Major breakthrough in pursuit of nuclear fusion unveiled by US scientists

[Admin]

American researchers have achieved a major breakthrough paving the way toward nuclear fusion energy generation, but major hurdles remain.

Major breakthrough in pursuit of nuclear fusion unveiled by US scientists : Read more

 

[Jan Steinman]

So, we're now "only 20 years away," as we have been for my entire 67-year life.

They produced enough energy to boil a kettle of water. I'll think of that tomorrow morning when I make a pot of tea.

Don't get me wrong — it's great to reach this milestone. But we're on a race to find a new way to power our civilization before the fossil sunlight gives out. We don't have 20 more years.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, fusion is not going to bail us out of the CO2 problem. CO2 abatement is a long term program.
- Elimination of incandescent lamps - LED revolution - nearly complete
- Idling of coal power plants - replace with natural gas - underway in US
- Expansion of nuclear power - underway in US - two new plants within next 12 mos.
- Wind and solar - underway
- Battery development to leverage intermittent solar and wind - underway
- Hydrogen technology - just beginning
- Fusion - decades away

 

[PaitoonW]

I hope not to use any power produced from fusion reactor in my life-time, since I am already 74 yo.

 

[Jan Steinman]

Yes, fusion is not going to bail us out of the CO2 problem. CO2 abatement is a long term program.
- Elimination of incandescent lamps - LED revolution - nearly complete
- Idling of coal power plants - replace with natural gas - underway in US
- Expansion of nuclear power - underway in US - two new plants within next 12 mos.
- Wind and solar - underway
- Battery development to leverage intermittent solar and wind - underway
- Hydrogen technology - just beginning
- Fusion - decades away

And yet, we're down on our peak fossil sunlight consumption by only a couple percent. And that would be the other direction if we hadn't given up Russia's 10%!

Gotta do better than that, quickly!

 

[billslugg]

In 2021 the US imported an average of 186 million barrels of oil per month.
Since March of 2022 we are averaging the importing of 192 million per month. The last month on record is Sept 2022 at 188 million. The loss of Russian oil does not seem to have affected our imports.
The US has consistently reduced annual CO2 emissions for about the last 15 years. This mostly due to LED lighting, coal plant conversion, solar cells. And yes, we need to pick up the pace.

U.S. Imports of Crude Oil (Thousand Barrels) (eia.gov)

​

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Part of the U.S. "reduction" in CO2 emissions was the off-shoring of much of our manufacturing of consumer products to China, which has been ramping up its CO2 releases for decades to make that stuff for the U.S.

The atmosphere is a shared environment. Unless everybody participates adequately, we will all suffer the consequences.

 

[Vernon Brechin]

The report of this so called 'breakthrough' came from people who are well versed in obscuring key details because they work in the secret environment of a nuclear weapons laboratory, Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Within it is the National Ignition Facility (NIF) giant laser building which has always been primarily funded to study thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb) fuel-compression and other thermonuclear weapon's dynamics. The reported experiment was actually part of that function. Material samples were placed next to the fuel capsule to test their reaction to the intense pulse of 14 Mev fusion neutrons that were generated by the reported experiment.

The reported input energy quantity may not have been from the lasers but instead a measure of the fraction of X-rays that ended up compressing the extremely expensive, nearly perfectly spherical, hollow diamond fuel capsule. The fusion energy production lasted about 0.08 nanoseconds. Since it took about a week to prepare the shot the duty cycle of this shot, over a one-week period, would be around 0.0000000000000002. It was finally admitted by the NIF staff that the energy needed to charge up the lasers was over 100 times greater than that used as the input reference energy to the compress the the fuel capsule. During the exceedingly brief reaction about 4% of the once frozen deuterium/tritium (D/T) fuel mixture actually 'burned' with the remaining ending up as radioactive waste coating the interior of the vacuum vessel that required cleaning out before another experiment could be performed.

The lab employs their own definition of 'ignition' that is different than most people idea of ignition. Most people equate it with something like a match head striking a rough surface where the initial reaction spreads to the rest of the fuel in about two seconds. In the NIF inertial confinement experiment (ICF) the extremely compressed core of the fuel pellet, which was in the form of a 150 million kelvin plasma, started the fusion reaction then blew off the other 96% of the fuel before it could participate in the reaction. The fusion reaction is totally dependent upon the energy contained within the laser beams and the compressing X-rays that are generated from those beams. During the blast from the laser beams the entire expensive target assembly turns into an intensely hot plasma.

The multibillion dollar National Ignition Facility (NIF) lasers achieved full power in 2009 and the experimenters were expected to achieve its namesake goal of 'ignition' by 2012. It failed by a wide margin but the funding kept flowing from the U.S. nuclear weapons program budget.

