Getting a bit closer.

[urlhttps://www.microsoftnewskids.com/en-us/kids/science-tech/to-usher-in-the-fusion-age-scientists-must-reckon-with-unruly-plasma-spurts/ar-AA11NA52?cvid=d222bf6ddf3c43529abced82a02ec537=]To Usher in the ‘Fusion Age,’ Scientists Must Reckon With Unruly Plasma Spurts.[/url]

Cheers.

Looks as promising as anything I've seen so far. But what do I know? So I will fall back on my previous position. I'll believe it when I see it. Which unfortunately, most likely, will be after I'm no longer here to benefit from it.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

The US is set to announce a “major scientific breakthrough” after reports scientists have achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research.

The US Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a “major scientific breakthrough” this week, after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research.

The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a “net energy gain” from an experimental fusion reactor.

That would represent the first time that researchers have successfully produced more energy in a fusion reaction — the same type that powers the Sun — than was consumed during the process, a potentially major step in the pursuit of zero-carbon power.....

Cheers.

Twenty percent net energy gain, all at once; that's remarkable! I would have expected just a few percent, at best, at this stage. They'll naturally be wanting to determine if this amazing result can be repeated, at will, if they've not already done so.

I remember, as a child, having the Livermore nuclear lab pointed out to me many times, when traveling by car through that area. Will be looking for the formal announcement today with great interest. Thanks, Wiggo, for sharing this story.

The formal announcement about a breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been given. The only qualification of the report of 20 percent net gain in energy appears to be that this was 20 percent over the energy directed at the fusion target, not the total energy to run the lasers and the rest of the experimental apparatus.

This is considered a valid way of describing scientific net energy gain. The application of this sort of fusion technique to practical power generation is a different matter, of course. There, a net gain over the total energy used in the fusion process, and a considerable one, is needed.

Still, it is the first time that even this sort of net energy gain has been achieved, and they did so by a fairly wide margin of 20 percent. I've found no reference to whether this feat has been accomplished only once, or repeatedly.

Please find a link, below, to a video of the announcement, as well as a written report:

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/east-bay/energy-officials-to-announce-nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-at-livermore-lab/3103572/

Some interesting, and puzzling, figures from a BBC article on this achievement, linked below. They report that 2.05 mega joules were sent into the fusion target by the lasers, and that 3.15 mega joules were gotten out.

This is a factor of about 1.5. This seems to contradict the already given figure of 20 percent net energy gain. Was there some attempt here, to factor in the total energy used to produce fusion, not just the energy delivered to the target? Did this produce the 20 percent figure? If not, I wonder what it means.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63950962

An article from Science Magazine, linked below, has greater breadth and depth than most. It repeats the figures -- 2.05 mega joules input, and 3.15 MJ output. No mention is made of the 20 percent net energy gain report, seen elsewhere. It also covers the 'one shot' nature of these experiments, describing the fusion target in some detail, and emphasizing the precision necessary in its construction.

The article also explains that the lasers used are very inefficient, requiring hundreds of times their output power, in order to operate. One reads that there are now more efficient lasers, than those used at the Lawrence Livermore Lab.

The possibility is raised that this early success might stimulate interest in a prototype inertial confinement reactor for power production. Currently, such reactors are purely experimental.

Tokamak, (magnetic confinement) reactors have long been held to be our best bet for sustained fusion. I wonder if this could be changing.

One recalls the renowned Professor Langley plopping his airplanes into the Potomac River, from a barge, while the obscure Wright Brothers were actually mastering power flight. Could this sort of thing happen again, with the 21st century technical challenge of nuclear fusion?

https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough

A good and clear explanation is given on:


Was There a Major Breakthrough in Fusion? Not Really...Here Are The Facts


So...

That is certainly a good leap forward for the science and physics and for that test facility.

... The technical bits need a lot more work!


Keep searchin'!
Martin

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To be sure, there's a great deal more to be done, before we get commercial electricity generation from fusion. The system-wide energy gain of the fusion reactor at Lawrence Livermore is about 1 percent, I'm told, with global break-even at 100 percent. I don't suppose the first successful Wright 'Flyer' was very efficient, either, by the standards of today's commercial aviation. Small steps...

