Guessed correctly - the BEEB was wrong on fusion breakthrough
Back on the 10/07 I
posted this:
Now this could be interesting - fusion power
And I closed with this disclaimer:
Unfortunately, there is no mention of this at the National Ignition Facility's news releases. They have had some major advancements but the power out is still several orders of magnitude smaller than the power in.
Turns out my suspicions were confirmed. From the
AAAS Science Magazine:
Fusion "Breakthrough" at NIF? Uh, Not Really �
One unintended effect of the U.S. federal shutdown is that helpful press officers at government labs are not available to provide a reality check to some of the wilder stories that can catch fire on the Internet. They would have come in handy this week, when a number of outlets jumped on a report on the BBC News website. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, it reported, had passed a "nuclear fusion milestone." NIF uses the world's highest energy laser system to crush tiny pellets containing a form of hydrogen fuel to enormous temperature and pressure. The aim is to get the hydrogen nuclei to fuse together into helium atoms, releasing energy.
The BBC story reported that during one experiment last month, "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 prompted a rush of even more effusive headlines proclaiming the "fusion breakthrough." As no doubt NIF's press officers would have told reporters, the experiment in question certainly shows important progress, but it is not the breakthrough everyone is hoping for.
A bit more -- with the numbers:
One requirement for ignition is that energy output should exceed the energy input from the laser, i.e., that gain (output divided by input) should be greater than 1. NIF's laser input of 1.8 MJ is roughly the same as the kinetic energy of a 2-tonne truck traveling at 160 km/h (100 miles/h). The output of the reaction�14 kJ�is equivalent to the kinetic energy of a baseball traveling at half that speed. Numerically speaking, the gain is 0.0077. The experiment �is a good and necessary step, but there is a long way to go before you have energy for mankind,� Campbell says.
Great way to visualize the numbers.
Posted by DaveH at October 10, 2013 5:53 PM