Fusion energy dreams smash into hard economic realities

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/fusion-energy-dreams-smash-hard-economic-realities-6C10442409

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Fusion energy dreams smash into hard economic realities[/font]

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News
June 25, 2013 at 8:09 PM ET

[font size=3]The old joke about nuclear fusion is that it's the "energy source of the future, and always will be" – but budgetary realities have raised new questions about just how much of a future fusion power has.

A campaign to get to the long-sought break-even point in a fusion reactor fell short last year at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $3.5 billion National Ignition Facility. Now it looks as if NIF will be turning its focus more toward nuclear weapons applications.

Meanwhile, the U.S. contribution to the international $13 billion ITER fusion research project is coming under increased congressional scrutiny. There's a chance that federal funding will be held up just as the decade-long effort is due to hit its stride.

…

The current plan calls for the ITER reactor to begin operation by 2020, with experiments continuing through 2040. The first reactor materials were delivered to the construction site just this month, and the first U.S.-made components are due to be shipped later this year. "We're on the cusp of moving out of the design phase and into the development phase," Uhran said.

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[cantbeserious]

1. Why Would The Energy Companies Allow Their Paid For Representatives To Put Them Out Of Business

eom

[longship]

3. Well, fusion is not easy.

The only way we know to do it releasing more energy than is consumed is an H-bomb. Not very practical.

The reality is economically efficient fusion power may be well out of reach for a considerable time no matter what the LaRouche kooks say.

It is a very tough problem which will not be easily solved. It's a strong nuclear force deal and there aren't any short cuts. It takes a lot of energy to overcome the barriers to get nuclei to fuse. And no, you cannot do it at room temperatures.

[PamW]

4. Actually, it's not just the LaRouche kooks..

The scientists at Lawrence Livermore are making progress every day.

First, it was really kind of silly for our political leaders in Congress to give a dead line and say that this very difficult task, as you are correct in saying; had to be solved in the first year of the NIF's operation.

What the HELL was THAT!!

How many scientific breakthroughs were made "on schedule". Remember the great success of the Apollo moon mission. Yes, that program actually did achieve success on schedule and met President Kennedy's challenge to put a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth "before the decade was out". NASA made it with just 6 months to spare.

However, suppose the problems encountered in the fire of Apollo 1 were greater than they were, and our Apollo program was set back by a year more. So instead of having Apollo 8 orbit the moon without landing at Christmas 1968 and setting up the Apollo landing for July 1969; suppose Apollo 8 occurred at Christmas 1969.

Suppose it was Christmas 1969 and we had just conducted the Apollo 8 fly-by of the moon setting up for the landing in July 1970. What if the politicians said, "Apollo didn't meet President Kennedy's timetable, the decade is over. Apollo is a FAILURE. Cancel the rest of the Apollo missions".

Would that have been smart? Just because the scientists didn't meet the President's guess / challenge ( and it was a guess ), we are going to abandon the Apollo program just when we were on the threshold of making a great achievement, we CANCEL it. Just because we were a year late?

Well, that's what the politicians want to do with NIF. So there were more bugs to work out than we anticipated. That's how science usually works. You don't always get things done "on time". So how STUPID is it going to be to give up on a monumental energy technology just because we didn't meet the politicians guess as to when it should be ready?

In essence, the politicians forced the scientists to "take the field" with their new machine, the NIF, and immediately attempt to throw a "Hail Mary" pass for a touchdown on the first down. We didn't make it.

Now the team is making that continual charge down the field, making first downs, and good progress; and the politicians want to call them off the field, and send them to the showers, and FORFEIT the game.

How DUMB is that?

The politicians cut the NIF budget, forcing LLNL to have a voluntary separation program to lay off the scientists that were working on completing this monumental achievement.

One might expect that type of STUPIDITY from a company where the R&D department didn't make progress quick enough to affect this quarter's earning statement, so we are going to lay off R&D scientists, and toss out the "seed corn" for the company's future. I would expect that type of short-sighted "thinking", if you can even call it that, from corporate bean-counters. However, that's not the type of shortsightedness with respect to high-risk, but high-payoff scientific research from our politicians.

PamW

[longship]

6. I don't think anybody wants to give up on fusion.

But we need to recognize that it's a very difficult problem, much more challenging than landing on the moon which basically only involved Newtonian mechanics plus some new technologies which happened to work out fine.

Fusion has been studied as a potential power source for many decades. But merging nuclei isn't like sending a capsule to the moon. The energies aren't even on the same relative scale.

Sure, we need to put billions of dollars into it. But after many decades I am not expecting a big breakthrough soon, nor should anybody.

