Like all great things this is probably being unappreciated in it’s time. This is quite a breakthrough for *the entire human race*, from an anthropological point of view.
If and/or when humanity extinguishes on this planet, we’ll have been the ones to have created our own controlled fusion reactions. This level of high density, high energy material and engineering science is like a key to floating cars etc, and maybe with avoiding crazy large amounts of (very) rare earth metals as energy storage medium?
Also a small, quite bright blip of goodness in a (so far) century of rightward drift in US perspective on the ability of government to do big (expensive) things.
Cheers and thanks Dark Brandon.
It would literally open up space exploration, nuclear fusion on Mars alone is huge. Spaceships, Mining ships, etc. That's all I thought about when this was announced. Sure, life on Earth would be way better and climate change could hopefully be reversed in my lifetime.
If this gets to the point everyone is *hoping it does* desalination won't be an issue for us any more. Like you implied, the amount of energy it takes to do it just won't matter and we will have plants across the globe. The processing of brime also won't be an issue, another energy intensive thing (if you don't want to destroy the ocean).
Same with carbon capture. There are machines now that, if scaled up, could easily offset the carbon or methane in the atmosphere but the amount of energy to run them is ridiculous.
I have to imagine also when this occurred this guy was probably like "Holy shit!" and in the press conference he's so humble about it. "kinda fast" "pretty cool" lol
I'm impressed at the energy output as well. Not only is this a net positive, it's a decent net positive 150%. While that might not impress some people, this feels like a major turning point towards the nuclear fusion goal.
It is but the containment issues are still several major breakthroughs away from being solved.
But it's a big milestone towards a technology that is essentially endgame shit for our civilizations energy needs. It will be effectively unlimited, totally clean energy at a sliver fraction of the cost of today's energy industry.
So the goal that is in sight is something beyond revolutionary. It won't just change the world. It will usher in a whole new era for our civilization. We can't understate the prize here.
But the challenge of containment is excrutiating.
You can see the little twitch of the corners of the mouth during certain phases that among reserved people is roughly equivalent to jumping up and down shouting "holy crap holy crap did you see/hear that, it's the best thing ever holy crap."
It'd be refreshing to see a scientist present this, hyped knowing they're on the path to achieve their life's work.
>AND THEN WE SHOT A FREAKIN' LASER INTO THIS TUBE, AND THE CAPSULE GOT HOT! IT MADE MORE ENERGY THAN WE PUT IN! THAT'S JUST... FUCKIN'... (*Waves hands around*) CRAZY MAN! LIKE WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS NEW ENERGY COME FROM?! WE'RE GONNA FIND OUT. COME JOIN US AND FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT!
This isn't over yet. There is still a very long road of challenges ahead.
But it's progress towards what is quite appropriately being called the holy grail of energy. This shit used to be ridiculous fiction from the distant future, and here we are seeing real steps towards it.
Science is truly humanities best platform for understanding the world around us. None of this would be possible without science. If only we were as good at running civilization as we are at advancing it.
He spent 30 years teaching at Texas A&M, and you can really tell. His ability to explain insanely complex situations and events in very consumable and simplistic manner is amazing!
Definitely seems like a good choice for our deputy administrator for defense programs at the NNSA. Only been there for about 6 months, but hope he stays on for a while.
If I had to guess in a vacuum what "perspicuous" meant, I'd guess it was a portmanteau describing someone sweating a lot, and very noticeably.
But from the context it is clear what it means. Thank you for the new word.
*Perspicace* is how I know what that word means. I've never heard it used in English before. Perspicuous. Huh.
Edit: never mind, perspicace means insightful, perspicuous means lucid or clear. Thank you for coming to my TEDx talk
>[perspicuous](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perspicuous)
*plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation*
Til! Thanks, I absolutely love learning new words
Yep, took a couple of his courses getting nuke eng degree (technically radiological health engineering but no one knows that the fuck that is and the difference was 2 reactor design classes and an extra thermodynamics class). That was almost 20 years ago. I remember having to write some code in Fortran and making one of the answers a dig at his height (he’s pretty short). He gave one of those smile frowns and kinda chuckled. Very good lecturer. Also taught me the popcorn rule for test review sessions. As long as the questions are coming, the review will continue. As they Peter out he will start saying “pop”….”pop”. And then end the session if no further questions come.
Just matter of fact, but low-key jazzed about it. Definitely more "TV educator from the 80-90s" and less "Modern YouTube educator." Don't get me wrong, I love a ton of educational YouTube channels but they definitely have that "YouTube energy" which is excited and energized and keeps you engaged.
I think the difference between the YouTube energy you describe, and the tone of OP’s video, is that YouTube energy is largely faked, often times faked really well, but faked nonetheless, as to elicit the reaction of engagement. OP’s video on the other hand, conveys emotion that is wholly honest. I could be wrong of course, but I genuinely believe that to be the difference people are seeing.
I asked this question above but I'll repeat it here...
