Giant Frikiin Laser(s) close to Nuclear Fusion

NIF has had a brake through, and isn't that far away from fusing:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18446-giant-laser-reaches-key-milestone-for-fusion.html

Cool. Or should I say very hot.

If they get it working, it's going to be kick in the teeth for ITER

 

More here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8485669.stm

 

Yay, nearly fusion. I don't care if it comes from NIF or ITER, fuctional fusion that produces power will be good.

 

If laser power does work, they can use it in ITER, so it's not really a kick in the teeth. The point of ITER is that it has a water jacket which they can use to harvest power from the fusion reaction - regardless of if the reaction is started by electromagnetism/microwaves/lasers/all three.

 

I'm actually trying to get a transfer to work on the ITER project.

Had a presentation by one of the project managers from our company that works there, seriously interesting and exciting stuff.

 

Good luck with that, it sounds awesome!

I'm going to meet Steve Cowley in a couple of weeks

 

Yes - not an expert at all on it, but if completely fascinates me. I do hope that the new money that they're putting into to IEC / Polywell fusion might come to something as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell

 

So, what they're doing there is making, well, a mini sun....anyone else wondering how they're planning on containing said sun?

Really good news though, seeing as it'll finally shut the eco protesters up about nuclear power....

 

I don't know how in this case, but for JET, the reaction is contained within a torodial shaped reaction vessel, and magentism creates a helical field which keeps the reaction contained.
Might be missing a few things, only studied it at A-Level and I've probably forgotten bits by now.

 

Being so very tiny (even if it got to the size of a golf ball in a full-scale reactor) you only need it to come into contact with some part of the reactor to be cooled well below the required temperature for fusion. Not to mention some emergency shutdown procedure where you would shower it in some cool, heavy element.

It's not a problem.

 

All we need now is nuclear powered sharks and we are in business... maybe "back to the future" was right about fusion power in 2015...

 

I believe the following, though actually about the LHC, sums up my response. No offense intended towards yourself however, just how I feel about people who know not much (or nothing more often then not) questions certain things.

 

None taken, and I agree with what the picture says, my comment about them containing it was merely a joke, and hopefully actually someone being able to explain to me about how this is going to happen, all the video shower was how it was going to happen. Not the rest of it.

Anywho, no harm done!!

 

The NIF isn't going for a sustained reaction. They are just looking for the 'I' part. The fuel pellet is tiny and will only sustain fusion for a fraction of a second. Sustained reaction will come later, and most likely use magnetic containment.

 

The thing I haven't worked out is if NIF works, how does it translate to a commercial power station? To get fusion, you need to hit the fuel targets.

At the moment, these are introduced one at a time - one per shot of NIF. In a comercial station, you'd need to feed these in rapidly and keep the lazer pulsing in time with the availability of the fuel targets, right?

Or does one shot just start the fusion process, and then it's sustained in another way?

Inquiring minds need to know.

 

Woah - cross posting...

 

Nuclear fusion, is well, what the Sun is, and that's pretty sustained. It could work in the way a conventional power-station works, using the heat to boil water, create steam, and turn a turbine. Seems the simplest way, or they could use some MASSIVE solar cells, and work it that way.

As long as they kept feeding the reaction,m it should work brilliantly.

 

Bingo, once it gets going you basically can add anything under the iron limit to fuel the reaction, IIRC. This is why the NIF is so important. If we can prove that we can start it safely, then we can go back to the research done in the 70's and 80's on the tokamak to set up the magnets and stuff.

 

they'll get it.. the iter project looks cool too- funny they're working on a limited budget as our state and federal is pretty bad right now

schwarzenegger (our governor- yeah we have washed up actors running our towns and state) has plans to hopefully get our state out of debt too- I laughed so hard cause only he would think of something like this- with so many peeps in jail here, he wants to build prisons down in mexico and send them all down there.. said it will cut the cost in half XD the corrections officers and rights activists are roid raged

if they can get fusion working in livermore.. and obama talking about offshore drilling for oil (not sure he'll follow through) we can probably say fack it to foreign oil sooner than later.. the wars would fall apart as that's basically the main income of the middle east other than dubai- which is doing pretty bad right now

it'd be a bright future I think iter looks very interesting too.. they probably borrow ideas from each other and get it done

 

I'd hope they share their knowledge in all honesty. Yeah sure people will say "No it's about money" but viable fusion power will help the whole planet.