I've followed the fusion energy experiments since the early 1970s with its usual claims that a practical fusion power reactor will likely only be 20-30 years away, touted by the experimenters and their fans. They often state that the power source is virtually unlimited since the fuel can be obtained from seawater. The fact is that tritium is extremely rare, extremely expensive and radioactive, having a half-life of about 12 years. There are enormous problems needed to be overcome for future fusion reactors to breed their own tritium fuel from a lithium isotope. The intense energy 14 Mev neutrons, generated by the fusion reactions, will degrade the structures around them and will render some of their atoms radioactive via the process of neutron activation reactions. The usual claims of fusion producing clean energy without creating radioactive waste is pure deceptive sales hype. Most nuclear fusion physicists agree that Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF) experimental approaches are far more likely to lead to a practical fusion power plant design. Still that is likely to take well over a single decade. Scaling that up to displace our addiction to fossil fuel based energy resources will take more decades. Those people, who continue to believe that nuclear power will save us, have to be masterful at excluding the following warnings from their consciousness.

IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster

IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster

Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, say climate scientists in what is in effect their final warning

www.theguardian.com

UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change'

UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid ‘runaway climate change’

António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, told global leaders this week that the world has less than two years to avoid “runaway climate change.”“If we do not change course by 20…

thehill.com

* This statement was made 4-years ago.

Here is another critical review of the recent experiment. When most journalists look for critical balance in their articles, on topics such as this, they tend to defer to those experts who have vested interest in the technology, or have long been fans of it.

Is This the ‘Kitty Hawk Moment’ for Fusion Energy?

Is This the ‘Kitty Hawk Moment’ for Fusion Energy?

This week’s big news amounts to a symbolic achievement—and symbols matter.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Those people, who continue to believe that nuclear power will save us, have to be masterful at excluding the following warnings from their consciousness.

While I fully agree with the post with respect to nuclear fusion, this particular statement is over-broad in that it seems to include nuclear fission as well.

Nuclear fission power has been used for decades to power Navy ships and the commercial electric energy grid in many countries. While it is despised by some anti-nuclear activists. others are coming around to thinking we are going to have to use it to get our CO2 emissions down and keep a reasonable standard of living at the same time. It is a proven technology, not like fusion.

 

[Vernon Brechin]

While I fully agree with the post with respect to nuclear fusion, this particular statement is over-broad in that it seems to include nuclear fission as well.

Nuclear fission power has been used for decades to power Navy ships and the commercial electric energy grid in many countries. While it is despised by some anti-nuclear activists. others are coming around to thinking we are going to have to use it to get our CO2 emissions down and keep a reasonable standard of living at the same time. It is a proven technology, not like fusion.

I did intend to apply my comment to all forms of nuclear fision energy production. I started following it in the mid-1950s when I was just 10 years old. I was an enthusiastic fan then but allowed myself to understand the deceptions as well. As it turned out nuclear power in the U.S. never grew at the rapid rate it was expected to in the 1970s. Three major accidents later those were not foreseen either. Nor was the failed promise, from the 1950s to construct a deep geological repository for the greater than 70 metric tones of high level radioactive waste discharged from civilian and military power plant reactors. Fans get into the habit of dismissing such downsides. They often claim that the history has no bearing upon what we can achieve in the very near future.

Please read the two warning articles from the IPCC and ask yourself how many people have the stomach to accept such a extremely short timeline to turn things around with nuclear power plant construction times, often lasting for over a decade.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

You do sound like one of the anti-nuclear activists. Nuclear power failed to take off as advertised mainly due to public political pressure resulting from nuclear reactor accidents.

Another problem was that few plants were made to any particular design, and were largely constructed on-site. It was not pursued in the most cost-effective manner.

And the lack of a waste repository is mainly due to public opposition.

The newer fission reactor designs are intended to be constructed at centralized facilities and have less demanding operating parameters. There are many competing designs, some of which were previously tried and abandoned, while others are direct evolutions of the existing light water reactor technologies with familiar behaviors. We will just have to see how that works out.

But, if the public decides that is what they want to do, the technology is already developed to do it. That is what is different about it, compared to the idea of using nuclear fusion power.

So, while your personal opinion is that we should not use either, the truth is that one technology is available if we decide to use it while the other is not available and will not become available on a predictable schedule.

 

[Vernon Brechin]

You do sound like one of the anti-nuclear activists. Nuclear power failed to take off as advertised mainly due to public political pressure resulting from nuclear reactor accidents.

Another problem was that few plants were made to any particular design, and were largely constructed on-site. It was not pursued in the most cost-effective manner.

And the lack of a waste repository is mainly due to public opposition.

The newer fission reactor designs are intended to be constructed at centralized facilities and have less demanding operating parameters. There are many competing designs, some of which were previously tried and abandoned, while others are direct evolutions of the existing light water reactor technologies with familiar behaviors. We will just have to see how that works out.

But, if the public decides that is what they want to do, the technology is already developed to do it. That is what is different about it, compared to the idea of using nuclear fusion power.

So, while your personal opinion is that we should not use either, the truth is that one technology is available if we decide to use it while the other is not available and will not become available on a predictable schedule.

Many find it easy to dismiss what I have presented by branding me as an anti-nuclear activist. Typically when they think of an anti-nuclear activist they see someone who is very skimpy on the details of the technology. I'm not that stereotype. I've been following all the fission technologies since I was a young kid and I was employed in a nuclear energy research lab.