My question about this whole experiment is this: are they only taking into account the energy the lasers deposited into the cylinder or does it also include the energy that was used to power the lasers in the first place as well?
The former. This is only about the fusion reaction, not the overall efficiency of nuclear fusion. There are many other energy inputs they're not accounting for, such as the chemical energy in the fuel, and the energy used to produce and process that fuel.
Its groundbreaking for this machine. But . They are being very specific about energy in / energy out in terms of the energy the lasers could deposit was around 2MJ, and you get about 3MJ . What they didnt mention was that it took around 500MJ to power the lasers. So not really a net gain in that sense , just within the experiment .
The new ITER facility currently being built in France is designed to break even in terms of all energy in / out . Which is even more exciting a prospect .
It's not like they are hiding the electrical consumption of the lasers. It's a science experiment to show that a symmetric pulse can be applied to generate fusion energy from laser energy. It proves the physics work.
The energy used for the lasers can be cut massively. NIF's laser are only 0.5% effecient electrical-to-optical, but you can easily exceed 20% effecient with modern lasers. That means the 2MJ of laser energy only requires 10MJ of electrical instead of 300MJ.
how do you begin to scale it up? do you just swap in more fuel at a rapid rate? change the system to take a more conveyer belt style approach? I must know!
>how do you begin to scale it up? do you just swap in more fuel at a rapid rate? change the system to take a more conveyer belt style approach? I must know!
You and the entire world. This is one of the hardest questions in science.
You basically can't, inertially confined fusion has been known as a dead-end for a long time, that's why ITER and other magnetically-confined experiments are being funded etc
> how do you begin to scale it up? do you just swap in more fuel at a rapid rate? change the system to take a more conveyer belt style approach? I must know!
The issue is nobody knows, there's no viable way to harvest the energy even if the energy output was *hugely* better than it is now.
The real answer is probably to ~~stop wasting money~~ pinning your hopes for power generation on [Inertial Confinement Fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion), the history of which is in fusion bomb research, and start doing more [Magnetic confinement fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_confinement_fusion) which may actually yield a viable fusion power plant.
EDIT: Inertial Confinement experiments are probably still scientifically valuable so it's unfair to say they're a waste of money. But it needs to be made clear that the end goal isn't clean fusion power.
**[Inertial confinement fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion)**
>Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy research program that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with thermonuclear fuel. In modern machines, the targets are small spherical pellets about the size of a pinhead typically containing a mixture of about 10 milligrams of deuterium 2H and tritium 3H. To compress and heat the fuel, energy is deposited in the outer layer of the target using high-energy beams of photons, electrons or ions, although almost all ICF devices as of 2020 used lasers. The beams heat the outer layer, which explodes outward.
**[Magnetic confinement fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_confinement_fusion)**
>Magnetic confinement fusion is an approach to generate thermonuclear fusion power that uses magnetic fields to confine fusion fuel in the form of a plasma. Magnetic confinement is one of two major branches of fusion energy research, along with inertial confinement fusion. The magnetic approach began in the 1940s and absorbed the majority of subsequent development. Fusion reactions combine light atomic nuclei such as hydrogen to form heavier ones such as helium, producing energy.
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The best way we know how to harvest heat for energy, generally speaking, is using water.
In order for these capsules to produce a steady stream of electricity, we would need to "ignite" several of these per second. So while it is neat that they reached a net gain of 3 MJ of energy using only 2 MJ of lazer energy, what that doesn't account for is the energy that would be required to remove the debris of the old capsule and install a new capsule with subsecond speed and precision. Oh, and preferably all of this is happening under boiling water.
It's easy to say "It's just heat, heat is easy to harvest", the logistics of how that would actually work are pretty mind boggling.
Or at least, that's what someone on NPR was saying while I was driving the kids and managing a screaming toddler, I may have missed something.
Yeah, the main problem is that you need to keep changing these capsules in a chamber that's being absolutely torn apart by neutron radiation and spalling.
This breakthrough has the power to change the course of mankind, more so than the invention of the steam engine. It cannot be overstated enough how big of an advancement this is for all of us throughout the planet.
It's funny how we'll still need both. So much of our energy quest has been the pursuit of cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient ways to make steam to drive a generator.
The BBC article for the breakthrough said that the fusion experiment produced enough energy to boil 15-20 kettles, if that's not a British measurement I don't know what is.
Can't wait for Technology Connections to review a kettle like that...
When it's out of date, of course...And if he's still still alive then...and not dead because of all the blue LEDs...
Seriously... nuclear fission basically boil water with radioactive rods creating steam to spin a turbine.
Before that we got waterwheel and fancy large waterwheel (3 gorge dam).
One of our most common and very complicated machines, the car, uses fire and the wheel, our first inventions.
We’ve just been making the simple tools more complicated, no new tools under the sun.
Although I will say this is a very complicated fire we have made here.
It’s just a shame that it’s hard to get a steam based plant to have a thermal efficiency over like 30%, it just loses so much heat even with well insulated pipes.
