“This is a monumental breakthrough,” says physicist Gilbert Collins of the University of Rochester in New York, who is a former NIF collaborator but was not involved with the research leading to the latest advance. “Since I started in this field, fusion was always 50 years away…. With this achievement, the landscape has changed.”
Fusion potentially provides a clean energy source. The fission reactors used to generate nuclear energy rely on heavy atoms, like uranium, to release energy when they break down into lighter atoms, including some that are radioactive. While it’s comparatively easy to generate energy with fission, it’s an environmental nightmare to deal with the leftover radioactive debris that can remain hazardous for hundreds of millenia.
Controlled nuclear fusion, on the other hand, doesn’t produce such long-lived radioactive waste, but it’s technically much harder to achieve in the first place. In nuclear fusion, light atoms fuse together to create heavier ones. In the sun, that typically occurs when a proton, the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, combines with other protons to form helium.
Getting atoms to fuse requires a combination of high pressure and temperature to squeeze the atoms tightly together. Intense gravity does much of the work in the sun. At the National Ignition Facility, 192 lasers directed at a small pellet of fuel provided a blast of energy that did the trick instead. The result was a burst of fusion energy that, though brief, was more than the laser energy that instigated the reaction, says physicist Carolyn Kuranz of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who was not involved with the research. While the total energy released by the experiment has not been made public yet, it exceeded the 1.
The long running joke is: 'fusion is 30 years away' Reality is that we're no where near. The longest we've been able to confine plasma is 5sec. Landmark Ignition achieved last month lasted billionth of sec & the total energy required for 192 lasers was 300MJ with output of 3MJ.
Have you found a method that succeeds in keeping the by-product helium in the atmosphere?
Efficiency 1.0 should not be possible. How?
How is it possible to have efficiency 1.0
this sounds bogus did they count the energy of the pellet ?
Me: Hey liver, should I be drinking this much? Liver: More!
other facilities have fusion working right now already! issue is sustainable or reusable. one that collides plasma to cause fusion inside a strong magnetic field. another that uses neutrons to generate electricity from fusion, however metals used become radioactive over time
It is beyond of imagination and feasibility.
No answer That means yes
totally different method than the europeans Torus models....read the story first before you make your mind up....energy out energy in !!!!!
Finally! The answer to climate change, to ending poverty, to end food starvation and so on. Bet this administration won't put any money into it
As Art Berman put it, this is a “nuclear nothing burger”
I think nuclear fusion is getting exciting. I picture space propulsion and probably weapons would be possible.
Only if you don’t count the energy to power the lasers. Also the Chinese lab had similar results, if you discount the rangers added to power the lasers and magnets. While this is a milestone, it is not a breakthrough.
Any side effects
It never will provide enough energy to power the lasers. First, you have to keep replacing the pellets. Secondly, the lasers are probably quite inefficient, if you can't combine monochromatic light sources correctly.
It's now 49
After reading the article it looks like fusion power plants are still about 50 years away.
Be careful, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Don't F up the planet.
Excluding the power to create the beams🤨 Therefore an engine’s combustion energy utilized to propel a vehicle is not a factor in differential torque-wheel requirements.
Always? Citation please. I can point you to very different forecasts from the likes of. R F Post. (cf Scientific American.)
This is exactly what I said.
They put more energy in those 20 high powered lasers as 100gig watts of power! They didn't get out over 100 gig watts fusion power energy !!
Ok...so if the gain is 20% over the input: F=e x 1.20 Wonder if the gain goes up without gravity bending it's alignment.
It's going to be 30 years before we can make this tech scalable for power stations. Meanwhile, Thorium fueled fission reactors, which we pioneered, produce no nuclear waste and can be built immediately for less than current nuke plants. Why not start there ?
pssss, that's nothing, Biden does that everytime he falls & slides down the stairs
Who cares. Unless it makes money people will not allow it to become large scale.
Any chance of our experiments going nova? We know it takes millions of years for the super giant (compared to our small reactor) to go nova but how long for a tiny reactor?
So when mankind does create its own star in a box? I’d ask: Who else in the universe could,would or did accomplish such a task?And…When mankind puts artificial intelligence into a mechanical mind and creates a new sentient life…What then when it ask’s Hey…!!!What about me⤵️
'But this latest fusion burst still didn’t produce enough energy to run the laser power supplies and other systems of the NIF experiment. It took about 300 million joules of energy from the electrical grid to get a hundredth of the energy back in fusion.'
No
No, it did not. It used a total of 302MJ to create 3MJ. It ran at a 299MJ deficit.
Yes but 50 yrs off production, still need another solution
They ran it 100 times 1 successful result and haven’t duplicated it. Much ado about nothing. They have been trying break even for 30 years
Did the MSM pick up on this or are we still busy on elonmusk ? CNN FoxNews BreakingNews
This will bring amazing advancements.
