Scientists repeat fusion power experiment that produced more energy than spent
For the second time ever, scientists have successfully produced more energy from a fusion power experiment than they spent running the experiment.
Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun, but until December no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes — a condition also known as ignition.
Researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who achieved ignition for the first time last year, repeated the breakthrough in an experiment on July 30 that produced a higher energy output than in December, according to three people with knowledge of the preliminary results.
Before you start buying stock in fusion power or believe the glowing praises coming from politicians and government bureaucrats, be warned: This experiment, which cost billions, was only able to produce enough power to run a household iron for about an hour. It will likely take many more billions and decades more of research to scale it up to a viable power system that has any hope of being practical.
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For the second time ever, scientists have successfully produced more energy from a fusion power experiment than they spent running the experiment.
Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun, but until December no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes — a condition also known as ignition.
Researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who achieved ignition for the first time last year, repeated the breakthrough in an experiment on July 30 that produced a higher energy output than in December, according to three people with knowledge of the preliminary results.
Before you start buying stock in fusion power or believe the glowing praises coming from politicians and government bureaucrats, be warned: This experiment, which cost billions, was only able to produce enough power to run a household iron for about an hour. It will likely take many more billions and decades more of research to scale it up to a viable power system that has any hope of being practical.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
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4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
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Another huge caveat is that they measure breakeven from the ratio of the fusion energy divided by the light energy required to initiate fusion. For a power plant, we are interested in the ratio of the electrical energy required to produce the light and the nuclear fusion energy. Last time I checked, that makes a huge difference. It takes about 200 times more electrical energy to produce one unit of light energy. Maybe they can increase the efficiency of light energy production but that remains to be seen.
“ If gain meant producing more output energy than input electricity, however, NIF fell far short. Its lasers are inefficient, requiring hundreds of megajoules of electricity to produce the 2 MJ of laser light and 3 MJ of fusion energy. Moreover, a power plant based on NIF would need to raise the repetition rate from one shot per day to about 10 per second. One million capsules a day would need to be made, filled, positioned, blasted, and cleared away—a huge engineering challenge.”
https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-explosion-long-sought-fusion-breakthrough
This post’s title left me confussd enough to dig a little deeper into the linked article. I am not an expert in nuclear physics, but everyone knows you cannot get around the 1st Law.
From the article:
“Energy gain in this context only compares the energy generated to the energy in the lasers, not to the total amount of energy pulled off the grid to power the system, which is much higher. ”
Also note Mr. Z’s final paragraph.
“The NIF device did not achieve net energy. The scientists who are promoting this result to the news media are playing word games. They use multiple definitions for the phrase “net energy.” Only the fuel pellet achieved “net energy.” This does not account for the energy required to operate the device.
The 3.15 megajoules of fusion output energy were produced at the expense of 400 megajoules of electrical input energy. A fusion device that loses 99.2 percent of the energy it consumes, in a reaction that lasts for 0.00000000009 of a second, does not indicate technology that could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.”
https://news.newenergytimes.net/2022/12/11/fusion-energy-breakthrough-scam/
Robert wrote: “It will likely take many more billions and decades more of research to scale it up to a viable power system that has any hope of being practical.”
We have been three decades away from fusion power plants for the past five decades, when I got to tour this very facility (previous iterations at the site, not this iteration). I am starting to become hopeful that we will finally have achieved this during our great grandchildren’s lifetime.
I agree with you all on this. This is not the self-sustained reaction that scientists have always wished for.
Anyone can create a fusion reaction, read the book “Amateur Nuclear Fusion” by Raymond Jimenez. You can do it for under $500. A twelve year old student built one for a science fair project. Yes, I know there is a big difference between the Ignition Facility vs. some kid’s fusor project.
I too remember in the 80’s the promise of fusion, the disappointment and fraud over ‘Cold Fusion’. I also wonder about this story coming out just after the power up of the Unit 3 reactor at Plant Vogtle (Vogtle Electric Generating Plant) in Georgia last week. The Unit 4 reactor at the same plant will be operational in September.
The Chicago Pile 1 produced .5 watts of power during the four
and a half minutes of the experiment. Pretty humble beginnings for the start of fission reactors.
Peter had similar comments back when the claim was first made. (with major problems to overcome, he believes by the end of the century it’ll be a reality… Maybe)
“We still need a few more “breakthroughs” before fusion becomes the energy of the present. Think scale, transmission, and materials. It took us a long time to get here, so what’s another half-century…”
His thoughts about five minutes long.
https://zeihan.com/the-fusion-breakthrough-70-years-in-the-making/
E = MC squared … I often wondered how massive the capacitors were on the Star Trek enterprise for the transporter buffer to hold all that mass converted to energy then re-integrate it back in the mass again on the surface.