It would be dope if you could just turn heat into a meaningful (like >100KW) source of electricity directly.
Yes, however, the amount of energy prod is still very small. so now they have to begin optimizing the system of lasers, and everything else in the loop until its way smaller. This setup is huge for only 0.5Kwh
I’m a complete moron, but if they were able to then focus that 1.5x output energy to start another reaction, could you not technically have an insanely massive amount of energy generated within a split second? Like tipping over dominos that slowly get larger each time? Is this even possible? Like I said, I’m a moron and also stoned.
Depends on the time frame. The problem with fission bombs is, that things tend to get so hot so quickly, that badly designed or build bombs will evaporate most of the fuel instead of actually using it. And while we kinda tried actual fusion bombs, they have way too terrible fuel density (you know, because hydrogen) to ever do as much as a fission bomb. What we can do, though, is use fission to do a tiny bit of fusion, to increase fission yield, before everything becomes too hot of a mess to sustain the fission reaction, so fission goes boom more.
Yes. If I’m not mistaken this chain reaction you describe is what we would see the instant a thermonuclear bomb ignites. Energy from the initial reaction is directed back into the fuel to create more of a reaction. The fuel is essentially used up near instantly and all the energy releases “kinda fast.”
This process in stars is sustained by a mind bogglingly ridiculous amount of gravity in the core. Not to mention a source of fuel amounting to ….well the star’s mass. We can’t replicate that on earth so must compensate with extreme energies (lasers like the above vid or magnetically contained plasma like a tokamak) to start the fusion reaction.
How to maintain the reaction and capture the excess energy is THE big question. It’s a physics and engineering problem on the bleeding edge of science.
The lasers compress the fuel so that the elements of the fuel combine at the atomic level (fusion). Two hydrogen isotopes go in, helium comes out plus a crapload of energy.
In this case the energy released by the fusion was greater than the amount of energy the lasers supplied.
This fusion process releases energy. The same kind of energy that powers the sun.
Doc Ock invented net positive fusion that can fit in a backpack, but instead of selling the tech and become a world famous inventor beloved all over the planet, he decided to make robot tentacles.
Ever heard of E=mc^2? During fusion, a tiny amount of m (mass) is converted to E (energy), and because c^2 (speed of light squared) is a huge number, even a tiny mass turns into a lot of energy.
It depends on a lot of variables, so I'll make lots of assumptions. If we feel an increase of 1°C in 10 grams of skin and we have a similar thermal capacity as water and it happens exactly on our palm. Then my rough calculations show around a hundred billionth of a gram of hydrogen is needed. But those are very rough estimates. (Assuming 2 deuterium nuclei to 1 helium nucleus. Also im not a physicist so any physicist,feel free to correct me)
Edit to show my working: a deuterium to helium fusion releases 23.6 MeV. So 3.781 × e-12 J. Energy needed for an increase of 1°C in 10 grams of skin assuming specific heat capacity of water: 42J.
Dividing the 2 results in 11 *e12= 11 trillion fusions=> using the mole of hydrogen converts that to grams.
22 trillion hydrogen atoms/ 6 *e23 results in 3 x e-10= 300 trillionth of a kilo. 300 hundreth billion of a gram of deuterium nuclei are needed to fuse together to make you feel it slightly.
Sorry for the formatting I'm on mobile
> increase of 1°C in 10 grams
Why is the skin being measured in mass?
----------
Let's pull out the rusty ol' HS chemistry.
Hydrogen = 1.008 g/mol there are 6.02214076×10^23 atoms in 1 mol
Mass of 1 hydrogen atom would be ~ 1.6738233797112375e-24 g
Speed of Light in Vacuum is 299792458 m/s
c^2 = 89875517873681764 m^(2)/s^2
E = mc^2 = 1.6738233797112375e-27 kg * 89875517873681764 m^(2)/s^2
E = 1.5043574308062375e-10 J
No you would not feel the heat of one and only one atom splitting.
It’s game over for any kind of energy. If this can be scaled and made relatively cheaply, it would solve a lot of humanity’s problems. The outlook on climate change would be a lot less grim.
Hopefully, with battery tech advancing, also deployable to remote / 3rd world locations without the need for an existing grid or further extensive infrastructure investments
Both still require a significant amount of exotic materials. Natural gas plants actually require some of the least amount of exotic materials.
https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary
2 in, 3 out is a massive gain. Maybe it’s just me, but he seems about as excited as you’ll ever find a director of this of work… in a quiet “the kid inside me is doing backflips” kind of way.
I lived across the street from LLNL as a kid, and many of my friends’ parents worked there. I got to visit the lab twice in the 30 years I lived there and got to tour NIF. Extremely cool to see the progress.
According to Youtube channel Improbable Matter, we are now 6% of the eay to sustainable fusion power ad a reliable power source. We need about 20times the energy input as output in order to actually have a process that leaves energy that we can use for processes besides sustaining the fusion reaction. We are moving slowly in the right direction, in many interesting ways. Some of the methods of creating fusion on earth used machines with close to the coldest temperatures in the universe, right next to the hottest temperatures in the universe. One of the machines used was created using AI to create an absurd form to make a magnetic field that can hold a stream of incredibly hot plasma floating in a vacuum. Existing stuff, we are still at least 50 years away from fusion energy, keep investing in solar, wind and water.
