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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 30 2020, @08:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the burning-for-you dept.

Laser fusion reactor approaches 'burning plasma' milestone:

In October 2010, in a building the size of three U.S. football fields, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory powered up 192 laser beams, focused their energy into a pulse with the punch of a speeding truck, and fired it at a pellet of nuclear fuel the size of a peppercorn. So began a campaign by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to achieve the goal it is named for: igniting a fusion reaction that produces more energy than the laser puts in.

A decade and nearly 3000 shots later, NIF is still generating more fizz than bang, hampered by the complex, poorly understood behavior of the laser targets when they vaporize and implode. But with new target designs and laser pulse shapes, along with better tools to monitor the miniature explosions, NIF researchers believe they are close to an important intermediate milestone known as "burning plasma": a fusion burn sustained by the heat of the reaction itself rather than the input of laser energy.

Self-heating is key to burning up all the fuel and getting runaway energy gain. Once NIF reaches the threshold, simulations suggest it will have an easier path to ignition, says Mark Herrmann, who oversees Livermore's fusion program. "We're pushing as hard as we can," he says. "You can feel the acceleration in our understanding." Outsiders are impressed, too. "You kind of feel there's steady progress and less guesswork," says Steven Rose, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London. "They're moving away from designs traditionally held and trying new things."

[...] With their sharper vision, researchers have tracked down energy leaks from the imploding fuel pellet. One came at the point where a tiny tube injected fuel into the capsule before the shot. To plug the leak, the team made the tube even thinner. Other leaks were traced back to the capsule's plastic shell, so researchers revamped manufacturing to smooth out imperfections of just a millionth of a meter. The improved diagnostics "really helps the scientists to understand what improvements are required," says Mingsheng Wei of the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

National Ignition Facility site and Wikipedia entry.


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @08:55AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @08:55AM (#1082320)

    So, what, we are like ten years away? Like the last time there was a "breakthrough"? Nice that they keep us up to date.

    Oh, and a RunawayXXXX submission! On nuclear fusion. Coincidence?

    • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday November 30 2020, @09:17AM

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Monday November 30 2020, @09:17AM (#1082323)

      Remember, NIF is funded to study research into fusion bombs.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday November 30 2020, @11:40AM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 30 2020, @11:40AM (#1082336) Journal

      Well

      Self-heating is key to burning up all the fuel and getting runaway energy gain.

      That runaway is one that I approve. Runaway1956... not so much.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 5, Informative) by FatPhil on Monday November 30 2020, @04:03PM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday November 30 2020, @04:03PM (#1082404) Homepage
      "Ignition is close now. Within a year or two..." -- someone in 2010.

      But don't miss out on all the other missings of targets:

      The initial estimates from 1992 estimated construction costs around $400 million, with construction taking place from 1995 to 1999.
      ...
      a redesign emerged as NIF in 1994. The estimated cost of the project remained just over $1 billion,[52] with completion in 2002.
      ...
      NIF would cost approximately $1.1 billion and another $1 billion for related research, and would be complete as early as 2002.[61] Later in 1997 the DOE approved an additional $100 million in funding and pushed the operational date back to 2004.
      ...
      Continuing problems of this sort further delayed the operational start of the project, and in September 1999, an updated DOE report stated that NIF would require up to $350 million more and completion would be pushed back to 2006.
      ...
      the US Congress requested an independent review by the General Accounting Office (GAO). They returned a highly critical report in August 2000 stating that the budget was likely $3.9 billion, including R&D, and that the facility was unlikely to be completed anywhere near on time
      ...
      A follow-up report the next year included all of these items, pushing the budget to $4.2 billion, and the completion date to around 2008.
      ...
      By this time, so sure were the experimenters that ignition would be reached that articles began appearing in science magazines stating that it would be announced only a short time after the article was published. Scientific American started a 2010 review article with the statement "Ignition is close now. Within a year or two..."
      ...
      In January 2012, Mike Dunne, director of NIF's laser fusion energy program, predicted in a Photonics West 2012 plenary talk that ignition would be achieved at NIF by October 2012
      ...
      given the unknowns with the present 'semi-empirical' approach, the probability of ignition before the end of December is extremely low and even the goal of demonstrating unambiguous alpha heating is challenging. (Crandall Memo 2012, p. 2)
      ...
      The NIF officially ended on September 30, 2012 without achieving ignition. ... NIF will shift its focus away from ignition back toward materials research.
      ...
      A memo sent on 29 September 2013 ... Alpha heating, a key component of ignition, was clearly seen. It also noted that the reaction released more energy than the "energy being absorbed by the fuel", a condition the memo referred to as "scientific breakeven". ... A number of researchers pointed out that the experiment was far below ignition, and did not represent a breakthrough as reported ... In this release, the term was changed to refer only to the energy deposited in the fuel, not the energy of the laser as in previous statements. All of the upstream loss mechanisms were ignored, and the comparison was between the approximately 10 kJ that reaches the fuel and the 14 kJ that were produced, a Q of 1.4. Using the previous definition, this would be 1.8 MJ in and 14 kJ out, a Q of 0.008.
      ...
      Since 2013, NIF has shifted focus to materials studies. Experiments beginning in 2015 FY have used plutonium targets

      When it comes to science stories, fusion is the field that just keeps on giving! The above's just NIF - feel free to have a stab at JET!
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MIRV888 on Monday November 30 2020, @11:56AM (2 children)

    by MIRV888 (11376) on Monday November 30 2020, @11:56AM (#1082337)

    If they can get it to work....
    Hydrogen to helium doesn't leave you with the mess that uranium does. As the articles says though, it has to extremely precise to even try to bring it off.
    (It's their side job after maintaining the viability of our aging nukes.)

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by choose another one on Monday November 30 2020, @12:23PM (1 child)

      by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 30 2020, @12:23PM (#1082340)

      > (It's their side job after maintaining the viability of our aging nukes.)

      So, something called the "National Ignition Facility" is responsible for maintaining the nukes... er...

      • (Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Tuesday December 01 2020, @07:14AM

        by MIRV888 (11376) on Tuesday December 01 2020, @07:14AM (#1082747)

        Yes, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory built and now maintains our nukes. The national ignition facility is teeny tiny part of that enterprise.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @07:02PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2020, @07:02PM (#1082486)
    Because even if they succeed in getting energy gain they'll have figure out how to mass produce those "perfect" pellets cheaply enough.
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