A major fusion breakthrough?

[John Clark]

Rumors say the US National Ignition Facility, using high-power lasers, has for the first time made a controlled nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than it consumes and the output was so much greater than expected it damaged some of the diagnostic equipment. The energy department that runs the facility will not confirm or deny these rumors but US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm says she will make an announcement tomorrow about “a major scientific breakthrough"

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

rdn

[Lawrence Crowell]

This result means the energy delivered from the laser shock wave on a deuterium pellet was .67 the fusion energy released. It does not take into account the much larger amounts of energy needed to run the laser system, energy that does not make it to the pellet. This is a breakthrough of sorts, but still quite a ways from a practical operating fusion power station.

LC

[John Clark]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 5:17 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 5:16 AM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> This result means the energy delivered from the laser shock wave on a deuterium pellet was .67 the fusion energy released. It does not take into account the much larger amounts of energy needed to run the laser system, energy that does not make it to the pellet. This is a breakthrough of sorts, but still quite a ways from a practical operating fusion power station.

I agree with all that except that most of the Laser's energy that hits the Fusion target does not heat the core deuterium and tritium pellet directly, instead it heats an outer layer of a heavy metal like gold or lead and that produces X-rays that heats the deuterium and tritium. With this indirect method you lose a lot of efficiency but it's necessary because the lasers are in the ultraviolet range and when UV light hits a plasma most of the energy accelerates the electrons not the nuclei which is what you want to fuse. Of course it doesn't take long for the energy in the nuclei and the electrons to equalize but it takes longer than the time window you have for fusion to occur which is only about as long as it takes light to move 1 inch. If they could make a laser that worked with a shorter wavelength than ultraviolet it would improve efficiency enormously and you could get by with a much less powerful laser.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

tttu

 

[Brent Meeker]

Doesn't the laser pulse just vaporize the gold coating which in turn compresses and heats the pellet?

Brent

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[Lawrence Crowell]

Before I continue, I think fusion can be arrived at with very modest powered lasers that do not induce a shock wave on a pellet. In fact I think for a few thousand watts you could get the same energy output. 

The lasers induce shock heating of the gold pellet, which in turn compresses the pellet into a much smaller volume. In fact, this is similar to how a hydrogen bomb works, but does not involve X-rays from fission in a plutonium pit.  I think with your discussion on X-rays that you are thinking of the gamma and X-rays channeled by incident by a holraum onto a DT lithium-hydride target.

LC

[John Clark]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2022 at 6:51 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Doesn't the laser pulse just vaporize the gold coating which in turn compresses and heats the pellet?

Things happen so fast that by the time it takes for slow moving vaporized gold debris to hit the target (slow moving compared with the speed of light) the fusion reaction is nearly over, so the important thing is that the gold gets so hot it radiates X-rays and heats the protons and not just the electrons.  And when the outer layer of the deuterium-tritium fusion pellet gets so hot it rockets outward, because every action has a reaction, the inner core of the pellet rockets inward and compresses. Experimentalists knew since 1952 that the idea was fundamentally sound because it had already been shown to work in an entirely different context, it's basically the Teller–Ulam principle that makes the H bomb possible; they were just working at a smaller more controlled scale and they replaced the nuclear fission trigger with 192 lasers.

 

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

tud

[spudb...@aol.com]

Basically then, it is a step and not a breakthrough, at least from a commercial-engineering pov?  I am somewhat more interested in the Proton=Boron^11 work performed by Heinrich Hora. Not a magnetic fusion experiment, but also laser-induced.  
Phys. Rev. E 106, 055215 (2022) - Improving the feasibility of economical proton-boron-11 fusion via alpha channeling with a hybrid fast and thermal proton scheme (aps.org)

The point is because the achievement listed is largely a century away commercially, we need to as a species focus on primary energy generation from other sources.

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.

[Dylan Distasio]

We're an EXTREMELY long way from commercialization of fusion power.   While this is a promising step, I would not consider it a breakthrough:

https://bigthink.com/the-future/fusion-power-nif-hype-lose-energy/

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[spudb...@aol.com]

Seems accurate unless the engineering (done by AI?) is accelerated.

The great question what we ought do now until the Age of Fusion arrives?

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[spudb...@aol.com]

We should consider alternative fusion paths, including the British one using a railgun to accelerate DT pellets.
Britain's 'artificial sun' nuclear fusion reactor sets a new world record | Daily Mail Online

Why? Because any other path may bring us closer and faster is why?

Now, I'd also be asking JC how much longer is his fav, MSR-U235 or MSR-Thorium 232/233?

My fix?

I'd go absolutely ape shite for solar panels hooked into batteries. Ape poop, for Wind Turbines at far Ocean.

Go massively huge for Electric Vehicles and Hybrids in every showroom on the planet. Why? Because the energy is waiting to be harvested, Not because of Climate Change but because I want to the Russian and Chinese war machine against al of us. I see them as the Existential Threat and Climate as the later fear. It this helps with BOTH issues, great!

Also-microhydro, also water flow through pipelines, also whatever else you guys recommend! 

John and company can and should include snide political comments as desired, since everything energy wise is more in Politics with a capital P. 

