I like being optimistic, but there is nothing to be optimistic about when it comes to producing electrical power from laser ICF. It's a weapons program.
Also, I spent a few years as an engineer at a stellarator. This video[0] recently came out and I find it's the best crash course on the nuances of reactor design that I've seen. It really nails the thoughts and feelings of fusion researchers. It was especially refreshing to hear in public that ECRH is the only viable heating method for a reactor.
If you watch this you might think I'm pessimistic about fusion, but I'm not. Fusion has been sold as this secret Ace up our sleeve that will come in and decarbonize our grid in a matter of decades. It isn't that. That's what's been sold because it's difficult to justify the field when the timelines don't decarbonize the grid in 50 years. The important thing to know is that the world doesn't end in 50 years. Energy demands are ever increasing and the supply is ever diminishing. Fusion science is expensive and time consuming. Humans will have to do the work if they want to stay on the current track beyond the next 100 years. It might seem like a subtle point and a doomed one to make considering how shortsighted we as a society have demonstrated to be.
While I'm excited for this, I'm also cynical about the public reaction to fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability.
These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes.
Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or will they see it as another dangerous nuclear thing? Will they see it as taking jobs from hard-working coal/oil workers? Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc? Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world?
Hopefully I'm just being cynical, but I am worried about how the general public will perceive it, and/or how it will be sold by politicians and the less reputable parts of the media.
Use of fusion as an energy source removes a lot of threats our civilizations are facing but it also comes with some caveats rooted in human behavior.
Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power means more consumption and demand for other goods that get used up while using things that consume power. And with enough power you can think about making things that consume more or even build more things that consume more power. Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible.
Just like with digital documents, when people predicted that paper wouldn't be needed in the modern economy and the demand for paper would decline, it has actually skyrocketed - because a paper document isn't important anymore. You throw it away and print a new one when it has a crease.
Historically, we've been very bad at predicting such side effects. So I won't buy in a 'fusion solves everything' mindset. Fusion power can be a boon for humanity on a global scale but it could also make some problems worse.
I think this really understates the case against nuclear power. The problem with nuclear power stations is they are prone to the same kind of industrial accidents all large plants are prone to, and they are on the more dangerous end of the scale when it comes to what can happen if there is an industrial accident. You can say that people aren't accurately weighing the risks, but you can't say it's irrational for people in, say, Japan, to be very skeptical of their government's capacity to either regulate industry or respond to industrial accidents and spills in a way that protects public health.
Fusion power, as far as I can see, is not on the more dangerous end of the scale, so would probably pass all of the mainstream, basically reasonable objections to new nuclear plants.
"green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc"
Since fusion does not work sustainable yet (or at all), I would not classify it as green energy. (Where is for example the tritium coming from?)
But once it works - it likely will not magically supply all of humanity at once in a way, that is way cheaper than what we can have with wind, water and sun now.
So why flip flopping? We use what works. If fusion really works soon, awesome.
But honestly, I have to see, to believe. What I see is, that solar and co. are working now and do not require a fundamental breakthrough for very, very complex machinery under heavy fusion fire to work consistently.
And desserts for solarfarming, we have enough. As well, as many, many roofes in the cities.
Solarfoils might be the next big thing to cover them big scale cheaply.
And stationary batteries can be made of cheap materials avaible in abundance.
Lots of other possibilities, too. Simple, reliable tech, compared to Fusion. So fusion would be nice to have, but I would not allocate more critical ressources to it, that might be better spend elsewhere.
Sure, investing into the energy grid, sounds not as sexy and interesting as building a fusion reactor. But maybe that is, what is currently more needed, to make it more flexible for the fluctating renewable energy sources.
And with the sun, we have already a big working fusion reactor. Why not focus on harvesting that energy more?
> fusion power as it gets closer to success and eventual general availability
IMO it is not clear that fusion will ever be useable for power plants: Depending on costs (construction/maintenance/decomissioning), it might never be competitive with (battery backed) photovoltaics (or wind), no matter how much progress we make.
Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are).
I don’t understand the appeal of this type of fusion (as opposed to the plasma reactor approach). We’ve known how to get positive energy out of fusion fuel since thermonuclear weapons in 1952. The really hard part would seem to be capturing that energy efficiently. This experiment is stuck at the ignition phase. When that’s positive energy they won’t be done, they’ll be able to start working on the practical problems of sustaining it. What am I missing.