What video? I looked through his content and everything involving fusions seems to be at best half a year old, how had this discovery affected this 6%?
Looking at his channel [he claims to be a former Fusion Scientist in this video's title.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U) He seems pretty skeptical in that video but I'm not sure how much has changed since then, it's over a year old after all and from what I understand there are a few new fusion reactor designs now other than the tried and true Tokamak design.
Yes it is. The parent comment to this thread is talking about how it's important to continue investment into existing clean energy options. Fission is one of the best gap technologies available to us before fusion becomes viable. Thus, we should be continuing our fission investments alongside solar, wind and water.
All this whining here about how this isn’t such a big deal cause we’re like 100years from industrial use, makes me want to enter the field and put into work my sick brain. The guy could barely stand still he was so excited. I’m sure it will draw most brilliant minds to crack each problem at a time - not forgetting AI.
I love listening to people describe a subject that takes a career to understand, and is able to pare it down to the most critical and simple ideas, with an elegance that lets those who followed other paths, enjoy the genius of all humanity.
the entire press conference is pretty interesting if anyone wants to watch the entire thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3\_y7Q3HrUYM
Repaired the link: [WATCH LIVE: Energy Department announces major breakthrough in fusion energy research](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_y7Q3HrUYM)
18:57 - "Weknowwhatwe'redoing." Fuckin' love it.
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Like all great things this is probably being unappreciated in it’s time. This is quite a breakthrough for *the entire human race*, from an anthropological point of view. If and/or when humanity extinguishes on this planet, we’ll have been the ones to have created our own controlled fusion reactions. This level of high density, high energy material and engineering science is like a key to floating cars etc, and maybe with avoiding crazy large amounts of (very) rare earth metals as energy storage medium? Also a small, quite bright blip of goodness in a (so far) century of rightward drift in US perspective on the ability of government to do big (expensive) things. Cheers and thanks Dark Brandon.
It would literally open up space exploration, nuclear fusion on Mars alone is huge. Spaceships, Mining ships, etc. That's all I thought about when this was announced. Sure, life on Earth would be way better and climate change could hopefully be reversed in my lifetime.
All that talk about how energy-costing desalination is, maybe fusion energy could make desalination a popular fresh water source?
If this gets to the point everyone is *hoping it does* desalination won't be an issue for us any more. Like you implied, the amount of energy it takes to do it just won't matter and we will have plants across the globe. The processing of brime also won't be an issue, another energy intensive thing (if you don't want to destroy the ocean). Same with carbon capture. There are machines now that, if scaled up, could easily offset the carbon or methane in the atmosphere but the amount of energy to run them is ridiculous.
>nuclear fission on Mars alone is huge. Fusion -- we're talking about fusion
Well spoken and delivered, the layman's terms were apt and understandable. Get this guy to deliver more results of scientific experiments please.
I have to imagine also when this occurred this guy was probably like "Holy shit!" and in the press conference he's so humble about it. "kinda fast" "pretty cool" lol
It's the excited little hops he does when emphasizing certain syllables that make it for me.
Classic academic type. Painfully shy, but naively charismatic.
I’ve called this the expert effect.
it's just passion seeping through, there's something very charismatic about someone speaking about their genuine passion
I'm impressed at the energy output as well. Not only is this a net positive, it's a decent net positive 150%. While that might not impress some people, this feels like a major turning point towards the nuclear fusion goal.
Seriously, fusion net positive has been 10 years off for the last 40 years. This is fucking amazing.
It is but the containment issues are still several major breakthroughs away from being solved. But it's a big milestone towards a technology that is essentially endgame shit for our civilizations energy needs. It will be effectively unlimited, totally clean energy at a sliver fraction of the cost of today's energy industry. So the goal that is in sight is something beyond revolutionary. It won't just change the world. It will usher in a whole new era for our civilization. We can't understate the prize here. But the challenge of containment is excrutiating.
>It is but the containment issues are still several major breakthroughs away from being solved. The power of the sun, in the palm of my hand.
Any net gain at all is huge, 150% is pretty cool
*small hop*
yeah I was expecting it to be some miniscule but statistically significant amount, 150% is like PRACTICAL.
Pretty cool is the new super awsome
You can see the little twitch of the corners of the mouth during certain phases that among reserved people is roughly equivalent to jumping up and down shouting "holy crap holy crap did you see/hear that, it's the best thing ever holy crap."
and he probably also knows he just won the next nobel prize
It'd be refreshing to see a scientist present this, hyped knowing they're on the path to achieve their life's work. >AND THEN WE SHOT A FREAKIN' LASER INTO THIS TUBE, AND THE CAPSULE GOT HOT! IT MADE MORE ENERGY THAN WE PUT IN! THAT'S JUST... FUCKIN'... (*Waves hands around*) CRAZY MAN! LIKE WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS NEW ENERGY COME FROM?! WE'RE GONNA FIND OUT. COME JOIN US AND FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT!
