OT: Scientists achieve nuclear fusion with giant laser

[Lab Lover]

A typo or two, but this is tremendous news!

Scientists achieve nuclear fusion with giant laser

[mike]

I wanna know how they get 192 beams "300 yards long" lasting only 30 femtoseconds to reach the target at the same time.

[The Daring Dufas]

In the past, it's taken more fraking energy to produce fusion that the energy produced by the fusion. If the boffins can get it to put out more energy than is put in, you can have nuclear explosions in your neighborhood. ^_^

TDD

[Lab Lover]

Of course you are referring to confined fusion reactions. It doesn't take much (relatively) energy to detonate a 20 mt thermonuclear weapon, which would release a tremendous amount of energy compared to the amount required to initiate the reaction.

Yeah, no.

[Lab Lover]

With lots of money, patience and practice?

[notbob]

It is, indeed.

I worked on one of the first experiments at LLNL back in the mid 80s. The Nova Target setup was an early attempt at nuclear fusion, via lasers, and was housed in the bldg adjacent to an older project where scenes from the original Tron movie were filmed. Nice to know they are still working at it and making headway, some 30 yrs later. Fusion, as opposed to fission, what makes atom bombs work, is how the Sun sustains itself. If we can improve on the "output greater than input" formula, we will have the answer to cheap sustainable power.

nb

[The Daring Dufas]

In the past, it's taken more fraking energy to produce fusion that the

I was being fecesious(sic) which is something people say about me with regularity(no pun). ^_^

TDD

[Jax]

Lab Lover wrote in news: [e-mail]:

LOL! Good reply, Lab. :)

[notbob]

It matters not. We've already polluted this ol' orb to the point of no return. I figure mankind, as a living species, has about 30-50 yrs. 8|

nb

[trader4]

I don't see what qualifies this as tremendous news. Scientists have created small fusion reactions in a lab setting for decades now. Yes, it's another step that they've gotten more energy out than they've put in for the first time, but if you look at what it took to do that, there is no clear path, in fact no path at all, to how this could be made commercially viable. It's one thing to take some mega laser that fills a whole building and create a little energy out of one tiny pellet. There is a long road from that to being able to actually contain and capture the energy and scale it up to something that produces commercial energy. And a good chance that before that happens, something else that's more viable will come along.

[Lab Lover]

I wondered but wasn't positive.

In actuality, I do think you are pretty bright and have a good sense of humor.

[Lab Lover]

Cool about LLNL, very impressive actually!

I am very curious about the containment methods which would be required to make fusion commercially viable as a power source.

[Lab Lover]

I am sorry you do not agree about the significance.

[dpb]

Years ago (like about 35-40 now) spent a fair amount of time as consultant at the Rochester Laser Energetics lab. Much of the preliminaries for the NIF were developed there.

The overall system control at the time was some very elegant Forth code running on HP-1000s that then triggered a set of optics of similar objective as those described but much more primitive and experimental given the state back in them days...

I still have my doubts on fusion as a commercial system, but who knows, it's been 25 yr away for about 50 or 60 now; a hundred more and it'll probably still be about that... :)

[RobertMacy]

Were you the guy that had that small shattered section of Neodynium doped laser sitting onyour desk? The one that when fired off found an internal flaw so all the energy converged on it. and $20,000 evaporated instantly.

[notbob]

No, but the story sounds vaguely familiar.

I worked six yrs as a contract mech tech on several of LLNLs projects. Some were worthy, others less so. I moved to the private sector when I realized my personal safety was not a primary concern of the feds. That, and there was more money to be made in Silicon Valley. ;)

nb

[Stumpy]

At least a tokamak can model steady state.

[micky]

It says they focus on the targe, Not that they actually get there at the same time. Maybe that's why they didnt' ignite the fuel.

"The laser, known as the National Ignition Facility (NIF), uses 192 beams 300 yards long that focus on a fuel cell about the diameter of a No. 2 pencil."

[micky]

I thought it strange that the article ignored H-bombs. None used in combat but how many were tested. Dozens?

[micky]

What did they use to get 4 quadrillion watts to the lasers within a second?