ITER is the most expensive science project ever. One hopes that economies of scale will help it be replicable if it can break through that energy equation where it generates more than it uses. But I don't see public power from fusion any time soon.

I hope I am wrong, but I don't think so.

[PamW]

8. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

longship,

There are some in Congress that want to throw in the towel; namely Senator Dianne Feinstein and some of her ilk. They are opposing funding further fusion power research on NIF because NIF didn't obtain fusion break-even during its first year as they were hoping. Again it's like having Apollo 8 do a fly-by on the Moon at Christmas 1969 and saying, "decades over", referring to JFK's challenge of "before the decade is through".

I think you will be pleasantly surprised. NIF was designed to reach fusion "break even". It is the latest in a series of fusion lasers, each coming closer to fusion than the previous. NIF is short for National Ignition Facility because it was designed to cross the ignition threshold.

It turns out that things were somewhat more complex. These factors complicate the design of the fusion capsules. However, the scientists are making good progress on getting a handle on those issues.

They are "knocking on the door" just as NASA was with the Apollo 8 success. NASA went on to achieve JFK's challenge with Apollo 11. NIF scientists are at the "Apollo 8 stage". They are quite close to the realization of fusion ignition. Unfortunately, with the end of the tunnel in sight, some of the politicians, like Senator Feinstein, want to "pull the plug" because the breakthrough didn't come on the timetable they demanded.

When can scientists make breakthroughs on schedule. It reminds me of a line from one of the original Star Trek series episode, "The Ultimate Computer", which is a breakthrough in computer technology. When someone points out it took its inventor Dr. Richard Daystrom years to accomplish the breakthrough, Kirk provides a litany of great scientists including Newton and Einstein and asks if they came up with breakthroughs on schedule. Kirks says, "You can't say 'Today I will be brilliant!'". It takes time for scientists and science.

Sure our elected officials are stewards of our money, and have to be cognizant of getting a good return on investment. That's why they need to follow the progress. If progress is being made, and success appears to be close at hand; that's not the time to stop funding.

That's the most wasteful thing to do. LLNL had a facility called MFTF-II ( Mirror Fusion Test Facility II ) Congress funded it back in the '70s. LLNL designed and built the facility. However, Congress de-funded it as soon as construction was complete. LLNL dedicated and mothballed it the same day. It sat for years awaiting funding until it was dismantled. THAT is the way you waste taxpayer money; you don't give the scientists a chance to make a success.

With MFTF, the scientists were given ZERO years to make a breakthrough. For NIF, they were given ONE year to make a breakthrough. That's NOT how you get scientific progress, by saying to your scientists, "Give me a breakthrough in short order, or ELSE".

If you want this research to continue; contact Senator Feinstein.

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Feinstein-declines-to-halt-NIF-budget-cuts-4523794.php

BTW, if you saw the most recent Star Trek movie, "Into Darkness", then you saw the NIF target chamber. Parts of the J.J. Abrams movie "Into Darkness" were filmed at NIF; the NIF target chamber was the USS Enterprises "warp core", the starship's engines:

https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2013/May/NR-13-05-05.html

http://www.livescience.com/34480-star-trek-film-national-ignition-facility.html

PamW

[longship]

9. Sorry, despise Abrams. But the original Tron was filmed there.

I keep up with physics. It's my background.

Fusion energy isn't Apollo for the reasons I gave above. We understand the technology to get a person walking on the moon. We do not yet know how to make fusion energy work, let alone make it economical. Not that Apollo was economical, but that's the promise with fusion and we've been hearing that it's right around the corner for decades. If we can just get this little twiddly bit working right...

I am all for putting lots into this, but I think this is a long term goal, not a short term one. However, we need both long and short. And fusion, when it finally works efficiently, will be a great one. I just wouldn't recommend holding ones breath.

Thanks for your informative response.

[PamW]

10. It closer than you think...

longship,

First the original Tron filmed back in the '80s wasn't filmed at NIF; but at "NIF's great-grandfather". The Tron movie was filmed at the facility housing LLNL's now defunct "Shiva" laser. After "Shiva", LLNL built the "Novette" laser, and then the "Nova" laser and finally the NIF laser.

Evidently you don't know, I work at LLNL; and you are NOT up to date with the latest in physics. The point is that we DO know most of what we need to get fusion to work. There are some issues that remain, but we are substantially "THERE" in terms of our understanding.

In that sense, my analogy between fusion energy and the Apollo program is quite apt. It is true that we did understand the basics of orbital mechanics needed to get Man to the Moon. However, there were substantial technical challenges with the Apollo program. Because we wanted to put the combined command/service and lunar modules in orbit around the Moon before landing, orbital mechanics tells us that we had to fire a retro burn of the service module engine to put the ship in lunar orbit. Otherwise, the craft would be on a slingshot "free return" path to Earth, which is what happened with Apollo 13.