(but then, I’m sure I’m missing something. It was probably matter, stripped down to its atoms, then reassembled. They did not convert into energy at all, other than a carrier wave)
Just another unprovable theory such as that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, if I can just find a leprechaun….
I am with Eugene Parker on this one, if the Suns energy was from fission… We would all be dead from the radiation.
“The theory initially developed by Parker of micro-nanoflares is one of those explaining the heating of the corona as the dissipation of electric currents generated by a spontaneous relaxation of the magnetic field towards a configuration of lower energy. The magnetic energy is thus transformed into Joule heating. The braiding of the field lines of the coronal magnetic flux tubes provokes events of magnetic reconnection with a consequent change of the magnetic field at small length-scales without a simultaneous alteration of the magnetic field lines at large length-scales. In this way it can be explained why coronal loops are stable and so hot at the same time“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoflare
This planet would be experiencing a “factor of three” more hard radiation then it currently receives. we are all alive, therefore the sun is not a nuclear furnace but an electric one caused by 50,000,000° temperature differential between the core and the surface of our massive sun, resulting in a “thermoelectric effect” such as in a pilot light ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect ) and a high pH (hydrogen) forming static electricity with the associated magnetic fields… and this simplicity accounts for the coronal heating problem. Why all of the light, heat, solar wind comes from the corona and not the sun itself. How the surface of the sun (photosphere 9500° F) is a fraction of the warmth of the Corona sphere (2,000,000 to 20,000,000°F) without violating the second law of thermodynamics. (The good news is our sun will never burn out)
Micro flares (now called nano flares) follows the path of least resistance to the thinner atmosphere above the sun where it forms a region of plasma. Spectral analysis verifies our sunlight is an electrical arc through a hydrogen atmosphere.
(you get more radiation from smoking then you do from living on the space station)
Jupiter is nearly 4 times hotter than the surface of the sun. Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus are also as hot or hotter then the Sun’s photosphere.
Atomic weapons demonstrate that fission is a reality, but difficult to slow down or control. Chain reaction is very violent.
The true power of this article demonstrates that you don’t have to fool all the people all the time, just the congressman that holds the purse strings to your budget. In the world we live today, one things for certain. If the budget gets approved… There will be a pot of gold in your reelection campaign.
Just came back from watching Tom Cruise movie, Mission impossible… interesting version of AI. Corrupting data, making truth obsolete. Sounds so familiar…
It’s a jobs program. I’m guessing 97% to 99% of government could be eliminated and everything that the average tax payer uses (roads, schools, police, fire) could still be provided.
The latest thing where I live is to fund essential services like EMTs and fire departments through special ballot initiatives while everything collected via normal taxation in the general fund goes to the leftist money laundering programs like ending man-made global warming, ending homelessness, ending racism, closing roads to bicycles only, etc…
I wonder how long it would take some eccentric billionaire with the passion and genius to create a fusion reactor.
https://www.americangeosciences.org/critical-issues/faq/how-much-natural-gas-does-united-states-have-and-how-long-will-it-last
This link states that the US has about 90 years of natural gas left given our current reserves and current use and expected growth.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/how-much-gas-is-left.php
This link states our known reserves are increasing.
Why are we spending billions on this fusion research again?
Natural gas (and oil – but let’s stick with gas) provide energy, very “dense” energy as part of their very material. I.e. there is a lot of potential energy in the material itself. The distribution (compressed or piped) is of the energy itself. The energy from fusion. created from converting the heat of fusion, must still be sent through the electric grid and is available as electric power – providing energy over time.
To meet all US energy needs (including HVAC, industrial processes including heating …etc) and replacing gas, the fusion energy source would need to be distributed through the electrical grid. This increase in distribution of energy will require a greatly enhanced US electricity grid that is not in existence today.
Granted, gas needs to be often processed for use (often “cut” as it is too “hot”), and stored; and the storage can be large and volatile. However the simplest storage may be simply capping a known producing well..
Pipelines and/or compression and distribution can and does easily distribute this energy – in the material gas itself – to where the energy is needed.
No doubt electricity power, distributed through the current grid, provides needed power to homes and industry, That electric power meets unique needs that gas itself cannot.
However, gas can be, and is used to generate that electricity. (`~40% last year).
We have the energy problem solved. We just need to execute.
If we could streamline the production of fusion devices, Project Pacer might be worth a second look. It is a fusion reactor design that could be utilized with our present technology. Little chunky but it would work.
“We have been three decades away from fusion power plants for the past five decades, when I got to tour this very facility (previous iterations at the site, not this iteration).”
I can remember reading in the newspaper that we were about a decade from commercial fusion. I was 10 or 12 and reading My Weekly Reader at school (Anyone else remember that paper?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Weekly_Reader
Let’s not forget that they actually generated precisely zero watts. Nothing in this device even attempted to harvest any of the energy produced at all. And in fact they don’t even have a theoretical design for an efficient means of doing so, it’s not like you can run water pipes through the plasma to generate steam.
