One megajoule laser brings nuclear fusion power closer to reality
By Richard Lai 
posted January 28th 2010 12:04PM
posted January 28th 2010 12:04PM
[Original photo from 2funnycats]
posted January 28th 2010 12:04PM
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down with this we MUST continue dependence on our limitless supply of fossil fuels!
lol
@dannoadams
OMG IT'S NOT AN iPAD !!!
@dannoadams
no but seriously tho, if we figure out self-sustaining fusion, our energy future is solved. keep on keeping on "national ignition facility"(?) !
@dannoadams
Unless it's 1.21 Jigawatts, i'm not satisfied.
Because of all the iPad posts on the web, it has generated a lot of radiation. And because of these radiation, cats developed the ability to shoot laser out of their mouths. Some will use the cats for good, others for evil. Who will win in the war of....
LASER CATS!!!!!!
@ToniCipriani
i dunno lol
@ToniCipriani
Cats...only cats will win that war. *sigh*
@ToniCipriani
only ceiling cat knows
@ToniCipriani that cat pic made me laugh so hard :P
@skyblaze
That cat is getting owned.
Are we any closer to lightsabers? no? eh, not interested then.
@raredesign
hey now, we have gotten closer than the 70's. we know know they would be plasma, and way too fucking hot to actually hold on to. thats something.
@SmilinGoat
I'm sure we'll have a cooling solution for the handle.
Liquid Nitrogen cooler anyone?
@MegaJapan Yeah, because when you're holding a giant blade of burning hot plasma, cooling the handle is going to keep it from cooking your insides.
That pic scares the shit out of me!
@ChazClout Glad I'm not the only one!
@ChazClout
Just goes to prove once again, cats are evil.
@ChazClout
What's funny is that cat is just yawning and you're scared - imagine if it was attacking!
@ChazClout
that pic made me join this discussion :-))
When I think lasers, I think lightsabers...
@Plazmic Flame
I think SHARKS WITH FRICKIN LASER BEAMS!
No, when I think of lasers, I think of the little guy in my DVD player.
Picture = win.
You mean cold fusion?
@jol nope, coldfusion however possible doesnot yet produce energy, it instead needs energy to function.
@jol
"One megajoule laser brings nuclear fusion closer to reality"
Yeah, I'm pretty sure fusion is already a reality.
(posted while sitting in the warmth of the sun)
@jol No, I'm thinking the power of the sun in the palm of my hand! What ever could go wrong?
@Why should I have all the fun
Fixed, thanks.
Anyone banking on Fusion saving us from fossil fuels needs to look else where.
NIF's purpose is to test fuels for positive Q. In other words, it looks for fuels (both elements and geometry ) that produce more energy then what it took to put in them. We haven't even begun to tackle the materials issues of a fusion power plant. Real fusion as a human controlled power source is at least 50-75 years if not more.
@M3 In fact, magneticly confined fusion has been demonstrated at the JET facility in 1997 with a Q larger then 1 ,.. and a first Device capable of 500MW of fusion power is being build in cadarache france.
The timeline so far aims at a demonstration powerplant somehwere around 2045.
@M3
JET was able to briefly produce net energy. If NIF is successful to make fusion a reality a version will have to be built that allows the pellets to be removed and added at a rate of one every 10 minutes (insteda of a few hours) .. and of course a housing that can heat water up to drive a turbine.
It's known which elements will produce net energy via fusion (anything below Iron in the periodic table). The materials issue you are referring to .. "neutron embrittlement" ... is a cost issue more than environmental .. it's actually negligible in comparison to the product of a fission plant but the environmentalists make a huuuge deal out of it.
Design of the hohlraum's geometry is a challenge .. yes (though solvable). The materials issue will go away when aneutronic fusion experiments get approval (successor machine to Z pinch and radical electrostatic confinement techniques such as dense plasma focus).
@M3 So, you say to look elsewhere and then you say it's at least 50-75 years away from being a reality implying that we will get there eventually. So just because it's going to take a while to get there doesn't mean we should stop looking into it. If we stop looking into it, it will never happen.
