Anonymous
said...
I hope you are joking. The DOE will not be entertaining new "ignition facility" ideas for a generation, anyone seriously proposing one now would heckled out of the room.
There is an interesting new approach to low-gain ignition on NIF that was just published in Physical Review Letters. http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.255003
NIF is costing half a billion dollars per year to operate. I would prefer that it be closed immediately but if is going to stay open for another five years then it needs some new ideas. The double shell and revolver concepts do not require high convergence for any shell. They don't have to keep their fuel near a Fermi degenerate adiabat. They use a simple pulse shape and perhaps polar direct drive. They are not sensitive to laser plasma instabilities. On the other hand they do not promise high gain (perhaps only three). Their designs are immature (unlike the NIF point design which has been under development since 1991). Livermore managers understand that NIF cannot use the next five years simply to study why the point design failed. So they are supporting development of these alternative capsule concepts.
Double shells and deviations from adiabatic compression are fine if you had >10 MJ of UV drive instead of 1.8 MJ. Also target chamber is not set up for direct drive. Cost is estimated to be $800M to move and adjust laser port locations and move diagnostics ports. Do you have a "fat" wallet ? Elan Musk, anyone ?
They have to do something in the next 5 years. Better to try several approaches and snow the next review panel with "promising" data, than to come up empty handed in explaining why the NIC failed AND have nothing else to pursue.
What else are they going to do with ICF? Ignition is out of reach at NIF, no other facility will do it, and no one will pay for an even bigger facility to gamble with. What they should be doing, quietly, is plotting the peaceful death of ignition and gain in ICF, and playing up the other benefits to the stockpile. I wager that is what we will be hearing more of in the coming years.
"If you are interested and spending an afternoon reading stuff."
Ya right, I hate LANL and only read things that give me information to have it closed. Once it is closed than I am vindicated and will no longer suck. This logic is a little weak but tell what what are my choices...face reality, no can do on that, no can do indeed.
14 comments:
I hope you are joking. The DOE will not be entertaining new "ignition facility" ideas for a generation, anyone seriously proposing one now would heckled out of the room.
There is an interesting new approach to low-gain ignition on NIF that was just published in Physical Review Letters.
http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.255003
Just because you're a MIT professor you can claim ignition with a 1D calculation. Incredible. This field is intellectually bankrupt.
You can claim ignition in 1D, AND get it published in PRL. The field is more than intellectually bankrupt, it is corrupt.
NIF is costing half a billion dollars per year to operate. I would prefer that it be closed immediately but if is going to stay open for another five years then it needs some new ideas. The double shell and revolver concepts do not require high convergence for any shell. They don't have to keep their fuel near a Fermi degenerate adiabat. They use a simple pulse shape and perhaps polar direct drive. They are not sensitive to laser plasma instabilities. On the other hand they do not promise high gain (perhaps only three). Their designs are immature (unlike the NIF point design which has been under development since 1991). Livermore managers understand that NIF cannot use the next five years simply to study why the point design failed. So they are supporting development of these alternative capsule concepts.
Probably they'll end up doing whatever Omar Hurricane, the hero of break even fusion and stockpile stewardship, tells them to do.
General fusion.
Double shells and deviations from adiabatic compression are fine if you had >10 MJ of UV drive instead of 1.8 MJ. Also target chamber is not set up for direct drive. Cost is estimated to be $800M to move and adjust laser port locations and move diagnostics ports. Do you have a "fat" wallet ? Elan Musk, anyone ?
They have to do something in the next 5 years. Better to try several approaches and snow the next review panel with "promising" data, than to come up empty handed in explaining why the NIC failed AND have nothing else to pursue.
The high-foot was supposed to be "promising". Now it's a dead-end. I guess they can wash, rinse, and repeat on something else.
What else are they going to do with ICF? Ignition is out of reach at NIF, no other facility will do it, and no one will pay for an even bigger facility to gamble with. What they should be doing, quietly, is plotting the peaceful death of ignition and gain in ICF, and playing up the other benefits to the stockpile. I wager that is what we will be hearing more of in the coming years.
http://www.firefusionpower.org/ICF_Program_Framework_2016.pdf
http://www.firefusionpower.org/ICF_HED_Review_Report_2015_Update.pdf
If you are interested and spending an afternoon reading stuff.
"If you are interested and spending an afternoon reading stuff."
Ya right, I hate LANL and only read things that give me information to have it closed. Once it is closed than I am vindicated and will no longer suck. This logic is a little weak but tell what what are my choices...face reality, no can do on that, no can do indeed.
Shunning
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