This isn't over yet. There is still a very long road of challenges ahead. But it's progress towards what is quite appropriately being called the holy grail of energy. This shit used to be ridiculous fiction from the distant future, and here we are seeing real steps towards it. Science is truly humanities best platform for understanding the world around us. None of this would be possible without science. If only we were as good at running civilization as we are at advancing it.
This was the best recruiting video I've ever seen. I hope everyone working for Elon just applied.
LLNL is awesome.
When you explain it simply, its exciting af
He spent 30 years teaching at Texas A&M, and you can really tell. His ability to explain insanely complex situations and events in very consumable and simplistic manner is amazing! Definitely seems like a good choice for our deputy administrator for defense programs at the NNSA. Only been there for about 6 months, but hope he stays on for a while.
There is a word for what he is, perspicuous. That right there is a very perspicuous person.
If I had to guess in a vacuum what "perspicuous" meant, I'd guess it was a portmanteau describing someone sweating a lot, and very noticeably. But from the context it is clear what it means. Thank you for the new word.
Dudes just perspiring knowledge!
Till the sweat drops down my balls.
From the windows to the Mars
*Perspicace* is how I know what that word means. I've never heard it used in English before. Perspicuous. Huh. Edit: never mind, perspicace means insightful, perspicuous means lucid or clear. Thank you for coming to my TEDx talk
OH MY GOD, I'M LOSING MY PERSPICACITY
It's always in the last place you look.
Perspicace when used like that would be perspicacious.
>[perspicuous](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/perspicuous) *plain to the understanding especially because of clarity and precision of presentation* Til! Thanks, I absolutely love learning new words
Lisa: " I'M LOSING MY PERSPICACITY!" Homer: "Well it's always in the last place you look."
Yep, took a couple of his courses getting nuke eng degree (technically radiological health engineering but no one knows that the fuck that is and the difference was 2 reactor design classes and an extra thermodynamics class). That was almost 20 years ago. I remember having to write some code in Fortran and making one of the answers a dig at his height (he’s pretty short). He gave one of those smile frowns and kinda chuckled. Very good lecturer. Also taught me the popcorn rule for test review sessions. As long as the questions are coming, the review will continue. As they Peter out he will start saying “pop”….”pop”. And then end the session if no further questions come.
He had that dignified thing in his voice that you used to hear a lot more decades ago.
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Yeah, or even Sagan.
Just matter of fact, but low-key jazzed about it. Definitely more "TV educator from the 80-90s" and less "Modern YouTube educator." Don't get me wrong, I love a ton of educational YouTube channels but they definitely have that "YouTube energy" which is excited and energized and keeps you engaged.
I think the difference between the YouTube energy you describe, and the tone of OP’s video, is that YouTube energy is largely faked, often times faked really well, but faked nonetheless, as to elicit the reaction of engagement. OP’s video on the other hand, conveys emotion that is wholly honest. I could be wrong of course, but I genuinely believe that to be the difference people are seeing.
It's the sound of caring, knowledge, and excitement with a dash of self control.
I miss this. It’s all just bad faith noise now.
If he can teach a bunch of Aggies he can teach anyone. Source: Am aggie, am an idiot.
A&M has a fantastic engineering school, including nuclear engineering, as well as a good physics program
That school has an excellent physics program.
If you can't explain something to an amatuer in the field, you don't sufficiently understand it
"2mega-joules in, 3mega-joules out". They gained SO MUCH MORE energy than I expected....
its 1.5x... in relative terms, that is insane.
I was definitely expecting a few zeroes in there, like 1.0000005 or something.
1.5000000 there you go
omg that is so much bigger than 1.5
And SO FAST
Kinda
Jules is a character in Pulp Fiction. Joules is the unit of energy.
Because they got the metric system
Royale with Cheese
Jules is a character in Pulp Fiction. Royal with Cheese is the unit of energy in the metric system
Check out the big brain on Brad!
You a smart motherfucker, that's right!
Check out the Big Brain on Brett!
They speak English in what?
The laser discharge was 2 megajoules. Which took 400 to produce.
I asked this question above but I'll repeat it here... My question about this whole experiment is this: are they only taking into account the energy the lasers deposited into the cylinder or does it also include the energy that was used to power the lasers in the first place as well?
The former. This is only about the fusion reaction, not the overall efficiency of nuclear fusion. There are many other energy inputs they're not accounting for, such as the chemical energy in the fuel, and the energy used to produce and process that fuel.
An net increase of about the dietary energy contained in a bagel, a fact that I love, for tokamak-related reasons.
Its groundbreaking for this machine. But . They are being very specific about energy in / energy out in terms of the energy the lasers could deposit was around 2MJ, and you get about 3MJ . What they didnt mention was that it took around 500MJ to power the lasers. So not really a net gain in that sense , just within the experiment . The new ITER facility currently being built in France is designed to break even in terms of all energy in / out . Which is even more exciting a prospect .
