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Finally Fusion? Well, Not Quite
There’s a paywalled Financial Times story linked on Instapundit that appears to claim that scientists have finally achieved a net gain in energy during a fusion reactor experiment. I’m not an FT subscriber, so I can’t read the article, and the summary news story (also linked by Instapundit) doesn’t contain a lot of details.
I’m assuming the reactor was of the inertial confined design, in which lasers are directed from many different angles at a small pellet containing deuterium or tritium (i.e., “heavy hydrogen”), with the rapid vaporization of the pellet’s walls creating a roughly spherical shock wave that compresses and heats the hydrogen atoms to a point at which their nuclei fuse — the fusion reaction.
What the story (as summarized) claims is that the energy produced by the reaction was about 20% greater than the energy of the lasers used to trigger the reaction. This is characterized, in the summary article, as a “net gain in energy.”
Well, yes and no. It’s a net gain if one is comparing the energy of the lasers to the total energy released by the fusion reaction.
However, it isn’t truly a net gain in a meaningful sense for at least two reasons.
First, the actual energy put into the system is considerably greater than the 2.1 megajoules of energy delivered by the lasers: even with the most modern high-efficiency lasers, the true energy input is like to be several times that number. With a claimed energy output of the fusion reaction of 2.5 megajoules, it’s certain that far more energy was consumed than was produced.
Secondly, it isn’t clear from the summary article (though the FT report might contain details) just how the energy of the fusion reaction was calculated. If it’s a measure of energy actually extracted in a usable form (e.g., as contained heat or as electricity), then the 2.5-megajoule figure may be valid. But if, as is more likely, it’s an extrapolation based on discrete samples of the radiation produced by the reaction, it’s a safe bet that the energy that can be captured and converted into a useable form is less than the 2.5 megajoules given losses in the confinement system and inefficiencies in the conversion process.
(After all, we know how to create a net excess of energy in a fusion reaction. We demonstrated that 70 years ago last month. By the way, it’s a widely held belief that the bathing suit was named after the site of the first hydrogen bomb detonation, but that’s incorrect: The first hydrogen bomb was detonated a couple of hundred miles away from the established Bikini Atoll test site — and six years after Louis Réard coined the name for his skimpy gift to mankind.)
Yes, achieving a fusion reaction that yields a total energy output that exceeds the immediate energy input and that does it without vaporizing a South Pacific island is a milestone. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory people deserve their well-earned pat on the back.
But we are a very long way from actually getting as much out as we’re putting in. Reporters are ignoring the true cost of this nuclear transaction, focusing only on one moment in a long and complex process.
Affordable nuclear fusion remains, as ever, just 50 years away.
Published in Science & Technology
I wouldn’t be surprised if, as I wrote in #4, fusion turns out to be only practical for use in space, not on Earth.
And jetpacks. We always seem to be X years away from jetpacks.
I know we aren’t going to have practical nuclear fusion for many years, but I disagree when people say “never.” I’m sure people declared for millennia that man will never fly. Even after the Wright brothers made their first powered flight, I’m sure many people figured they have made a toy, nothing more, and that it will never have a practical application.
If we have fusion power plants before I die, hooray! In the meantime, let us build a ton of state of the art fission reactors.
The key, of course, is a self-sustaining fusion reaction. If megawatt lasers – powered by fission, most likely – have to ignite each pellet of fuel, it wouldn’t be useful for much beyond propulsion in space.
And Flying Cars
Fusion is the greatest boondoggle fraud. Decade after decade billions of dollars per year have been spent on these huge fusion research reactors. Mega projects all over the world. Since I was first reading about fusion reactors, going back to the 1980s, the final paragraph of the article has always been – “If research budgets continue at the same pace as today, commercially viable fusion reactors could begin in the next 20 years.” … For at least the past 40 years, we’ve been promised that fusion is 20 years away.
Give up on fusion, go to the Thorium fuel cycle LFTR reactor. The basic design was tested in the 1960’s at Oak Ridge National Labs… Compared to fusion, it would be a simple low cost nuclear reactor, that could be providing energy in the near future.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors are coming, and in numbers. Just not before the end of the decade.