What you're missing is that since the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty came into effect it's illegal to test-detonate nuclear weapons. Which are narrowly defined in terms of fission devices, with or without a fusion booster.
Fission devices have been very well understood since the early 1950s, but fusion reactions are somewhat less so. The NIF provides an instrument for probing the plasma densities and temperatures that occur inside a nuclear fireball, so is directly relevant to H-bomb research.
This becomes trivially obvious when you realize that a laser implosion fusion reactor producing power would need to achieve in excess of ten ignitions per second to produce the sort of power output needed just to power its own lasers ... and that each hohlraum costs on the order of a third of a million dollars. (What kind of power plant costs $11Bn per hour to operate?) Answer: it's not a remotely practical design for generating electricity, so it must be something else, and promoting it as "clean energy from fusion power" is a cynical propaganda move to disguise a nuclear weapons research tool.
The final clue is that the NIF is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose primary job is designing and ensuring the reliability of nuclear weapons.
> We’ve known how to get positive energy out of fusion fuel since thermonuclear weapons in 1952
Indeed, the brute-force approach is to simply detonate a hydrogen bomb underground, tap off steam, then repeat. That was seriously investigated (I believe as part of Project Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare ), but the high cost of the bombs made it uncompetitive with other methods.
We have know for centuries that all you need to go high is a big fire pointing down, but soon realized that the hard part was maintaining the fire long enough to reach orbit or other planets.
And even when that would become possible, the problem of how to land in the destination, build shelters and grow food remains.
So, why we insist on this irrational pursuit?
First because we can.
Second because the the search needed to achieve that generates far more societal benefit than just the space goals.
And third because society can pursuit many goals at once. We have several people, just let them explore.
So, fusion is hard, but very probably not impossible. The pursuit of it will advance science and technology. If successful, can trigger societal changes we can only imagine today (serious carbon capture becomes possible. Smelting of very energy intensive alloys becomes cheaper and possible).
And if the ultimate goal of a miniaturized reactor becomes possible, our spaceships can fly basically anywhere.
There was a project to collect energy from thermonuclear bombs by blowing them up in an underground chamber cooled by a shower of molten salt. It was abandoned because the cost of making the bombs was too high, not the energy capture.
Until now Nuclear Fusion has produced optimism, careers and portfolio valuations but no energy.
The theory is there, but the implementation is not and worse than that, there is no "it will get cheaper with industrialization" in sigh, because we are not even at that stage and there is no indication there is a realistic path to achieve the efficiency needed to be economically viable ( ever! ).
The best positioned to deliver something tangible seems to be ITER, many of the rest seems to be more of a pump & dump scheme than anything else.
ITER may deliver something tangible, but also something that is not on any realistic path to being competitive. It's far too large for the power it (or DEMO) would produce.
It's also possible ITER will just deliver a negative outcome, if they can't figure out how to control disruptions sufficiently. A reactor that violently breaks itself is not something anyone would want to buy.
Can someone ELI5 to me how this design would be industrialised? How do you repeat this process day in day out?
Whenever there are articles written about inertial confinement, they always describe the current process (which I understand at a layperson level) but never how this design could be implemented in a repeatable manner?
Could someone enlighten me how laser fusion of prefabricated pellets (at least that's how I understand the idea in the article) can generate electricity? In a Tokamak or Stellarator, we collect heat on the outside, AFAIK and generate electricity in the good, old, "make something spin quickly" manner. But in a laser-ignition device, we need to shoot a pellet into some kind of chamber, so that chamber better be relatively cool or our pellet melts or deforms before it can be hit by the lasers, right? So how does one tackle that problem?
NIF is a national lab. Haven’t read this article yet but they made somewhat unexpected progress.
NIF is inertial confinement fusion. Magnetic confinement fusion startups have been making waves because of a new type of magnet which doesn’t need to be supercooled and can create the same amount of magnetic pressure w a smaller device (I think).
In addition to that, there are the same old and not-so-old publicly funded experiments which have been making good progress of their own. ITER is still being built, but a lot of these publicly funded experiments are tied to ITER.
Great! Does that mean fusion is going to be here in just 10 years in the future as opposed to the 20 years in the future it's been for the last 50 years?
Who knows. The problem is not getting fusion, but getting fusion to economically produce power. Hopefully one of the startups figure out some way to make it work.