Orbital mechanics also tells us that the retro burn of the service module engine had to take place on the far side of the Moon. The burn has to be precise, which required computer control. Because the ship would be on the far side of the Moon, it would be out of radio contact with Earth, and thus could NOT use ground-based computers for controlling the retro burn. The fact of the matter is that the computer that controlled the retro burn had to be ABOARD the Apollo ship.

Back in the '60s, computers, even the most basic ones; took up entire rooms. There was a technical challenge to shrink an entire room of computer equipment down to the size of something that could fit in the Apollo craft, and use an amount of power that could be provided by Apollo's batteries and/or fuel cells.

THAT challenge of Apollo alone is greater than the remaining challenges that fusion energy on NIF faces.

Progress is being made. In all probability, I would expect that we have fusion break-even within 5 years; and I'm being generous at that. As for what to do once we have break-even, LLNL has a program that it has been working on for a number of years now to design the "balance of plant" for the fusion power plant. They call it "LIFE" - Laser Inertial Fusion Energy. The following articles are 4 and 2 years old; much more has been done since:

https://str.llnl.gov/AprMay09/moses.html

https://str.llnl.gov/JulAug11/dunne.html

We are much closer to fusion energy than you think. It was an exaggeration in the past to say that we needed to twiddle some little feature. That was the popular science misconception, but scientists in the field knew better. Now the scientists in the field are saying that we are very close.

PamW

[longship]

11. Thanks for the correction.

Much appreciated and informative.

Yes, I remember now that it was Shiva. Thanks for that memory jog, too.

I hope you are correct about this.

We need to pour billions into it anyway because the promise for our future could be bright. And even if it doesn't pan out, there are always paybacks from primary research like this.

Keep at it, PamW.

[oldhippie]

12. PamW, may I ask .....

The point is that we DO know most of what we need to get fusion to work. There are some issues that remain, but we are substantially "THERE" in terms of our understanding.

Can you give an example or two of the issues that remain? In layman's terms (well, engineer's terms) that we might understand? I'm really curious as to what are the technology issues now. Are they anything I could possible understand? (I was an RF communications EE, not a physicist.)

[FogerRox]

18. Toridial Fusion will never be developed into a power source.

2 companies, Tri Alpha and EMC2 are in the fore front of fusion research funded by the Navy in an effort to replace fission with fusion.

Many fusion fuels create neutrons and heat, requiring shielding and a thermal plant, this makes toridial fusion, (ITER) impractically large, think 4 football stadiums. Using fuels that create less heat and create alphas instead of neutrons vastly simplifies the process. Alphas can be directly converted to electricity, eliminating the need for a large thermal plant.

[PamW]

20. Sure...

oldhippie,

One of the issues is what material should be used for the "ablator". The NIF laser beams are divided into two bunches with each bunch directed into the end of a cylindrical metal "hohlraum":

https://lasers.llnl.gov/programs/nic/icf/

The lasers impinge on the walls of the cylinder, and the cylinder re-radiates X-rays which impinges uniformly on the spherical fusion "capsule" which is in the middle of that cylinder. The capsule consists of many layers. The inner layers contain the fusion fuel. One of the outer layers is called the "ablator". When the X-ray drive from the hohlraum strikes the ablator, it vaporizes or ablates the surface of that layer and it throws off material. By Newtons 3rd Law of Motion and Conservation of Momentum; if the ablator is throwing off material, that means that there is an inward force that is compressing the capsule. It's like a spherical rocket engine; the "exhaust" goes in all directions; so the net force from that exhaust has to be inward. So it implodes the capsule, and that compresses and heats the fusion fuel in the interior to thermonuclear conditions, and thermonuclear reactions are initiated.

One of the questions is what the best material to make the ablator out of. The original design called for a metal-doped plastic. You dope the plastic with the metal, so it is opaque to the radiation impinging on it. That traps energy in the plastic, and it ablates. Some of the issues are what is the best plastic, and what is the best metal dopant. The following gives the abstract for a scientific paper that lists a whole litany of design issues:

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=83DBDC7FACB9AFD27B88ED43CCD34513.journals?fromPage=online&aid=33819

The above abstract refers to ablator materials, ablator dopant materials, the distribution of dopant, the timings and profile of the X-ray drive... there are a whole host of things that need to be "tuned". Your car doesn't run right until the mechanic "tunes" the various specs - hence you need to get a "tune up". Likewise, there are a greater number of things to "tune" on the NIF. Each "shot" has to be analyzed to see whether the various settings were set too high or too low or just right.