The NIF won’t scale up to power production.
It’s designed for weapons testing.
A viable fusion reactor will be of an entirely different design. Something like Helion or the superconducting Tokamak the British group is working on.
Col…the link is to an album. I remember one issue that had us run out of fossil fuels by 2000.
No foreseeable fusion based system can replace fossil fuels, any more than your toilet & sewer can replace your butt. They simply do not do the same job. Your butt produces poop. The sewer system moves it and deals with it. You can’t replace one with the other.
By far, the main advantage fossil fuels have over their competitors is that they are much easier to store & transport than the alternatives. It is easy enough to make electricity without using fossil fuels, even in an economically competitive way. Sometimes wind power can even beat coal. The problem comes when you need to get it to the wheels of a car, or a country 10,000 kilometers away, or store it for later use. This is highly expensive and wasteful with current technologies. To change that you need better batteries or superconductors. You need a smart grid. Or you can use the power to make synthetic fossil fuels with CO2 from the atmosphere. All are being tried and we are making progress. Fusion has been marginalized for a long time, for a good reason.
Cold fusion was mentioned.
I live in Salt Lake, two of my neighbors worked for the University of Utah.
The Pons and Fleischmann experiment with heavy water.
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/the-science-behind-cold-fusion/
The dumb down explanation is that electrolysis released hydrogen and oxygen, in a pressure vessel with a catalyst platinum sponge designed to recombine the gases back into heavy water with extra heat, basically an over unity machine. Getting more heat than the energy expended to separate the molecules.
When they turned it off, the water continued to heat for a half an hour or so before the temperatures started to fall. This unexplained heating was their eureka moment, not realizing that the heavy water has soaked up hydrogen called hydrogen loading, and was continuing to react with the Palladium sponge to form heat until the hydrogen was expended. (A flameless reaction similar to the mitochondria in your body that turns oxygen and sugar into heat, water and CO2)
A chemical reaction, not a nuclear one that they hoped for.
90 years of natural gas? I remember reading we have 200 years of coal, and twice that much of methyl hydrate on the bottom of the ocean. (pressurized natural gas in it’s liquid form frozen in ice matrix covering the ocean floor)
Ocean floor core driller‘s called it flammable ice, it would pop and fizz as it melted above 40°F.
Japan is the only nation that I’m aware of that’s trying to recover the large methane accumulation frozen to the deep ocean floor off their coast line.
The Tomahawk experiment using magnetic containment has a few unintended consequences due to extreme temperatures involved. Super cooled magnets in contact with super heated material. They will create electricity in abundance due to the thermoelectric effect. The largest amount of power ever generated in the Guinness book of world records was a rod of metal with one end in a blast furnace, and the other in a container of liquid nitrogen?
I do not know if this still holds the record, but the effect is real. I think the same phenomenon was responsible for the welding of joints of movable parts in early spacecraft?
Fusion is still a fantasy while fission has been reliable for nearly 70 years now. Reactors the size of trailer houses that are modular are being advertised now and will soon be online. https://www.nuscalepower.com/en
Maybe it’s just investment scam likes Solyndra?
Why did O’Biden confiscate more land where uranium was discovered in Arizona? (Bears ears was the other discovery in Utah which mining had just started when the national monument was declared)
Maybe thorium is the answer.
Laser fusion might be adapted for space travel.
Say you have a Johndale Solemn Medusa.
This focused a beam to a point behind….where a simple BB gun can fire fusion pellets.
Why are we spending billions on this fusion research again?
Because brown (coal/oil/gas) and blue (hydro, and nuke) are icky to “sophisticated” people.
And because you can’t return to the halcyon days of 1990’s dot-com-bubble returns-on-investment, by putting your billions in mature technologies. You have to have a Next Big Thing to invest in to make that happen. And if it doesn’t work for the masses, well, the masses can be made to work with it, if you have the right government connections so your strategy leverages the coercive force of law.
Subsidy was insufficient to make it work with the masses, so we are now at stage 2: penalty … not direct legal sanction, but government interventions into the economy that push down brown/blue energy in favor of that Next Big Thing, green.
Col Beausabre asked: “Anyone else remember that paper?”
None of my schools got that one, but if the article was in the 1960s then I would not be surprised that they were so optimistic about how quickly they could develop fusion power. By the 1970s, there was somewhat less optimism, but as I noted, they were still overoptimistic.
One of the devices that they displayed when I toured Lawrence Livermore was the unit that they used to (if I recall correctly) prove the concept that they could build a machine to prove the concept of laser powered fusion reaction. My recollection is also that the U.S. abandoned the magnetic containment version of fusion power by the 1980s.
Well, we still have cold fusion to look forward to.