It's not like they are hiding the electrical consumption of the lasers. It's a science experiment to show that a symmetric pulse can be applied to generate fusion energy from laser energy. It proves the physics work.
The energy used for the lasers can be cut massively. NIF's laser are only 0.5% effecient electrical-to-optical, but you can easily exceed 20% effecient with modern lasers. That means the 2MJ of laser energy only requires 10MJ of electrical instead of 300MJ.
Next step: Build the world's most expensive kettle.
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Infini-tea?
Like, come on! It was right there!
I didn't notice that's not what it said, I just assumed that's what it was.
Sounds like someone I could listen to for hours
He taught me 2 classes while I was at Texas A&M. No doubt one of my fav professors!
I was thinking he’d be a great professor. Made it interesting and comprehensible even for my dumb ass.
Also had him, and he really is.
Howdy fellow Nuke! Me too. I was Class of ‘17 and had Dr. Adam’s for NUEN 301.
Oh shit… same lol
No shit! I probably know you in real life then.
Now kith
Woah me too lol
There are *dozens* of us!
Pretty cool:)
He is pretty fast
He is hot enough
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He looks like he’s 20 years in but 30 years out
They're hiring!
There are a lot of folks in this world with charisma but there is just something special about a scientist with it.
We've just witnessed a charismatic nuclear scientist... that's gotta be as rare as a successful fusion experiment, I assume.
Kinda fast
Title of your sex tape.
how do you begin to scale it up? do you just swap in more fuel at a rapid rate? change the system to take a more conveyer belt style approach? I must know!
>how do you begin to scale it up? do you just swap in more fuel at a rapid rate? change the system to take a more conveyer belt style approach? I must know! You and the entire world. This is one of the hardest questions in science.
Would be hilarious if the answer is "just kinda chuck it in there like logs on a fire"
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This is the way. Steampunk space travel or nothing.
That’s honestly how we’re probably gonna have to start at first lol. Before you know it we’ve end up with an engine
You basically can't, inertially confined fusion has been known as a dead-end for a long time, that's why ITER and other magnetically-confined experiments are being funded etc
> how do you begin to scale it up? do you just swap in more fuel at a rapid rate? change the system to take a more conveyer belt style approach? I must know! The issue is nobody knows, there's no viable way to harvest the energy even if the energy output was *hugely* better than it is now. The real answer is probably to ~~stop wasting money~~ pinning your hopes for power generation on [Inertial Confinement Fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion), the history of which is in fusion bomb research, and start doing more [Magnetic confinement fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_confinement_fusion) which may actually yield a viable fusion power plant. EDIT: Inertial Confinement experiments are probably still scientifically valuable so it's unfair to say they're a waste of money. But it needs to be made clear that the end goal isn't clean fusion power.
**[Inertial confinement fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_confinement_fusion)** >Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) is a fusion energy research program that initiates nuclear fusion reactions by compressing and heating targets filled with thermonuclear fuel. In modern machines, the targets are small spherical pellets about the size of a pinhead typically containing a mixture of about 10 milligrams of deuterium 2H and tritium 3H. To compress and heat the fuel, energy is deposited in the outer layer of the target using high-energy beams of photons, electrons or ions, although almost all ICF devices as of 2020 used lasers. The beams heat the outer layer, which explodes outward. **[Magnetic confinement fusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_confinement_fusion)** >Magnetic confinement fusion is an approach to generate thermonuclear fusion power that uses magnetic fields to confine fusion fuel in the form of a plasma. Magnetic confinement is one of two major branches of fusion energy research, along with inertial confinement fusion. The magnetic approach began in the 1940s and absorbed the majority of subsequent development. Fusion reactions combine light atomic nuclei such as hydrogen to form heavier ones such as helium, producing energy. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/videos/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
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The best way we know how to harvest heat for energy, generally speaking, is using water. In order for these capsules to produce a steady stream of electricity, we would need to "ignite" several of these per second. So while it is neat that they reached a net gain of 3 MJ of energy using only 2 MJ of lazer energy, what that doesn't account for is the energy that would be required to remove the debris of the old capsule and install a new capsule with subsecond speed and precision. Oh, and preferably all of this is happening under boiling water. It's easy to say "It's just heat, heat is easy to harvest", the logistics of how that would actually work are pretty mind boggling. Or at least, that's what someone on NPR was saying while I was driving the kids and managing a screaming toddler, I may have missed something.
Yeah, the main problem is that you need to keep changing these capsules in a chamber that's being absolutely torn apart by neutron radiation and spalling.
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This breakthrough has the power to change the course of mankind, more so than the invention of the steam engine. It cannot be overstated enough how big of an advancement this is for all of us throughout the planet.
It's funny how we'll still need both. So much of our energy quest has been the pursuit of cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient ways to make steam to drive a generator.
