https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11526987/California-scientists-make-history-using-worlds-biggest-laser-replicate-reaction-powers-sun.html
Amazing!!!. 2023 Noble for LLNL for sure.
Nuclear weapons are cool and all that but a far more greater threat to humanity is global warming. NIF may have just solved that and saved all of our lives. Tip of the hat folks!!! Unlimited free energy.
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Michael Campbell the leader of the LLNL fusion free energy project.
The real credit goes to Biden of course!
"The Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act is investing almost $370billion into new subsidies for low-carbon energy with the plan being to cut emissions and focus on clean tech for the next generation."
Ok this is a bit hyped up and the news is a off and who at NIF actually did this. It is not free energy but it is something real unlike the bs wormhole crap on 9 qubits in the Google sycamore machine. (by the way do they have proof that the qubits where even entangled?), personally I doubt this since they can run these experiments over and over again and at 9 qubits some of the results will match the classical result by random chance and you can say "see it works but is is quantum, never mind that 10000 other random noise results this thing made"
Ok the NIF thing is a tad overhyped bit at least the experiment was real, the result is real, and the original idea of NIF actually did at least in part what they are hoping to get and more progress can be made. Science is still science. So far not a single non-science friend or relative as emailed me about NIF. I have gotten 30 emails asking me about quantum wormholes.
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Alejandra Caraballo
@Esqueer_
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10h
This is going to change the world. Cheap unlimited energy with nearly no negative externalities is within reach. I can't stress enough how huge and important this is.
https://washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/11/fusion-nuclear-energy-breakthrough/
Does anyone else feel like the wheels are coming off the vehicle in scicomm land right now? First the wormhole thing and now this oversold fusion story. Did the pandemic teach y’all nothing about care in reporting science?)
But at least I am happy to see some relatively balanced coverage in New Scientist: “Sarri estimates that if 2.1 megajoules of energy was output by the laser then NIF would have had to draw “tens” of megajoules from the electricity grid to achieve it.”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2350921-nuclear-fusion-has-there-been-a-breakthrough-and-what-will-it-mean/
WASHINGTON (AP) — Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced a “major scientific breakthrough” Tuesday in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, the Energy Department said.
The achievement will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, officials said.
Granholm was appearing alongside Livermore researchers at a news conference in Washington.
“This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become a reality, and this milestone will undoubtedly spark even more discovery,” Granholm said in a statement.
Some thoughts?
The future of clean energy probably not? Also I would not call this a "scientific breakthrough", there was no scientific discovery at all and no real advancement in scientific knowledge. It is a engineering or applied science achievement and you could even call an engineering breakthrough, and of course you had a have a lot of science to get to this point, but this is not the "discovery" of fusion processes in nature.
Here is my takeaway, (1) if they can keep repeating these shots that have some good stuff that will be of value for the labs, science, engineering. The question is can they keep doing it, I would guess they have a good chance as this is in essence the second shot that worked. (2) Can they really advance on this or is this it 2.1 in and 2.5 out is as good as it is ever going to get? (3) Money money money, NIF will start getting more resources, so a bunch of people better be prepared to start working this. (4) LLNL is now the top science lab in NNSA.
Another issue for the fusion fuel is that it is not all that available. The deuterium can be obtained from sea water but tritium cannot. Tbere is very little tritium in the world; just enough for ITER. It is said that the fusion reactors can breed tritium but the breeding rate is in question.
It is said that fusion is clean. But neutrons are produced in the fusion reaction and these then neutron activate the surrounding materials. The volumn of these materials is higher that produced in fission reactors. The halflife is much less than for fission but it is still hundreds of years.