A boost from magnetism is nearly enough to achieve fusion ignition:
Fusion power may be a more realistic prospect than you think. As Motherboard reports, researchers at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that a new magnetic field setup more than tripled the energy output of the fusion reaction hotspot in experiments, "approaching" the level required for self-sustaining ignition in plasmas. The field was particularly effective at trapping heat within the hotspot, boosting the energy yield.
The hotspot's creation involved blasting 200 lasers at a fusion fuel pellet made from hydrogen isotopes like deuterium and tritium. The resulting X-rays made the pellet implode and thus produce the extremely high pressures and heat needed for fusion. The team achieved their feat by wrapping a coil around a pellet made using special metals.
Also at Motherboard and Yahoo News. Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Thursday December 08, @08:55AM (7 children)
50 years ago they said it would take 30 years to get nuclear fusion working. It has been 30 years ever since.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 08, @10:37AM (2 children)
This is laser fusion, so a completely different technology to magnetically confined fusion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, @11:05AM (1 child)
Which seems also seems very hard to turn into a practical power plant.
Assuming you have a powerplant using such tech. How many megajoules would be produced per pellet? What would the rate of fire per laser bank- once every second? You'd need to break even after subtracting the total costs of factories churning out these pellets at high quantities and recycling them at high rates. And I bet those pellets have to be very precisely aligned.
Not saying it's impossible but it actually seems a tech that's better suited for nuclear fusion tests than for generating power at "nuclear power plant" amounts.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Thursday December 08, @01:09PM
Of course, all the above is covered in Wikipedia's ICF page [wikipedia.org].
The dirty little secret to ICF is that it will probably never make a power plant, but it might one day be slightly more useful than a Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor. Meanwhile it is something of a UBI for some well-educated physicists.
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I have posted a mostly-nothing AC friendly journal [soylentnews.org] today.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday December 08, @04:45PM (3 children)
No. 50 years ago they said if fusion were fully funded, moonshot-style, it would take 30 years to get nuclear fusion working. Funding was promptly canceled. The estimate has been 30 years ever since. Funding has been canceled ever since.
The moral of the story: Never tell the investors that if they show up at your door with dump trucks full of money then you will take the money and not deliver anything for thirty years.
Worst grant proposal ever!
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday December 08, @06:21PM (2 children)
Money is being spent. Wikipedia:
"Construction of the ITER complex in France started in 2013,[18] and assembly of the tokamak began in 2020.[19] The initial budget was close to €6 billion, but the total price of construction and operations is projected to be from €18 to €22 billion;[20][21] other estimates place the total cost between $45 billion and $65 billion, though these figures are disputed by ITER.[22][23] Regardless of the final cost, ITER has already been described as the most expensive science experiment of all time,[24]"
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeRandomGeek on Thursday December 08, @06:55PM (1 child)
Apparently I was exaggerating. But funding for fusion researched peaked 50 years ago at about $1.3 billion/year and then steadily decreased for the next 30 years down to $400 million/year.
http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2021/ph241/margraf1/ [stanford.edu]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08, @08:56PM
I guess it must be cheaper to invade countries that have reserves of oil than to invest in something that may not work out. Oh wait...
(Score: 4, Informative) by oumuamua on Thursday December 08, @07:03PM
First you need renewables to replace fossil fuels. Then because no new nuclear plants are being built, you need renewables to replace them. Finally you need renewables to power massive atmosphere carbon removal operations.
NOW repeat all those renewable installations because the first generation has aged out.
https://www.genolve.com/design/socialmedia/memes/If-the-Climate-Crisis-was-a-Football-Game [genolve.com]