This latest fusion advance is discussed at the start of this video. It is nowhere near getting more power out than the overall power going in
Peter wrote:
This latest fusion advance is discussed at the start of this video. It is nowhere near getting more power out than the overall power going i
Thats correct. Also the particular form of fusion, utilising lasers, is not the most promising for fusion power generation anyways. But imho each and every step that brings us closer to achieving the ultimate goal is good. Fusion power as a concept is just too promising to abandon the research to make it possible, no matter how many more decades that may take.
Here is another interesting take on the Fusion ‘Breakthrough’.
One interesting comment is that with the rapidly falling cost of solar and wind and related storage technologies, we might find that by the time fusion is properly developed, nobody actually wants it as it’s too expensive compared to other renewables. That might have been a throwaway comment, but I thought it an interesting question none the less.
Renewables are pretty expensive. They became viable only due to huge subsidies. The jury is still out on long term operating costs of wind power in particular.
FWIW my view has always been that this laser compression method is not particularly scaleable. The installations are huge and that is just to hit one pellet which won’t produce meaningful power (say, like a normal nuclear power station) unless you can hit of the order of 10k-100k pellets per second. And if you can do that, the energy will be too focused to be extractable without hitting the same problem which the tokamak designs have: degradation of the absorbing material. The direct conversion proposals are much better in this respect.
The total power requirements for the lasers is one thing. The main objective from a more scientific point of view is it can only be used for Tritium (hydrogen 3) as fuel. It does not work with regular hydrogen. Tritium is extremely rare naturally, not physically collectable. Tritium is produced in tiny amounts as a bi product in ordinary fission reactors. To produce Tritium requires all by itself much more energy than the fusion of tritium will ever create, and when a fission reactor is needed to produce it, what’s the point? Tritium is also unstable and radioactive and will form Helium all by itself with a half life of 12 years. All they did was to speed the natural process up. It was NOT real fusion in any sense of the word.
As research equipment in fusion it’s a breakthrough most definitely, but in fusion as in creating energy it’s dead in the water from the start due to the fuel (tritium). It will be like using a battery to create hydrogen (from water), then compress and burn the hydrogen in a turbine to create electricity to charge the battery. Exactly like that, only orders of magnitude less “efficient” 
Peter wrote:
The direct conversion proposals are much better in this respect.
I agree – the laser experiments always sound very fiddly.
Aside from the direct conversion attempts there are also designs from General Fusion and First-Light Fusion, where the reaction would take place within the centre of a mass of molten metal – Lead or Lithium. I don’t have the background to have any intuition as to whether the approaches are likely to work in terms of achieving ignition – but they sound like devices that would be practical to build and that would not destroy themselves in short order, all the delicate parts being shielded by molten metal that can easily be decontaminated. I know someone who has put his own money into First Light Fusion and whilst I’m sure it is still seen as a gamble, he’s someone who will have done his homework and has ready access to academics in any field.
I agree. A few years ago there were just a few nerdy lectures online. They announced they were going to try for fusion then… silence. I assumed they had gone out of business but found they were still trading then I heard that they had been sponsored by someone I used to know. Perhaps the flashy website is what they spent all his money on, though I think a bit of it went on this camera:
I’d be the first person to admit I’m not good at spotting scammers.
Energy Credits are not helping to make the energy situation clear.
The Energy Credit is the biggest joke of all. Wasn’t sure it actually existed anymore. It’s the same in Norway. Foreigners buy “green” hydropower credits. There’s only so much credit in total, so the end result was that Norway was all “brown”, even though 99.9% is hydro and wind
A week or so ago it was announced plans for Hydrogen production in Norway. This hydrogen was to go in pipe lines to Germany to be used instead of natural gas. You have to be pretty low on IQ points or very un/mis informed if you think this is a good idea.
