Thanks Red Badger.
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The Strange History
of Fusion and
the Science of
Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife
Posted on 02/07/2024 6:58:26 AM PST by Red Badger
Wait! Fusion power is now! I am waiting for the gov’t to mandate all fusion powered cars by 2035 - I am certain California will amp up the ante to 2030. Expect to replace all the effective measures put in place by green energy projects for the ultimate in green energy. What are they waiting for? Now we can protect all the birds we are chopping out of the air with turbine blades and frying mid-flight with solar farms. Perhaps it will reduce enough carbon emissions that farming will be allowed by then.
“-powering the lasers”
Just one stage of the laser amplifier is less than 50% efficient. I would not be surprised that the input might be 10x the delivered energy.
“powering the confinement scheme”
Zero. Inertial confinement.
Thanks Red Badger.
The Strange History
of Fusion and
the Science of
Wishful Thinking
by Charles Seife
“Thorium which has a benign decay series.”
Concerning stochastic radiation damages, thorium-232 is more radiotoxic than uranium if incorporating the same activities.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00204-023-03484-6
Experiments run by Department of Defense aimed at proving, in a tangential way, the US knows how to make fusion bombs. The use of lasers in a batch process has no scalable means to usable electrical power, EVER.
Philo Farnsworth invented the Farnsworth Fusor in the early 1960’s. It created fusion using Cathode Ray Tubes instead of lasers. Unfortunately, Farnsworth died before he came close to breakeven energy.
You don't seem to understand what "break even" means.
“You don’t seem to understand what “break even” means.”
I understand what break even means. I don’t understand what you mean. Sarcasm?
Anything is better than that Tokamak crappola. I still claim it was a parting gift from the USSR to spoil US research.
It has certainly been nothing more than a money dump.
I wonder what the energy output ratio needs to be in order to engineer a self sustaining system. At 2:1 output to input it seems the scale would have to be impractically massive to cover all the inefficiencies in systems necessary to convert output heat to electricity and keep powering the Laser.
.
Natural fusion in the heart of stars requires massive amounts of gravity.
The will not achieve the required energy output with lasers.
Magnetism, maybe, but not lasers............
My last job before I retired was with NIF
Did they ever ignite?..............
Ha, ha, ha. Great Joke. I wasn't aware that "Science Alert" was a humor magazine. It makes sense, considering some of their global warming stories.
Apologies.
“Forgot the word “more” before the word benign.”
More correct is less benign.
I did some digging and found the LLNL lasers are 1% efficient and require an entire day to cool after producing the 1 excess MJ. So really they put in 200 mega joules to get 3 out.I share your skepticism on viability as there are huge engineering challenges in laser efficiency but this is still a major hurdle overcome especially considering their yield increased from the first experiment.
Warp Drive or bust.
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