Still, they went from extracting only 70 percent of the energy put into the fusion target 18 months ago, to 150 percent, last week. If they can keep up this sort of progress they'll eventually have something.

I'm told that the lasers at Lawrence Livermore are older ones, and that new ones could be 10 times as energy efficient. That seems a likely route to further progress. Having been the first to do (considerably) better that plasma break-even, perhaps they'll get the chance to make such improvements.

I'm concerned about the fuel problem. They use deuterium and tritium. The latter is very rare and very expensive . If they can work out a way to use cheap and plentiful protium, they stand a much better chance of producing an economically viable source of power.

Why fusion ignition is being hailed as a major breakthrough in fusion, a nuclear physicist explains.

Cheers.

Whatcha wanna bet once they get a working reactor going nobody is gonna want it in their vicinity?

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

An ITER update.

World's largest nuclear fusion reactor promises clean energy, but the challenges are huge.

Provence in southern France is known for its rolling vineyards, fields of lavender, olive groves and idyllic villages.

But recently, the mood has shifted in this charming part of the world.

Eerie midnight convoys block off stretches of highway between Marseille, Avignon and Nice.

Semi-trailers slowly creep along deserted roads, ferrying enormous and mysterious-looking objects through the Provencal countryside.

These parts are headed for one of the biggest science experiments on the planet: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER.

At this complex, hidden behind rows of fences, forests, and fields, scientists are planning to create the reaction happening in the centre of the Sun.

The major goal of ITER, which is a multi-billion dollar collaboration between dozens of nations, is to show nuclear fusion can generate power at an industrial scale....

Cheers.

Wendelstein 7x update;

https://www.ipp.mpg.de/14393/newsletter

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rOZZ
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Pictures

Looking good for the future.

Nuclear Fusion Breakthroughs Suggest Limitless Energy is Closer Than Expected.

.....Hence, nuclear fusion has been described as the "holy grail" of energy production.” Over the last few years, significant breakthroughs in materials science and plasma physics have set nuclear fusion on an exponential growth curve.

Thanks to new developments that sustain a plasma reaction much longer than previously thought possible, six distinct approaches to nuclear fusion — including Magnetized target fusion and Orbitron — are being built by private companies. Tech expert Jeff Brow says the prototype reactors could be tested in early 2024.

Machine learning, one of the software systems for nuclear fusion, has advanced exponentially. Significant private capital has flooded the industry because of all the remarkable technological progress over the past few years. 2022 was a record year for nuclear fusion companies. $4.86 billion was invested in the sector. But of that $4.86 billion, only $117 million was from public funding.

The road to achieving nuclear fusion has been fraught with setbacks, but the recent progress made by the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) — a multinational collaboration of 35 countries, including the U.S., Russia, China, and the European Union — and private companies like CFS — offers renewed hope that affordable nuclear energy may soon become a reality......

Cheers.

However, the development status of this technology, which is still in its infancy, must be assessed realistically. With today's knowledge, no decade can be named when this technology can make a relevant contribution to our energy supply. The time horizon is unpredictable. The same applies (unfortunately) to a hydrogen-based energy economy.

So, we will not see Fusion power on the grid within 15 years, as the thread's title asks. [EDIT:] ... and the thread is already five years old.

Advances in fusion research in the US, France, Germany and elsewhere are nonetheless remarkable. Technical revolutions always began when promising research or inventions were further developed into revolutionary technologies by private capital, private initiative. I assume, things are accelerating now.

There has been continuous progress recently also with the "Wendelstein 7-X" stellarator at the Max Planck Institute in Greifswald: (Julie already posted the 'Wendelstein 7-X' newsletter in May 2023, but the latest one there is from 2020)

Feb 22, 2023:

During the three-year completion work that ended last summer, Wendelstein 7-X was primarily equipped with water cooling for the wall elements and an upgraded heating system. The latter can now couple twice as much power into the plasma as before.