🔬
Fusion is the future.
its dangerous . Ask albert
But conveniently left out it used 300MJ to create the 2MJ required to produce the 3MJ reaction. Nothing to see here.
Stop digging and look up and out .
Now we can get rid of all those lithium batteries clogging land fills, fiberglass windmill blades that nobody knows what to do with when they break, and carcinogenic coatings on solar panels!
But it still needs to produce more energy than it is consuming. If they increase the fuel then ofcourse more energy more required to heat up the fuel. It is difficult to break this cycle .
This is hopefully true!!! If so...more people need to know!!
Doc Ock no way
Great result, but a reliable source of power is still decades away.
Yes could of been done a very long time ago
I’m amazed at the civilization that is going on around this!
Love laser technology!
Not there yet and progress is slow, but, it's a start.... I believe it's just a matter of time until someone harnesses the energy all around us, that makes up existence.....
and Pandora's box is now open.
Hot.
This is sensationalised reporting to maintain funding of a perpetual motion machine. it took 300 million joules of energy to power the lasers and they produced 2.5 million joules of output. Replacing the mass of the sun with energy will always result in net negative result.
sounds safe
China already did it.
Just look up primer fields on YouTube. They make a ⭐ star in a jar 🫙😂
3 million joules out 302 million joules put in. Very efficient🤣
Some of those CEO's have already gotten their 'parachutes.'
Nature always protects you, beware of authorities who have weapons like HAARP TECHNOLOGY/CLOUD SEEDING.
I heard about this, we have finally moved past the point of breaking even. Congrats.
I don't know if it is due to my accounts popularity or the dribble the algorithm feeds me but I am definitely not hearing about this as I should be, nor are other people. This is literally going to change the world in a big way. VERY Exciting!!
What could possibly go wrong..?
Fusion maybe in 50 years and expensive. Fission safe (safer than any other viable alternative), cheap, here and now, proven, ready to go.
Ok, but how much energy went into producing that 2 mega-joule laser? They are usually only like 1% efficient. So, while it may have produced 3 mega-joules from the 2 mega-joule input, it probably took 200 mega-joules to create the 2 mega-joule lasers.
Yes yes, but where is god in all of this!?
Great
Get that Can-do! Confidence out of the cupboard and get it dressed and pressed! I love it when the US grabs science by the short hairs and pulls a new technology out of their sleeve. Moonshot\\= Fusionshot
just tried it, took thirty laser pens focused them into one point igniting the flux capacitator filled with cosmic protoplasm unlimited energy ... wait Exxon and men in black are knocking on my door
About time
Eco terrorists will just find another raison d'etre centered in something we’re doing – ‘You’re hurting the atoms!’
The Big Hope for energy
Finally! I can now take a sun bath without leaving my bed. That’s awesome!
Science will save us yet again.
Sounds a bit religious but I have faith in thousands of scientists & engineers working hard to make nuclear fusion energy a reality. They will do it. Sooner than 'decades away' actually. 👏
Big Oil may have something to say
Net energy = Free energy What a load!
Original paper pretty clearly states that claims of surplus energy have not yet been evaluated. Also there's really no path to commercialization of laser fusion for power that doesn't have mind boggling implications for infrastructure.
Is 2030 doable?
That is absolutely amazing! Still a little bummed out that, though the experiment did produce more energy than the light, it did not produce enough energy to make the light. Still an amazing breakthrough!
Well this 8s a thing
It's about DAMN TIME!😡😡😡
I heard that the equipment measuring it was damaged in the experiment, and they’re not sure of the results. Any validity?
Oh finally! Only 100 years after Nikola Tesla developed free energy for the world, which was suppressed for Big Profit.
Cautious optimism
Electric cars are a pipe dream. Hydrogen is being surpressed. Fusion will be as well. Globalists want all of us at each others throats. Damn them to hell.
hopefully things will progress quickly after first success!
In a Lab? ROMMFA!
Interesting development
You would think the headline would be: first law of thermo dynamics has been disproven. Science people, am I wrong? Please be nice, I am really asking. 😀
THIS is the important part: 'The net energy gain is with respect to the energy in the light that was shined on the target, not with respect to the energy that went into making that light' Believe that someone has net Energy gain when it sells Electricity!
apparently they never pulled pop pop's finger !
I refuse to believe until Sabine Hossenfelder says so. Too much previous disappointment.
Never would of guessed NIF would be the first to get a net gain in energy!
Another baby step on the long road to fusion. Some day. Maybe.
Does the lab put out more energy or the nuclear fusion? Misplaced your atom.
new era