I have a hard time seeing the NIF approach becoming economical. It's more of a science experiment.
willis936|4 years ago
Also, I spent a few years as an engineer at a stellarator. This video[0] recently came out and I find it's the best crash course on the nuances of reactor design that I've seen. It really nails the thoughts and feelings of fusion researchers. It was especially refreshing to hear in public that ECRH is the only viable heating method for a reactor.
If you watch this you might think I'm pessimistic about fusion, but I'm not. Fusion has been sold as this secret Ace up our sleeve that will come in and decarbonize our grid in a matter of decades. It isn't that. That's what's been sold because it's difficult to justify the field when the timelines don't decarbonize the grid in 50 years. The important thing to know is that the world doesn't end in 50 years. Energy demands are ever increasing and the supply is ever diminishing. Fusion science is expensive and time consuming. Humans will have to do the work if they want to stay on the current track beyond the next 100 years. It might seem like a subtle point and a doomed one to make considering how shortsighted we as a society have demonstrated to be.
0. https://youtu.be/JurplDfPi3U
danpalmer|4 years ago
These past 2 years have highlighted to many how a combination of poor critical thinking and politicisation of so many aspects of our lives can lead to literal catastrophes.
Will the public see Fusion as the wonderful advancement for humanity that it will likely be, or will they see it as another dangerous nuclear thing? Will they see it as taking jobs from hard-working coal/oil workers? Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc? Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world?
Hopefully I'm just being cynical, but I am worried about how the general public will perceive it, and/or how it will be sold by politicians and the less reputable parts of the media.
wnkrshm|4 years ago
Human energy consumption has always gone up when the supply got more efficient, from coal to oil to fission. While here, the power generation itself won't have such a drastic impact (unless humanity overdoes it, though, we seem to always do that) but maybe more power means more consumption and demand for other goods that get used up while using things that consume power. And with enough power you can think about making things that consume more or even build more things that consume more power. Lots of processes that were considered too wasteful suddenly become feasible.
Just like with digital documents, when people predicted that paper wouldn't be needed in the modern economy and the demand for paper would decline, it has actually skyrocketed - because a paper document isn't important anymore. You throw it away and print a new one when it has a crease.
Historically, we've been very bad at predicting such side effects. So I won't buy in a 'fusion solves everything' mindset. Fusion power can be a boon for humanity on a global scale but it could also make some problems worse.
pasabagi|4 years ago
I think this really understates the case against nuclear power. The problem with nuclear power stations is they are prone to the same kind of industrial accidents all large plants are prone to, and they are on the more dangerous end of the scale when it comes to what can happen if there is an industrial accident. You can say that people aren't accurately weighing the risks, but you can't say it's irrational for people in, say, Japan, to be very skeptical of their government's capacity to either regulate industry or respond to industrial accidents and spills in a way that protects public health.
Fusion power, as far as I can see, is not on the more dangerous end of the scale, so would probably pass all of the mainstream, basically reasonable objections to new nuclear plants.
(For the record, I'm not anti-nuclear.)
hutzlibu|4 years ago
Since fusion does not work sustainable yet (or at all), I would not classify it as green energy. (Where is for example the tritium coming from?)
But once it works - it likely will not magically supply all of humanity at once in a way, that is way cheaper than what we can have with wind, water and sun now.
So why flip flopping? We use what works. If fusion really works soon, awesome.
But honestly, I have to see, to believe. What I see is, that solar and co. are working now and do not require a fundamental breakthrough for very, very complex machinery under heavy fusion fire to work consistently.
And desserts for solarfarming, we have enough. As well, as many, many roofes in the cities. Solarfoils might be the next big thing to cover them big scale cheaply. And stationary batteries can be made of cheap materials avaible in abundance. Lots of other possibilities, too. Simple, reliable tech, compared to Fusion. So fusion would be nice to have, but I would not allocate more critical ressources to it, that might be better spend elsewhere.
Sure, investing into the energy grid, sounds not as sexy and interesting as building a fusion reactor. But maybe that is, what is currently more needed, to make it more flexible for the fluctating renewable energy sources.
And with the sun, we have already a big working fusion reactor. Why not focus on harvesting that energy more?
pas|4 years ago
> Will it be spun as the green energy sector not making their minds up and flip flopping between solar/wind/fusion/etc?
Well, the green energy sector is big. Solar companies push solar, wind folks push wind, and well, fusion folks are pushing for funding and VC money.
But the important thing is, we need all of them. Plus batteries (and battery-like systems).
And, yes, there will be spin doctors trying to discredit "green" because X, but that's what they do anyway, fusion or not.
