Is the NIF a ignition achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize? I have my own options but didn’t want to bias the question.
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...
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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.
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.
Good point. They keep spinning this as if NIF was only built for the commercial use of fusion energy.
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”.
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
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.
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.
The scientists involved should get any Nobel; unfortunately, Nobels are not awarded to the deceased.
Sorry for the sarcasm.
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.
https://www.osti.gov/biblio/658936
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.13182/NSE90-A23734?src=recsys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ba_VY7bHi8
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.
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.
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.
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