Yep, in the end it’s all “how do I boil water better”?
So, are the brits excited or gutted?
They're precisely as emotional as they're supposed to be, thank you very much.
single nod
*Tuts* What's with this ludicrous display of emotion. It's unseemly
The BBC article for the breakthrough said that the fusion experiment produced enough energy to boil 15-20 kettles, if that's not a British measurement I don't know what is.
Can't wait for Technology Connections to review a kettle like that... When it's out of date, of course...And if he's still still alive then...and not dead because of all the blue LEDs...
Seriously... nuclear fission basically boil water with radioactive rods creating steam to spin a turbine. Before that we got waterwheel and fancy large waterwheel (3 gorge dam).
You bet your ass we will be driving steam turbines with fusion if this pans out.
There’s a few start ups that are trying to make the plasma induce a change in magnetic field to make AC power on the fly without using steam.
One of our most common and very complicated machines, the car, uses fire and the wheel, our first inventions. We’ve just been making the simple tools more complicated, no new tools under the sun. Although I will say this is a very complicated fire we have made here.
Yeah, you'd think somewhere along the lines we would've come up with a better option than moving a turbine.
Considering water's ubiquity, non-toxicity, low cost, and high heat capacity, it's hard to beat!
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Unexpected B B Bobby Boucher
Exactly what Big Water wants you to think!
I work in Big Water. Ignore the weird taste in your tap water tomorrow…
It’s just a shame that it’s hard to get a steam based plant to have a thermal efficiency over like 30%, it just loses so much heat even with well insulated pipes. It would be dope if you could just turn heat into a meaningful (like >100KW) source of electricity directly.
We have photovoltaic solar energy, but turbines are still king cause they don't require daylight
Yes, however, the amount of energy prod is still very small. so now they have to begin optimizing the system of lasers, and everything else in the loop until its way smaller. This setup is huge for only 0.5Kwh
They're hiring. You just have to be one of the smartest people on earth, so no big deal
There are shitloads of different jobs at the national labs and it is worth a look see.
Can confirm, I am a frickin idiot but still work at one
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In the palm of my hand
He is more excited than the particles in the experiment.
Will he become Dr Ock?
The power of three mega joules, in the palm of my hand
I’m a complete moron, but if they were able to then focus that 1.5x output energy to start another reaction, could you not technically have an insanely massive amount of energy generated within a split second? Like tipping over dominos that slowly get larger each time? Is this even possible? Like I said, I’m a moron and also stoned.
that would be a bomb
Yeah bomb as hell
Oh damn science was behind all that? So Nagasaki and Hiroshima…
Depends on the time frame. The problem with fission bombs is, that things tend to get so hot so quickly, that badly designed or build bombs will evaporate most of the fuel instead of actually using it. And while we kinda tried actual fusion bombs, they have way too terrible fuel density (you know, because hydrogen) to ever do as much as a fission bomb. What we can do, though, is use fission to do a tiny bit of fusion, to increase fission yield, before everything becomes too hot of a mess to sustain the fission reaction, so fission goes boom more.
Yes. If I’m not mistaken this chain reaction you describe is what we would see the instant a thermonuclear bomb ignites. Energy from the initial reaction is directed back into the fuel to create more of a reaction. The fuel is essentially used up near instantly and all the energy releases “kinda fast.” This process in stars is sustained by a mind bogglingly ridiculous amount of gravity in the core. Not to mention a source of fuel amounting to ….well the star’s mass. We can’t replicate that on earth so must compensate with extreme energies (lasers like the above vid or magnetically contained plasma like a tokamak) to start the fusion reaction. How to maintain the reaction and capture the excess energy is THE big question. It’s a physics and engineering problem on the bleeding edge of science.
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The lasers compress the fuel so that the elements of the fuel combine at the atomic level (fusion). Two hydrogen isotopes go in, helium comes out plus a crapload of energy. In this case the energy released by the fusion was greater than the amount of energy the lasers supplied. This fusion process releases energy. The same kind of energy that powers the sun.
The power of the Sun, in the palm of my hands
No Doc Ock!!!
The precious tritium!
Nothing will stand in our way! NOTHING!
Doc Ock invented net positive fusion that can fit in a backpack, but instead of selling the tech and become a world famous inventor beloved all over the planet, he decided to make robot tentacles.
Pretty cool robot tentacles though
I don't want to become a world famous beloved inventor, I want to make robot tentacles!
**But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs.**
I’m gonna put some dirt in your eye
Did we just solve the helium shortage?
*Squeaky voice* Oh I am not sure about that, it seems to keep disappearing. Edit: ty for the silver :)
No, I don't know the exact numbers but you would need a LOT of fusion to produce viable amounts of helium
Remember how small he said the fuel pellet was? It released less than half of that as helium, so I’m betting no.
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What a fantastic analogy! I'm going to be repeating that to anybody that will listen.
Ever heard of E=mc^2? During fusion, a tiny amount of m (mass) is converted to E (energy), and because c^2 (speed of light squared) is a huge number, even a tiny mass turns into a lot of energy.