Ideas?

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>
To: everyth...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, Dec 15, 2022 10:41 am
Subject: Re: A major fusion breakthrough?

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.

[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 12:20 PM <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

> Now, I'd also be asking JC how much longer is his fav, MSR-U235 or MSR-Thorium 232/233?

 

That depends on how much money is put into liquid fuel thorium reactor R&D, it would take a hell of a lot of money to make it practical but a lot less than the money the COVID vaccine saved by not having to put 18.5 million people in the hospital.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

rdc

[Lawrence Crowell]

I think this approach to fusion is silly. I also think the Tokamak approach is overwrought. I will give a possible to do this in different ways.

I wrote a white paper years ago about putting Lithium 6 in a target, say a foil. Deuterium ions are accelerated to the foil so that Li6 + D --> Be8 --> 2He4 plus 24 MeV. That energy is in the form of kinetic energy of the alpha particles that can be easily captured without thermal mess. A boron version of this has also been proposed.

My most "out there" idea is to put deuterium ions in a lattice induced by a laser trap. Now this will not be easy. Such physics is done usually with heavy ions that are not susceptible to perturbations that cause the ions to fly away. The laser trap method would put these into a Bose-Einstein condensate. The quantum wave of the system is that of a "giant" deuterium atom that is in a higher energy nuclear state. This then quantum transitions into the helium He4. The larger, N atoms, the greater is the probability for transition. This will be very challenging to do, but it will not involve vast amounts of input energy.

LC

[spudb...@aol.com]

A working MSR pilot plant would cost billions and billions to get to fruition. Covid vaccines are cheaper. However, neither one area of research is related. You are not going to light cities with Moderna, We are not going to vaccinate people with Molten Salt. I gather that if one is obsessed over politics versus problem solving, one's engineering work will naturally suffer.  

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To: spudb...@aol.com
Cc: everyth...@googlegroups.com <everyth...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Dec 16, 2022 2:57 pm
Subject: Re: A major fusion breakthrough?

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[spudb...@aol.com]

Oh yeah, Colliding Beam Fusion. How much do we put in energy-wise, and get out from it? 

Deuterium ions are accelerated to the foil so that Li6 + D --> Be8 --> 2He4 plus 24 MeV.

For me, I'd have just gone the D-T route just to see how bad it would fail, or how many molecules actually fused?

But, you're the physicist. Magnetized or Polarized targets may have beefed up your experiment, but getting us closer past the Lawson Criterion? Meh! For Li-6, rather than fusion energy, I'd consider it to be used for light metals fission, which may never be fruitful to study?  Still, let's have a look. 

I still like Heinrich Hora's P-B^11 thingy in Aus. We probably need more sure ways to make energy abundant beyond the Age O' Fusion a century from now. Even Beta voltaic power, might be just what we need to get us to Tomorrowland? 

ps://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0114529

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1066362222030134

https://vdocument.in/n94-11407-robert-b-laughlin.html?page=2

Batman to Robin in Batmobile: Power to Turbines, Turbines to Speed!

Me: I think we can get through this with just solar. Why?

This-

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/230978/study-finds-huge-global-potential-energy/

Upside? 4.3 times our annual global energy consumption.

Downside? Solar Panels on 50% of all the roofs in the world. Materials. (just polysilicon) plus batteries. 

Upside? Replaces the Fossil and thus reliance on Putin. but we go EV's and Hybrids. 

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/36884827-a7a2-4617-9e28-d6439217bf6cn%40googlegroups.com

.

[Lawrence Crowell]

With deuterium that does not fuse, they can be recycled back in a loop with quadrupolar magnets. The He4 that result from fusion will have a larger scattering angle and these can be sent into an MHD generator. 

LC

[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 6:02 PM Lawrence Crowell <goldenfield...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I wrote a white paper years ago about putting Lithium 6 in a target, say a foil. Deuterium ions are accelerated to the foil so that Li6 + D --> Be8 --> 2He4 plus 24 MeV. That energy is in the form of kinetic energy of the alpha particles that can be easily captured without thermal mess. A boron version of this has also been proposed.

It would be really cool if you could get fusion to work by accelerating a proton and smashing it into Boron-11, that would produce three electrically charged alpha particles with a combined energy of 8.7 MEV which could be directly converted into electricity with no need for clumsy steam turbines. And the good thing is the reaction would produce very few nasty neutrons that can damage and induce radioactivity in the reactor vessel, and as a bonus Boron-11 is the most common isotope of Boron.

 

> My most "out there" idea is to put deuterium ions in a lattice induced by a laser trap. Now this will not be easy. Such physics is done usually with heavy ions that are not susceptible to perturbations that cause the ions to fly away. The laser trap method would put these into a Bose-Einstein condensate. The quantum wave of the system is that of a "giant" deuterium atom that is in a higher energy nuclear state. This then quantum transitions into the helium He4. The larger, N atoms, the greater is the probability for transition. This will be very challenging to do, but it will not involve vast amounts of input energy.

Wow, I never thought of that, but you're right, it would be really hard to do this on an industrial scale.  

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

urt