Your statement is confusing. Either it is an alternative to fossil fuels, or it isn't, regardless of the time frame.
@M3
Yes, JET showed a positive Q, except that was from a D-D Plasma, where as NIF is testing for Q from pellet. Even then, Q's on the order of 10 are needed for real fusion viability. NIF is supposed to test various shapes and configurations for Inertial Confinement.
Materials issues are far more then just neutron embrittlement. Plasma facing components have immense fusion problems. Extreme neutron flux, peaked at 14 MeV, plasma leakage, and basically the inability to use our most highly developed material for Nuclear applications, steels. Tungsten is already showing phenomena we didn't even think would happen. This is from test samples at JET.
A realisitic fusion powerplant would need to have a rep rate of 30hz.
Yes ITER is supposed to hit 500MW for 1000 seconds. But the materials community has stated that the first wall will have to be replaced after this and the secondary walls will likely have suffered irreparable damage. ITER doesn't even attempt to produce electricity, so we haven't even included that problem of diverting the heat away.
We're not going to get ITER until 2040-2050. The materials don't exist. Want proof? Look at ICFRM-14 Program. For those that don't know, that stands for 14th International Conference on Fusion Reactor Materials. Add to the complication that Russians aren't sharing much of their Tungsten information and you can easily see why this will take 75+ years.
This doesn't mean we should stop investing. We need to invest more. Fusion is a large problem and will take lots of investment and time to get it right. But that doesn't change the fact that it won't be doable in next 5-7 decades. I doubt it will occur in this century.
@truelove79
It's not. Any alternative to fossil fuels needs to occur on a much shorter time scale or the ADD that plagues human society will cause us move on to something more dramatic like the supposed end of the world in 2012. Fission is an alternative. Fusion is not. It's a post cursor to fission.
pew pew
Regarding the National Ignition facility.
Its certainly true that by means of those facility , utilizing a powerful laserbeam, Nuclear Fusion can be realized. BUT , the method applied, is at the moment mostly used to study the exotic states of matter during the fusion process: Highly dense and very hot matter so far observed during Hydrogenbomb tests.
The lasers are used here to create a means of initalising inertial fusion, driven by a wave propagating into the matter.
In order to function as a viable energy source would have to function on a multi Hz basis, menaing several shots at those energy a second,.. which is upto now rather difficult to achieve.
The more likely approach to reach fusion as an energy source is here the magnetic fusion. Using large magnets to confine a hot plasma, and thus producing fusion under much more quiesent scenarios.
www.iter.org
@hansolo1979
Laser fusion has just as much potential. Japan, and Europe both have laser fusion programs unrelated to weapons research (for sure the Japanese one isn't).
what's the deal with the exposed reactor?
@darkmax in any case it will to some extent be radioactive, but compared to the waste produced in nuclear fission, as used today, the activated materials will most likely be harmless after a timespan of 50 years (Millions for nuclear fission waste).
@hansolo1979
Thanks for the heads up.
The naysayers will keep saying that "fusion is always 50 years away". In 1903 they were saying the same thing about airplane flight.
Nevermind that the fusion budget was slashed by a whopping 95% in the seventies (thanks Nixon). Some of the fusion machines that are coming online now were the ones designed in the 70's (ITER) and were supposed to be operational in the 80s but budgets were cut.
@JS
I wonder which industries didn't want clean, abundant, high tech power...?
@JS
Haha, have you any idea how much has been put into fission reactor research? Even with the budget cut it's more money than is imaginable.
And even just the US it's humongous, as for the combined world investment, well I probably can't pronounce the amount.
Awesome picture.
Makes me reconsider my plans to take a break vom iPadget.
@Cence
vom = from
Meh, the Petawatt laser at the University of Texas is still more powerful, they are also doing research on fusion. My friend works there so I've seen it a few times (radiation suit and all)
I'm sorry, but I'm not interested until they get somewhere near 1.21 jigawatts
@D4N14L Didn't Jay-Z already get a jigawatt laser?
@D4N14L
GIGAwatts
@7egend somebody didn't get the reference
http://www.youtube.com/watch#v=I5cYgRnfFDA