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...
Comments
Well, it looks like they’re going to have to take nothing for granted and fire off at least a half dozen shots with capsules identical to the December shot and laser power equal to the December shot in order to confirm the results of that shot and convince themselves that they can reproducibly achieve ignition conditions.
-Doug
All focus should be on NIF from now on, this was going to win a Nobel prize for sure, we gotta get this done.
5/11/2023 7:51 AM
Climate change.
I am not joking, there is talk about NIF winning since it represents a new form clean energy that could save the world. The world will be doomed very soon if we continue to use fossil fuels, we must be free of this by the next 15 years and fusion can be one of the methods. By giving the prize the NIF we will show the world that fusion energy is a viable option that must be pursued. Even if NIF does not work out the end we need to give the perception that it works and Fusion is the way forward among many others. Again you may say this is a joke but this is a real conversation people are having and will not be surprised if NIF wins this years. I think if they get one more successful shot in the next six months that the odds are 50% or more.
In case you have any doubts just look at the 2021 Nobel prize for climate change. Few physicists thing any of these people deserve the prize. Even the one physics guy Parisi, was said to win it for climate change, when in fact his research had nothing whatsoever to do with climate change. Even his is a controversial choice as many think he should not have gotten it either but there are some that think he does. Another theory is that he got since they failed to give it to Cabibbo. Technically speaking NIF is probably more deserving of the 2021 prize but there is a push to make the prize more and more about climate change.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-right-words-are-crucial-to-solving-climate-change/
Aren’t the 192 NIF lasers running near or at damage threshold now? Have there been any NNSA budget proposals to rebuild each of the 192 NIF lasers to increase power and energy density by ___x, in a manner that would be able to use the same facility? Or, a NNSA budget proposal to design and build a prototype laser (1 of 192 needed) as ~proof of its viability?
Do they lack the ability to (1) precisely and fully characterize each target assembly and/or (2) to precisely and fully characterize each implosion to determine exactly what went wrong and make adjustments to the next shot to improve the probability of ignition? If they lack (1) or (2) or both, then it seems they're reduced to essentially pecking around in the dark and relying on getting lucky to see another successful shot. And who knows how long that may take?
-Doug
We’ve been conditioned to believe EVs will save the planet, even though we don’t have the grid capacity for such a transition from gasoline. In CA, expect pre-scheduled rolling blackouts in the future and even costlier electricity. Even now, some fixed income elderly Californians must decide to run “the air conditioner or the oxygen machine” because of sky high electricity rates.
Meanwhile 7,000 miles away, China (FYI: we share the same planet with China) is building about 2 coal power plants per week. You know, the power plants that pump out large amounts of CO2, the global warming gas into our MUTUAL atmosphere.
Back in the USA, we buy lithium battery materials from China to power our “clean” EVs. Except, the carbon footprint to produce an EV delivered to USA showrooms, is comparable to gas cars over their lifetimes.
Maybe it’s time to switch gears from a 25-75 year fusion possibility, to a new generation of fission plants that can be designed much safer and far less prone to human error than their fission plant predecessors.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin#:~:text=It's%20the%20equivalent%20of%20about,in%202022%20compared%20to%202021.
5/16/2023 6:01 PM here. You are spot on! Excite me with new fission possibilities instead of boring me with new fusion promises.