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jvett77
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The recent successful fusion experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Labs created a positive energy gain of 150%, a first for any fusion reactor. Even though the NIF reactor actually lost 99% of its 400 megajoules input energy delivering 2 MJ of laser energy to the target fuel pellet, it nonetheless achieved its fusion threshold goal by producing 3 MJ and it is in fact a scientific breakthrough. The reaction took place in less than a microsecond. (a MJ is less than 1/3 of a kwh).
This was a miniscule step in this process that will take more than several decades to a century before a workable fusion reactor can be connected to the power grid supplying electricity to our homes. Here's a summary of problems to be overcome for this type of reactor:
1. "The NIF is built on 1980s laser technology,” said Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "the lasers are only 1 percent efficient in terms of turning electricity to laser light, while more modern designs can be 20 percent efficient."
2. The NIF reactor generates bursts of energy by quickly burning one tiny chunk of fuel after another. Scientists have yet to figure out how to replace the fuel pellets quickly enough to maintain a reaction for longer than the tiniest fraction of a second. Making it happen 10,000 times faster is absurdly difficult.
3.The NIF takes hours to recover from each experiment. The fact that NIF is able to do this once per day is a technical achievement that took years to perfect. NIF can only fire a few laser shots per day. To run an actual fusion reactor, you’d need to fire about 10 shots per second.
4. There is a dwindling supply of tritium, a key isotope that is combined with deuterium as fuel for the reaction.
5. The huge technical problem is maintaining a mass of plasma at a temperature of several million degrees to enable fusion, while extracting enough heat to provide useful energy.
There is no "breakthrough": NIF fusion power still consumes 130 times more energy than it creates
This was a miniscule step in this process that will take more than several decades to a century before a workable fusion reactor can be connected to the power grid supplying electricity to our homes. Here's a summary of problems to be overcome for this type of reactor:
1. "The NIF is built on 1980s laser technology,” said Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "the lasers are only 1 percent efficient in terms of turning electricity to laser light, while more modern designs can be 20 percent efficient."
2. The NIF reactor generates bursts of energy by quickly burning one tiny chunk of fuel after another. Scientists have yet to figure out how to replace the fuel pellets quickly enough to maintain a reaction for longer than the tiniest fraction of a second. Making it happen 10,000 times faster is absurdly difficult.
3.The NIF takes hours to recover from each experiment. The fact that NIF is able to do this once per day is a technical achievement that took years to perfect. NIF can only fire a few laser shots per day. To run an actual fusion reactor, you’d need to fire about 10 shots per second.
4. There is a dwindling supply of tritium, a key isotope that is combined with deuterium as fuel for the reaction.
5. The huge technical problem is maintaining a mass of plasma at a temperature of several million degrees to enable fusion, while extracting enough heat to provide useful energy.
There is no "breakthrough": NIF fusion power still consumes 130 times more energy than it creates