Fusion energy milestone reported by California scientists

[RandySF]

Scientists are creeping closer to their goal of creating a controlled fusion-energy reaction, by mimicking the interior of the sun inside the hardware of a laboratory. In the latest incremental advance, reported Wednesday online in the journal Nature, scientists in California used 192 lasers to compress a pellet of fuel and generate a reaction in which more energy came out of the fuel core than went into it.

There’s still a long way to go before anyone has a functioning fusion reactor, something physicists have dreamed of since Albert Einstein was alive. A fusion reactor would run on a common form of hydrogen found in seawater, would emit minimal nuclear waste and couldn’t have the kind of meltdown that can occur in a traditional nuclear-fission reactor.

“You kind of picture yourself climbing halfway up a mountain, but the top of the mountain is hidden in clouds,” Omar Hurricane, the lead author of the Nature paper, said in a teleconference with journalists. “And then someone calls you on your satellite phone and asks you, ‘How long is it going to take you to climb to the top of the mountain?’ You just don’t know.”

Hurricane and other scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, home of the multibillion-dollar National Ignition Facility, took pains to calibrate their claims of success. This was not fusion “ignition,” the NIF’s ultimate ambition. The experiment overall requires much more energy on the front end — all those laser shots —than comes out the back end.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fusion-energy-milestone-reported-by-california-scientists/2014/02/12/f511ed18-936b-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html

[Recursion]

1. Now, factoring in my past experiences with "science journalism"...

... I'm less excited. However, this is still cool.

("Science journalism": a field for those that are good at neither...)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

4. I know what you mean. They like to either sensationalize or dry it out...

Reporting on fusion ALWAYS talks about it like it's a cult and the researchers are crackpots.

It's also ALWAYS compared to regular nuclear reactors which are creating heat to form steam to run a turbine which means the nuclear pile is doing the same job as a coal fired or natural gas fired plant. Then they ALWAYS have to bring up past reports that were proven wrong with a smug superiority.

[TexasProgresive]

12. This line caught my sceptical (of the reporting) eye

A fusion reactor would run on a common form of hydrogen found in seawater

Is this the same "common form" of hydrogen found in any water; the hydrogen that is bound up with oxygen?

We had our own debacle with "cold fusion" at Texas A&M. It was Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Dr. John Bockris who lead the charge. The excess of energy was ultimately refuted. I like the idea of fusion power and think that there should be some research but it is like a lot of pie in the sky ideas that get people's hopes up-including the researchers. If fusion power is possible someone will stumble on to it, perhaps by accident.

Now can we get some real "scientific" reporting.

[Recursion]

14. No, pretty sure it's deuterium

An isotope that is hydrolized in some sea water.

[kristopher]

2. Today on NPR re: restoration of MIT's fusion funding

While the fusion reactor was shut down, Mumgaard worked on side projects. He began writing his thesis and considered his next move, possibly China. The U.S. has about 200 to 300 fusion grad research students. China has 2,000 to 3,000 and an ambitious fusion program.

“I’d probably have gone overseas where the funding is maybe more secure and long term,” Mumgaard says. “It would have been a problem. I possibly would have left the field.”

But late last month Congress restored most of MIT’s fusion budget and renewed the U.S. financial support for an international fusion reactor being constructed in France. It’s based on MIT’s reactor but will be 10 times bigger and more powerful, designed to prove commercial fusion power is possible.

“We think you could put electricity on the grid in 20 to 30 years, but that would require a real crash program,” Greenwald says. “At the rate we’re now going, it would be longer. Fifty years is more like the kind of number.”

http://www.wbur.org/2014/02/06/mit-fusion-center-federal-funding

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. As I've posted before - the GOAL is to prodice electricity directly from a reaction....

We are talking straight E=mc² levels of matter to energy conversion allowing one to power New York with a cup of water with the only "waste product" being neutrinos.

[kentauros]

5. Isn't that how a Polywell reactor is supposed to work?

I'm not a scientist nor do I have that kind of background, but from what I've read about how Polywell works, is that it converts the energy directly to electricity. No boiling of water, and now regenerative if they use boron as part of the fuel (as I recall.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. Most pictures I've seen of what sci-fi calls a fusion reactor are spinning light rings...

The Polywell has that look.



It dawned on me that what they were showing was the old joke of opening the hood of your car and finding a hamster on a wheel as the power source.

I have a feeling that when they finally have a breakthrough with fusion power is will look so simple it will be wondered why they didn't come up with it before.

What would be funny is if it was discovered by an Iranian scientist.

[kentauros]

7. Yeah, I saw the list of researchers in the wiki entry

and wondered something similar about Iran making a breakthrough

Speaking of science fiction, the Polywell was invented by Robert Bussard. Is that the same name as was often used for "Bussard Collectors"? Seems like they were used to collect solar wind for rocket engines.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Only on Star Trek.

[kentauros]

9. I know Niven used them, too,

but I don't remember in which books (haven't read his stuff in decades.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

10. Found a wiki entry...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

[kentauros]

11. A lot of that went over my head fast!

I did like the idea of the magnetic sails and electrostatic collectors, though

[Javaman]

13. this just in...

with this latest milstone achieved, experts on site now can claim that, "we will have fusion energy in 20 years!"

lol