Major Nuclear Fusion Milestone: Ignition Achieved

[Astronuc]

As I recall from about 4 decades ago, inertial confinement systems imagined a pellet per second (or so) dropping into a chamber and then blasted. At the time, I wondered how a burst would affect subsequent pellets arriving at the target location.

Another part I forgot to mention is the consistency with subsequent shots, or the lack thereof. As far as I know, it is difficult to replicate the shots, which if one was using for energy generation, it would require reliable repetition within some uncertainty/variability, kind of like 60 Hz +/- δ Hz. However, that is moot as long as the energy produced is much less than the energy input, which seems to be the showstopper currently.

 

[Rusty123]

TL;DR Summary: Recent article claims ignition has been achieved at NIF

https://phys.org/news/2021-08-major-nuclear-fusion-milestone-ignition.html

Anybody know any more? Like what they did differently from earlier trials.

They lied a little tiny bit less. 1.8MJ in, 3.5MJ out. HOWEVER 400MJ used to get the 1.8MJ in. And that is the whole of their shabby little secret.

 

[gmax137]

@rusty you might see this thread:
Thread 'Big announcement about fusion energy coming soon! (Dec-2022)' https://www.physicsforums.com/threa...t-fusion-energy-coming-soon-dec-2022.1048101/

 

[phyzguy]

They lied a little tiny bit less. 1.8MJ in, 3.5MJ out. HOWEVER 400MJ used to get the 1.8MJ in. And that is the whole of their shabby little secret.

I don't know why you would call it a"shabby little secret". It was all very clearly publicized. Those numbers were never hidden. You just rely too much on popularizations of the results rather than reading the true stories.

 

[artis]

I don't know why you would call it a"shabby little secret". It was all very clearly publicized. Those numbers were never hidden. You just rely too much on popularizations of the results rather than reading the true stories.

Well truth be told in their recent press video they talked about many things but the total laser input power wasn't at the forefront. IIRC it wasn't mentioned at all.

If you only (the NIF team) present this as a purely scientific experimental success at plasma research then sure no need to even talk about total input electrical energy , but if you also promote this as a possible future electricity generation source then I believe those numbers should be at the forefront together with the capsule input energy and it's released energy.

Because if you put those numbers together then every lay person can easily see how NIF as a potential fusion energy producer is "30 years away"