> Will there be stories about how we could accidentally create a black hole and destroy the world?
Good idea, maybe :D But we'll sure hear a lot about how much irradiated/activated waste it will produce, and how it's not green at all, and so on.
myrmidon|4 years ago
IMO it is not clear that fusion will ever be useable for power plants: Depending on costs (construction/maintenance/decomissioning), it might never be competitive with (battery backed) photovoltaics (or wind), no matter how much progress we make.
Personally I believe that fusion research is worthwile no matter the outcome, but calling it a "purely academic waste of ressources without positive environmental/economical ROI" might turn out to be correct (playing devils advocate here but this is important to consider, no matter how much pro-nuclear you are).
xupybd|4 years ago
sanp|4 years ago
aristophenes|4 years ago
cstross|4 years ago
Fission devices have been very well understood since the early 1950s, but fusion reactions are somewhat less so. The NIF provides an instrument for probing the plasma densities and temperatures that occur inside a nuclear fireball, so is directly relevant to H-bomb research.
This becomes trivially obvious when you realize that a laser implosion fusion reactor producing power would need to achieve in excess of ten ignitions per second to produce the sort of power output needed just to power its own lasers ... and that each hohlraum costs on the order of a third of a million dollars. (What kind of power plant costs $11Bn per hour to operate?) Answer: it's not a remotely practical design for generating electricity, so it must be something else, and promoting it as "clean energy from fusion power" is a cynical propaganda move to disguise a nuclear weapons research tool.
The final clue is that the NIF is operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose primary job is designing and ensuring the reliability of nuclear weapons.
chriswarbo|4 years ago
Indeed, the brute-force approach is to simply detonate a hydrogen bomb underground, tap off steam, then repeat. That was seriously investigated (I believe as part of Project Plowshare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare ), but the high cost of the bombs made it uncompetitive with other methods.
motoboi|4 years ago
We have know for centuries that all you need to go high is a big fire pointing down, but soon realized that the hard part was maintaining the fire long enough to reach orbit or other planets.
And even when that would become possible, the problem of how to land in the destination, build shelters and grow food remains.
So, why we insist on this irrational pursuit?
First because we can.
Second because the the search needed to achieve that generates far more societal benefit than just the space goals.
And third because society can pursuit many goals at once. We have several people, just let them explore.
So, fusion is hard, but very probably not impossible. The pursuit of it will advance science and technology. If successful, can trigger societal changes we can only imagine today (serious carbon capture becomes possible. Smelting of very energy intensive alloys becomes cheaper and possible).
And if the ultimate goal of a miniaturized reactor becomes possible, our spaceships can fly basically anywhere.
phreeza|4 years ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_PACER
user-the-name|4 years ago
This is where we are at, that is what we are aiming for.
the-dude|4 years ago
ganzuul|4 years ago
ED: By now I assume I would be ignored if I was wrong.
PedroBatista|4 years ago
The theory is there, but the implementation is not and worse than that, there is no "it will get cheaper with industrialization" in sigh, because we are not even at that stage and there is no indication there is a realistic path to achieve the efficiency needed to be economically viable ( ever! ).
The best positioned to deliver something tangible seems to be ITER, many of the rest seems to be more of a pump & dump scheme than anything else.
pfdietz|4 years ago
It's also possible ITER will just deliver a negative outcome, if they can't figure out how to control disruptions sufficiently. A reactor that violently breaks itself is not something anyone would want to buy.
dabeeeenster|4 years ago
Whenever there are articles written about inertial confinement, they always describe the current process (which I understand at a layperson level) but never how this design could be implemented in a repeatable manner?
BrianOnHN|4 years ago
The initial investment may be scary, but I think this is discounted per people's experience with Moore's law (whether right or wrong).
choeger|4 years ago
ganzuul|4 years ago
Tepix|4 years ago
Or is it just various fusion startups making PR waves to get more investments?
adnmcq999|4 years ago
NIF is inertial confinement fusion. Magnetic confinement fusion startups have been making waves because of a new type of magnet which doesn’t need to be supercooled and can create the same amount of magnetic pressure w a smaller device (I think). In addition to that, there are the same old and not-so-old publicly funded experiments which have been making good progress of their own. ITER is still being built, but a lot of these publicly funded experiments are tied to ITER.
pfdietz|4 years ago
danjac|4 years ago
Ottolay|4 years ago
I have a hard time seeing the NIF approach becoming economical. It's more of a science experiment.
Shadonototra|4 years ago