Posted on 10/08/2013 6:23:05 AM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers at a US lab have passed a crucial milestone on the way to their ultimate goal of achieving self-sustaining nuclear fusion.
Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.
But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.
Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion.
NIF, based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world's most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.
The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.
This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known "inefficiencies" in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel.
But the latest achievement has been described as the single most meaningful step for fusion in recent years, and demonstrates NIF is well on its way towards the coveted target of ignition and self-sustaining fusion.
For half a century, researchers have strived for controlled nuclear fusion and been disappointed. It was hoped that NIF would provide the breakthrough fusion research needed.
In 2009, NIF officials announced an aim to demonstrate nuclear fusion producing net energy by 30 September 2012. But unexpected technical problems ensured the deadline came and went;
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
The truth stings a bit, does it???
Nor, Warty, will I be drawn into some tit-for-tat silliness however clever you might think it. Off you go now.
I have dyslexia, too... '-)
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BTW, Thanks for the great reference sources!
Looks like some serious experimentation and data-gathering is going on...
it’s a lab experiment, a curious one
***Just like this lab experiment the article notes. But cold fusion has been past the ignition point for more than 20 years.
well, not dyslexic actually----just trying to type too fast.
And it’s still a curious lab experiment not a supply of wondrous cheap energy or a world changing saving blah, blah, blah. Nor is there reason to suppose it will be.
Not the simplest use application is available.
If it’s a curious lab experiment — which has been replicated more than 14,720 times — that shows energy densities 50,000 times that of gasoline, how is it that you can say that “ the simplest use application is available”? By your reasoning, gasoline would not have “ the simplest use application is available.” You’re so anti-LENR that it fogs your vision when you look at the facts.
I'm thinking of a way to both heat up the planet AND exercise a little "outreach" to the moslems.
Couldn't you just use the hot water to heat a city instead?
Plus, we would have the additional benefit that it would make a lot of extra glass. I understand there’s a glass shortage.
Is a cold fusion device heating a room or boiling water for coffee somewhere? They may be there in the fog but if not then all that energy density doesn’t mean much.
A gallon of gasoline will move my car further than all the cold fusion gizmos and gadgets put together. And that’s a fact!
Another 50 years to the next milestone?
I thout the government was shit down...
Maybe that’s better than guvmint bein’ shit up?
Now it’s a party - 14,700 Guy showed up - and he even found 20 more -YES!
Harnessing fusion—the process that powers the Sun—could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy. But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive. …Yes, I think that creating energy would be elusive to say the least, per the first law of thermodynamics. And since stars are finite in their existence, not even their energy production is “unlimited”.
This statement applies exactly the same to LENR and "hot fusion", yet you snark at LENR and have zero criticism of a "lab curiosity" that has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
At this point, there is more reason to expect LENR to deliver a practical commercial application sooner than for ANY of the hot fusion "types".
So now I must be critical of hot fusion? Why? Fairness? Balance? Must the cost and future value of cold fusion be graded relative to the same for hot fusion?
So called “cold fusion” is not more a possibility because hot fusion is less a possibility...one has nothing to do with the other’s viability.
“At this point, there is more reason to expect LENR to deliver a practical commercial application sooner than for ANY of the hot fusion “types”.”
In that you might be right since hot fusion may never be economically viable even if technically possible while Lenr may only be close to never.
The question must be asked why haven’t any of these relatively simple Lenr devices been scaled up to a practical commercial device? If only for heat alone on the cheap? Is it because the attempts to build a reliable working model fail as often as they succeed?
Simply put, yes. It's called "not being a hypocrite".
"So called “cold fusion” is not more a possibility because hot fusion is less a possibility...one has nothing to do with the other’s viability."
Never said that it did.
"The question must be asked why haven’t any of these relatively simple Lenr devices been scaled up to a practical commercial device? If only for heat alone on the cheap? Is it because the attempts to build a reliable working model fail as often as they succeed?
Perhaps because of the "science politics" played by the high-energy physicists to deny ANY funding for research into cold fusion?? Even private funding?? Or perhaps because newly graduating PhD's in physics are told that if they pursue research in cold fusion they will never get tenure, or, having tenure, that they will never get promoted. Probably less than $10MM has been spent on LENR research by ALL sources, while "hot fusion" has sucked down hundreds of billions of dollars.
And yet, cold fusion as a "lab curiosity" is already well ahead of hot fusion, as Kevmo put it, having reached "breakeven" twenty years ago. This in spite of all the obstacles thrown into its path.
Where are the successful "hot fusion" reactors, heating that "cuppa" that the skeptopaths are so fond of saying has to be done??
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