Small nuclear reactors suffer from the same inefficiencies that all modern reactors have, they’re a solid fuel reactor – 99% of the energy from their fuels, end up in waste. Creating the nuclear waste problem, that the department of energy is not serious about solving.
A nuclear reactor in a molten fuel state -like LFTR has the advantage that the fuels remain active in the cores much longer and produce radically less waste as a result – like 98% less.
As for nuclear waste disposal… I think we can count on Sam Brinton to take care of that for us.
No, not as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Nuclear Waste — I understand the fellow has been dismissed from that position.
No, I figure we could just pack spent fuel in suitcases and leave it at airport luggage carousels in major cities. He seems to have a knack for hauling away such items….
I wonder if the new congress will take a look at this guy’s FBI screening. How did someone like this end up in such a sensitive position?
At least he had some relevant education for the position – which honestly surprises me. Has there ever been a media interview with this guy that actually discussed his job and the real issues of his workday? Or was it all gay all day?
This story makes the same general point as mine, here, and does so with more details.
I think of myself as skeptical but not cynical. Were I more the latter, I’d wonder if the unwarranted optimism for fusion weren’t rooted in something more sinister than a simple desire to secure more of that sweet, sweet federal research funding. I’d wonder if perhaps there are those who think focusing attention on untenable solutions is itself productive, because the goal for them isn’t and never has been sustaining energy prosperity, but rather seeing mankind humbled by limitations that they’re just sure we must be hitting soon, despite our oft-demonstrated and no doubt frustrating ability to repeatedly innovate beyond them.
It almost seems that these folks have adopted an “anything except what actually works” approach to energy.
I hear you Henry, but when I think of the federal money wasted on wind farms and trains to nowhere, I cannot get so upset about spending on research for nuclear fusion.
Fake low interest rates, inflation, money printing, and asset bubbles are the enemy of conservatives and libertarians. Because…
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
I appreciate that. Unfortunately, I tend to put fusion in the same category as wind and solar right now. Expensive distraction. Not nearly as expensive, however, as trashing the grid with renewables.
Supposedly, it’s a proven fact that government spending on “basic science” doesn’t pay. Basic science is some thing that private capital can’t do because the ROI isn’t dependable enough.
The one I wonder about is the hyperloop. I wish they would hurry up and figure out if that thing is going to work. It looks to me like European governments assume it’s going to work, but that doesn’t mean much.
And even if it’s never feasible for use on Earth, if the research leads to practical space propulsion we can wave at them in the rearview mirror as we head out!
Because burning dung for heat is so much cleaner!
Hello wonderful people, Anton breaks down the technology of the fusion experiments:
And like with the space program, fusion research has spun off technological advances that benefit other areas. (Probably even windmills, damnit.)
I know this is an old post, but the issue of fusion was brought to my attention by a close friend who works in the alternative energy field — specifically, utility-grade solar. She was telling me how excited she was about ITER, the big European magnetic containment fusion reactor experiment, and how she hoped it would be our energy future. That got me looking at fusion efficiency in more detail.
ITER is a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. They just redefined success as achieving a fusion reaction by 2035, if I read their press releases right. As I said before: fusion is hard, and there’s a lot of boondoggle to it.
It turns out that the good people at Lawrence Livermore may have, not exactly cooked the book, but redefined the terms enough to make their own claims of yield greater than input particularly bogus. In my opinion, that’s bad science.
If I were calling the shots we’d stop spending big dollars on fusion, and focus our attention on far more practical fission technology.
That’s one takeway. The other is that we shouldn’t trust scientists when funding is on the line.
Let me say that again.
Don’t trust scientists when funding is on the line. Not any of them: not climate scientists, medical scientists, energy scientists — none of them. Scientists are people too, and they’re in it for the same things most of us are: money, babes, and glory. Probably in that order.
Or, simplified to Indiana Jones terms, “Fortune and Glory!”
No, I am not willing to leave out the babes.
That’s implied. Fortune and Glory gets you babes, and sometimes Babes are what get you the Glory, from other people!