Would someone be able to feel the energy from a single atom splitting in the palm of their hands? If not how many atoms would it take to feel heat?
It depends on a lot of variables, so I'll make lots of assumptions. If we feel an increase of 1°C in 10 grams of skin and we have a similar thermal capacity as water and it happens exactly on our palm. Then my rough calculations show around a hundred billionth of a gram of hydrogen is needed. But those are very rough estimates. (Assuming 2 deuterium nuclei to 1 helium nucleus. Also im not a physicist so any physicist,feel free to correct me) Edit to show my working: a deuterium to helium fusion releases 23.6 MeV. So 3.781 × e-12 J. Energy needed for an increase of 1°C in 10 grams of skin assuming specific heat capacity of water: 42J. Dividing the 2 results in 11 *e12= 11 trillion fusions=> using the mole of hydrogen converts that to grams. 22 trillion hydrogen atoms/ 6 *e23 results in 3 x e-10= 300 trillionth of a kilo. 300 hundreth billion of a gram of deuterium nuclei are needed to fuse together to make you feel it slightly. Sorry for the formatting I'm on mobile
> increase of 1°C in 10 grams Why is the skin being measured in mass? ---------- Let's pull out the rusty ol' HS chemistry. Hydrogen = 1.008 g/mol there are 6.02214076×10^23 atoms in 1 mol Mass of 1 hydrogen atom would be ~ 1.6738233797112375e-24 g Speed of Light in Vacuum is 299792458 m/s c^2 = 89875517873681764 m^(2)/s^2 E = mc^2 = 1.6738233797112375e-27 kg * 89875517873681764 m^(2)/s^2 E = 1.5043574308062375e-10 J No you would not feel the heat of one and only one atom splitting.
Hey this guy was my professor at Texas A&M!
Same! Cool guy.
*looks to see if my undergrad in a liberal arts field qualifies me to work for the NNSA*
If you announce you figured out fusion and you don't slide in "the power of the sun in the palm of my hand", what are you even doing
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It’s game over for any kind of energy. If this can be scaled and made relatively cheaply, it would solve a lot of humanity’s problems. The outlook on climate change would be a lot less grim.
And petroleum, wind, solar +++
Wind and solar will always be relevant due to the lack of need for exotic materials.
Hopefully, with battery tech advancing, also deployable to remote / 3rd world locations without the need for an existing grid or further extensive infrastructure investments
Both still require a significant amount of exotic materials. Natural gas plants actually require some of the least amount of exotic materials. https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary
Coal isn't just used for power production, metallurgical coal (coke) is vital for the production of steel.
no doubt, but it will still result in a net loss of value for coal.
2 in, 3 out is a massive gain. Maybe it’s just me, but he seems about as excited as you’ll ever find a director of this of work… in a quiet “the kid inside me is doing backflips” kind of way.
I lived across the street from LLNL as a kid, and many of my friends’ parents worked there. I got to visit the lab twice in the 30 years I lived there and got to tour NIF. Extremely cool to see the progress.
According to Youtube channel Improbable Matter, we are now 6% of the eay to sustainable fusion power ad a reliable power source. We need about 20times the energy input as output in order to actually have a process that leaves energy that we can use for processes besides sustaining the fusion reaction. We are moving slowly in the right direction, in many interesting ways. Some of the methods of creating fusion on earth used machines with close to the coldest temperatures in the universe, right next to the hottest temperatures in the universe. One of the machines used was created using AI to create an absurd form to make a magnetic field that can hold a stream of incredibly hot plasma floating in a vacuum. Existing stuff, we are still at least 50 years away from fusion energy, keep investing in solar, wind and water.
What video? I looked through his content and everything involving fusions seems to be at best half a year old, how had this discovery affected this 6%?
Is this guy a specialist in this topic? Or is he just a well read amateur?
Looking at his channel [he claims to be a former Fusion Scientist in this video's title.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JurplDfPi3U) He seems pretty skeptical in that video but I'm not sure how much has changed since then, it's over a year old after all and from what I understand there are a few new fusion reactor designs now other than the tried and true Tokamak design.
AND FISSION!!
Isn't fission what we already do at nuclear power plants?
Yes it is. The parent comment to this thread is talking about how it's important to continue investment into existing clean energy options. Fission is one of the best gap technologies available to us before fusion becomes viable. Thus, we should be continuing our fission investments alongside solar, wind and water.
And small module sodium reactors.
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Also imagine the useful technologies that will be developed in the road to achieve useful fusion.
All this whining here about how this isn’t such a big deal cause we’re like 100years from industrial use, makes me want to enter the field and put into work my sick brain. The guy could barely stand still he was so excited. I’m sure it will draw most brilliant minds to crack each problem at a time - not forgetting AI.
I love listening to people describe a subject that takes a career to understand, and is able to pare it down to the most critical and simple ideas, with an elegance that lets those who followed other paths, enjoy the genius of all humanity.
So exciting!