I'm well aware that a new generation has come along who have bought into the concept that some of the new technologies will bypass most of the problems that occurred with the past nuclear power plant designs. They look to the future while dismissing all the faith and hard work that went into the past designs. I'm well aware that those designs involved multi-pronged and multi-organizational reviews to ensure the safety and reliability of those reactor designs. I don't dismiss those reviews as being irrelevant to the designs that may soon be fielded. I'm aware that many of those designs began 15 to 20 years ago and most have experienced numerous delays since the early proponents claimed commercial energy production start dates. In pushing for these designs the proponents have a habit of not mentioning the delays that they have experienced.

You must be aware of Bill Gates and his NuScale slowdown. Then maybe you think its best to not advertise the issue since it might get in the way of what you are trying to promote.

I assume you have now read the IPCC warning articles that suggest we are on the cusp of no-return tipping points in our climate situation but you still want to believe that we still have 20-30 years to scale up your favored fission reactor technologies to where it can significantly displace our addiction to fossil fuel based energy sources. I find that aspect of the human mind to be fascinating. For many people their technological love outweighs the mounting evidence of our rapidly collapsing ecosystem.

The lack of a operating deep geological repositories affects all nuclear power generating countries, not just the U.S. That is partly because the power production revenues were considered more important than the permanent waste disposal issue. Some segment of the world's youth are becoming increasingly aware of that dominating priority. Many of the adults may think it wise to keep them away from such perspectives.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Vernon,
I am not going to get into a detailed debate on nuclear power in what is supposed to be a space forum. But, like you, I have been following several subjects for many decades, including nuclear power, climate change, human population dynamics, solar and wind power, as well as the astronomy, cosmology and physics subjects that this forum relates to. In particular, I was involved at a professional level with nuclear safety issues for decades, and am quite familiar with the designs, operational issues, accident sequences and risks of the current crop of nuclear power reactors. And, no, I was not ever employed by a nuclear power manufacturer or plant owner.

All I am going to say at this point is that humans have a serious problem with over-population, and the politics of the debates about what to do about that hardly ever get to the root cause, which is that there are too many of us for our planet to support to the levels of comfort and pleasure that most aspire to.

The power production technological infrastructures that support our current life style are all subsidized in multiple ways by governments at several levels. That includes coal, oil, natural gas, hydro, wind, solar and hydrogen as well as nuclear fission (and research on fusion).

Each has its proponents and detractors, and all have problems that their detractors use in political debates to try to win support for their preferred alternatives.

But, the truth is that they really aren't "alternatives" in the sense that one or a few can completely displace one or some others in the near term. At least not without major damage to the quality of life for billions of people.

At this point in the politics, much more is being promised and subsidized for solar and wind power than can be delivered on the time frames you are talking about. So, what you are saying about nuclear power applies even more to solar and wind.

And, any need to produce massive amounts of new electric power infrastructure will necessarily be done with fossil fuel energy sources. The quicker we try to do it, the more net CO2 emissions will result. Look at manufacturing in China and see what their energy source mix is, and where it can be increased and where it cannot be increased for added manufacturing speed.

Perhaps you could get a better idea of the realities of what you are campaigning for by looking at the history of the "Solar Breeder" plant in Frederick, Maryland, United States. See https://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Solar+breeder for a description of what "solar breeding" is about. Basically, it attempts to use only solar power to make more solar cells. The link above only says the attempt in Frederick was "cancelled". What it doesn't tell you is that it was trying for a long time, and received substantial financial help during the Obama administration to keep it going, but still eventually went bankrupt. Even if it succeeds, it is an extremely slow process to try to use solar in a 'bootstrap" mode to displace other sources of energy. It cannot succeed in the time frame you are saying is essential.

So, the actual truth is that we are going to need all sorts of energy sources in the near term, and those will include nuclear fission power if we really want to minimize our CO2 outputs for the conversion process.

And, it looks like it will also require a hydrogen fuel infrastructure, too, if only to handle the heavy machinery needed to mine, transport, etc. the materials to make all of those solar cells, storage batteries and wind turbines. See https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/12/mixing-diesel-and-hydrogen-provides-big-cuts-in-emissions/ for a "breakthrough" on using hydrogen to displace 90% of the diesel fuel now used in such equipment. And, while you are at it, look at https://www.the-sun.com/motors/6900140/new-pininfarina-with-swappable-hydrogen/ to see an actual hydrogen powered automobile with technology designed to compete in the consumer market with electric cars.

If the goal is to transition to CO2 neutral conditions as quickly as possible, we need to seriously analyze the process to minimize the CO2 emissions caused by the transition processes. That is not being considered in any rational way in the political debates. I can give multiple examples of counter-productive tactics, but this post is already too long and this is not the proper forum, anyway.

The relevant aspects for this forum are how new technologies can help us explore and maybe colonize and exploit off-Earth environments. So, let's get back to that.