Major Fusion Energy Breakthrough To Be Announced By Scientists !

[JMAC]

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NYT since 1851
12/13/22


Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

"The government official, who spoke anonymously to discuss results that are not yet public, said that the fusion experiment at NIF achieved what is known as ignition, where the fusion energy generated equals the laser energy that started the reaction. Ignition is also called energy gain of one." !!



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/s...akthrough.html



Nearly 60 years ago, as I recall, my first girlfriend's father was a scientist at Lawrence Livermore Labs.


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[Puma Cat]

Yeah, that was really cool. A major breakthrough.

[80B]

It sounds like a strong step forward, but I'm going to be 'constructively skeptical' until I hear this experiment has been replicated. Maybe I missed something, but from what I could tell this happened a week ago, and only once. There was a lot of press back in the late 80s (if memory serves) about a cold fusion experiment that never was able to be replicated. A bit of perspective on some of the challenges to get to a commercial power delivery from the WSJ:

"The lasers at the National Ignition Facility are less than 1% efficient, according to Jonathan Davies, a senior scientist at the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The facility used hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the laser light needed to produce about 3 megajoules of fusion energy."

All that said, the fact that VCs are getting into the game and that there seems to be real progress is encouraging.

If fusion plants are viable, warm water used in the plants' cooling may be the biggest environmental threat, which ought to be manageable, and this could possibly prevent the visual blight of solar farms and windmills, as well as the other downsides of those sources of energy (reliability, true non-subsidized cost, etc.). If we are 20 years away from the first commercially viable power plant, the world could look very different in 40 years, and my son won't have to worry about powering the McIntosh tube amps he has inherited from his old man!

[Formerly YB-2]

We will eventually get there, but likely not in my (our?) lifetime. A friend spent many years in the '70-80's working at the Princeton Advanced Research tokamak facility. The engineering problems are huge (how to get that heat produced into a usable form - steam, for instance). As 80B states, a healthy dose of skepticism is wise.

[clpetersen]

Agree with Glenn and 80B.

We just lost a couple of good people to Commonwealth Fusion (in MA). These guys have attracted serious funding (multi $B) and are building a state of art facility just outside the metro area of Boston. Fingers crossed.