NIF news

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Mon Nov 05, 2012 11:42 pm

A couple of new articles.

http://www.fusionenergyleague.org/index ... d_on_verge

http://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/bo ... un/264270/

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Tue Nov 06, 2012 6:32 pm

Video update of NIF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTf-AwmriWo

Stubby · Post by **Stubby** » Wed Nov 07, 2012 10:58 pm

http://www.nature.com/news/laser-lab-sh ... ds-1.11745

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 2:42 am

LOL!
Should read: They stopped pretending to do fusion energy research and are now admitting to being what they always were: a defense project
NIF leaves me cold and always has.

mattman · Post by **mattman** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 5:17 am

Do you think this is Good or Bad news for the Polywell?

I vote good news.

"You cannot get on a new path, till you get off the path you are on..."

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Thu Nov 08, 2012 6:33 pm

As I recall we had the argument here before about the purpose and funding of NIF.

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:35 am

I suppose this is a good place to put this link:

https://lasers.llnl.gov/newsroom/projec ... ctober.php

NIF October status update. Still plugging along.

CharlesKramer · Post by **CharlesKramer** » Mon Nov 12, 2012 12:50 am

mattman wrote:Do you think this is Good or Bad news for the Polywell?
I vote good news.

It's bad news for fusion, which is the key point, and what's bad for fusion is bad for all fusion research.

NiF seemed ill-conceived to me -- even if it works, it doesn't (in the sense of pointing the way to a practical machine). At best it would be a pulse device, requiring many pulses a minute to produce meaningful power -- but it's only set up for infrequent pulses which take a long time to set up. And all that with a monstrous machine requiring massive capital investment.

And it's not a new approach -- NiF is the successor to other laser efforts which were expected to achieve net energy.

So it's just another fusion disappointment in a long history of disappointments going back to 1949 at least (when Farnsworth started messing with his fusor).

NiF's nuclear modeling work may at least keep the machine from being decommissioned, and maybe eventually it will return to fusion work if the brains there can think of a reason why this time they'll really pull a rabbit out of NiF's hat.

As bugs bunny once observed -- not about fusion -- that last step is a doozy! Fusion research has expected to take that step many times, and so far failed each time.

CharlesKramer · Post by **CharlesKramer** » Thu Nov 15, 2012 1:18 pm

Ivy Matt wrote:I suppose this is a good place to put this link:
https://lasers.llnl.gov/newsroom/projec ... ctober.php
NIF October status update. Still plugging along.

http://dvice.com/archives/2012/11/largest-laser-i.php

article excerpt wrote:"We know, the fact that the largest and most powerful laser in the world is now being used for weapons research might not, at first glance, sound like a bad thing. But it is, for two reasons: first, this laser used to be trying to figure out how to make fusion happen, and second, the weapons research does not involve turning it into a laser cannon.

Last we heard from the National Ignition Facility, it was "optimistic" that by the end of 2012, it would have managed to use its 1.21 jiggawatt 500 terawatt array of 192 separate lasers to cause a small pellet of hydrogen to implode and undergo fusion, releasing a surplus of energy in the process. The ultimate goal was to develop a prototype fusion power plant that would implode 1,000 hydrogen pellets every minute, creating a huge amount of perfectly clean energy.

But, um, it hasn't happened yet. Sadface.

A series of unexpected technical issues meant that by the end of the NIF's research campaign in September, it hadn't achieved its goal of at least getting to the break-even point for laser fusion, and it's now expected that the time that the NIF is allowed to spend on fusion research will be cut to just 50%. The other 50% will be used for weapons research, but on laser weapons. Rather, the NIF will be simulating what happens inside nuclear weapons, to improve simulations of how our stockpile of warheads is aging and making sure they all go off properly when we tell them to.

This certainly is not the end for laser fusion research: at the very least, testing at the NIF has identified several issues that need to be resolved, including loss of laser energy through scattering and asymmetric implosion of the hydrogen capsule. Unfortunately, government muckety-mucks who control the NIF's funding are becoming somewhat disillusioned with the whole fusion idea, and are mumbling things about how "the lab overemphasized and oversold the energy aspect of the NIF, at the expense of the very important and successful work it was doing in stockpile stewardship and basic science."

jcoady · Post by **jcoady** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 3:50 pm

http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/N ... 091772.php

DeltaV · Post by **DeltaV** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 4:20 pm

jcoady wrote: http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/N ... 091772.php

Zoom in on the end of the diagonal arm above and you can see the burger (with top bun removed). Only McDonald$ is keeping this going.

GIThruster · Post by **GIThruster** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 5:12 pm

I'm still not familiar with any real science coming out of NIF and there are still the charges that it was never capable of doing significant science. It's certainly not a design that could be used for power generation. It's far too expensive. Looks like just another crazy multi-billion dollar project that is stealing funding from more useful ideas.

Stubby · Post by **Stubby** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 6:27 pm

Good place to hide black spending though.

Skipjack · Post by **Skipjack** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 10:40 pm

GIThruster wrote:I'm still not familiar with any real science coming out of NIF and there are still the charges that it was never capable of doing significant science. It's certainly not a design that could be used for power generation. It's far too expensive. Looks like just another crazy multi-billion dollar project that is stealing funding from more useful ideas.

Agreed! I cant see how this would ever result in a practical and economical reactor design.

GIThruster · Post by **GIThruster** » Wed Dec 19, 2012 11:18 pm

During one of NIF's battles over funding, some leader at one of the other national labs caused a huge dust up over claims that NIF cannot do real science, because it is exploring a process that cannot ever be commercially viable. There is indeed significant tension and competition between the labs for funding, and NIF rode in based purely upon political ability, not sensibility, at least it seems to some including me. I think the sooner they close it down the better.