On 15 February 2023, the researchers reached a new milestone: for the first time, they were able to achieve an energy turnover of 1.3 gigajoules in this device. This was 17 times higher than the best value achieved before the conversion (75 megajoules)

The plasma heating consists of three components: the newly installed ion heating, the heating by neutral particle injection and electron microwave heating. For the current record, the electron microwave heating system was particularly important because it delivers large amounts of power over periods of several minutes. The energy turnover of 1.3 gigajoule was achieved with an average heating power of 2.7 megawatts, whereby the discharge lasted 480 seconds.

Within a few years, the plan is to increase the energy turnover at Wendelstein 7-X to 18 gigajoules, with the plasma then being kept stable for half an hour.

[EDIT:] schematics and photos of Wendelstein's stellarator design, magnet coils, construction work...

Wendelsyein 7-x is completely ready for another run.

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rOZZ
Music
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Feb 08, 2024: Nuclear fusion: European joint experiment achieves energy record

https://www.ipp.mpg.de/5405892/jet_rekord_2024?c=5405906

At the Joint European Torus (JET) in the UK, a European research team has succeeded in generating 69 megajoules of energy from 0.2 milligrams of fuel. This is the largest amount of energy ever achieved in a fusion experiment. [...] The same amount of energy would have required about 2 kilograms of lignite – ten million times as much.

Nuclear fusion for the grid is coming much sooner than you think
wrote:

Even well-informed members of the West’s political class are mostly unaware of the quantum leap in superconductors, lasers, and advanced materials suddenly changing the economics of fusion power.

Britain’s First Light Fusion announced last week that it had broken the world record for pressure at the Sandia National Laboratories in the US, pushing the boundary to 1.85 terapascal, five times the pressure at the core of the Earth.

Days earlier [...] Commonwealth Fusion Systems near Boston had broken the world record for a large-scale magnet with a field strength of 20 tesla using the latest high-temperature superconducting technology. This exceeds the threshold necessary for producing net energy, or a “Q factor”, above 1.0.

"Overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40,” said Professor Dennis Whyte, plasma doyen at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

The “old” low-temperature magnets are made of niobium alloys operating near absolute zero at -270C. The new magnets lift the temperature from 4 kelvins to 20 kelvins using rare earth barium copper oxide (ReBCO) with a radical new design. They combine superconductivity with extreme magnetic power. This leverages a “multiple order-of-magnitude increase” in fusion capability.

[...] “The breakthrough is in superconductors. Much stronger magnets mean that we can build a plant that is 40 times smaller,” he said.

but...

The world’s long-running $20bn ITER research project, a consortium of the US, Japan, Europe, China, and Russia, looks ever more like a beached whale in this contest. It has collected valuable science over the decades but has been dogged by geopolitics and delays, and has never produced more energy than it put in, unlike the Lawrence Livermore lab in the US using the rival technology of inertial fusion.

Bob DeWoody wrote on 2023-01-04:

Whatcha wanna bet once they get a working reactor going nobody is gonna want it in their vicinity?

Quotes from same article in my previous post: Nuclear fusion for the grid is coming much sooner than you think
wrote:

Regulators in the UK and the US plan to treat fusion plants like hospitals, since they use tiny amounts of deuterium-tritium. Radioactive release is nothing like a uranium fission reactor. This means they can be built almost anywhere and rolled out fast.

The allure of fusion is by now well understood. It generates four million times more energy than fossil power, without emitting CO2 or methane. It creates almost no long-term waste. Its main by-product is inert helium.

It uses almost no land, and little water, and can be made practically invisible. Unlike today’s fission, it produces industrial high-grade heat to help decarbonise glass, cement, steel, ammonia, hydrogen, etc. It runs continuously if you need it, or is dispatchable if you don’t.

The fuel is effectively limitless for thousands of years and can be obtained anywhere: deuterium from seawater, and tritium by breeding with small amounts of lithium. There is no risk of a runaway chain reaction. It does not use fissile materials and is useless for weapons.

[EDIT:] link removed bc article doesn't name safety regulations for fusion power plants (like hospitals).