It takes time to check out all the possibilities, and the system has to cool down between shots. ( A commercial power plant won't use a doped-glass laser like the NIF ) So it's going to take time to get the system "tuned". Unfortunately, the politicians are impatient. The scientists thought their original tuning values would be close enough, and the system would be close to "in tune" on the first go round. It would have been nice, the politicians would get their breakthrough immediately. However, now it looks like we have to do some good science and explore the possibilities, just like Edison inventing the electric light. Edison said that invention was something like 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. That "perspiration" part is what is going on now.

Edison didn't have a political master to say, "That's enough Thomas; pack up and move on, you've failed"

If Edison had that; we wouldn't have electric lights.

Hopefully, enough people will tell Feinstein and the other politicians that they have to give the scientists the time to do the "perspiration" part; because the final invention will certainly by worth it.

Imagine a device that produces energy, and it gives MILLIONS of times more energy per pound of fuel as we get from chemical reactions; the fuel is hydrogen from plentiful water; and the waste is not radioactive; and we get to control it - we decide how much power we get; not Mother Nature.

It would be so great. If only our politicians weren't so impatient...

PamW

[FogerRox]

15. ITER will run for 500 seconds they'll get the data and move on.

The ITER will have nothing to do with practical fusion power at any time in the future. In my opinion Toridial fusion will never be practical as a power source, an opinion Robert Hirsch, former Director of the US Atomic Energy Commission has outlined for nearly 20 years.

[longship]

17. Thanks. I am skeptical, too. nt

[FogerRox]

19. Maybe you dont understand, the stated goal for the ITER, is to run for about 500 seconds

Once they have the diagnostic equipment operating.


ITER is a not a proof of concept or a prototype of a net power reactor.

[longship]

21. Believe me. I understand. Thanks much.

[FogerRox]

14. If I collide a proton and Boron 11 at a fast enough speed they will fuse, regardless of temp.

About 550kv IIRC.

[longship]

16. Well, it still has to release more NRG than it consumes.

It's not just the fusion process that is the technical problem. It's how to make the various processes generate power without putting in more power than is generated.

It's not just fusion, it's also thermodynamics. If you solve the one (which we apparently have), you still have to solve the other. Therein lies a big reason why we don't have Mr. Fusions in our flying Deloreans. At least not yet.

Regardless. One still hopes.

[PamW]

22. Speed is the equivalent of temp...

Temperature is what tells you how fast your particles are moving.

You could collide protons out of an accelerator like a cyclotron on a Boron-11 target and get fusion.

However, you don't get much energy from a beam of particles in an accelerator. You need a large amount of fast protons.

The way to get fast protons is to heat hydrogen to a high temperature. If we have enough protons to have a "collisional medium" then the distribution of speeds will be a distribution called a Maxwellian, after James Clerk Maxwell.
The most probable energy will be kT where k is Boltzmann's constant, and T is the absolute temperature. The average energy will be 3/2 kT.

So if you have a lot of protons; which you need to get any macroscopic amount of energy; then you will have a collisional medium, and if the speed of the protons is high enough to cause fusion; then by definition the temperature will be high. Speed and temperature are linked together.

In fact, particle physicists don't use Celsius, or Kelvin as their temperature scale; they will quote the "temperature" directly in terms of the most probable energy; i.e. the 550 keV that you cite above.

PamW

[FogerRox]

24. IIRC this may be what the Soviets did in 1958

You could collide protons out of an accelerator like a cyclotron on a Boron-11 target and get fusion.

The only example of P-B11 fusion that I've read about.

EMC2 hopes to adapt its WB-8 Polywell, currently using D-D fuel, to P-B11. P-B11 fusion would be very cool, in a machine that small would be extremely cool.

[wtmusic]

2. Weapons?! What the hell?

Obama continues to make the world a more dangerous place.

[PamW]

5. The weapons are old..

The newest nuclear weapons in the US stockpile are 1970s vintage.

Think about a '70s vintage car versus the cars of today. In essence, the Labs have to do what Chip Foose and his crew do on Velocity's "Overhaulin'" Chip Foose and the A-Team strip an old car down to its parts. They refurbish, sand and paint the parts that can be salvaged. They replace the old worn parts, and put in a new engine.

That's what the Labs have to do with nuclear weapons, which aren't going away any time soon.

In spite of all the talk about the Cold War being over; Russia still "points" nuclear-armed missiles at the USA. Obama has said that as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, then the USA will have them. When Putin was the Russian President in 2004, he started a decade-long program to modernize the complete Russian stockpile of nuclear weapons, and upgrade them with new nuclear weapons. That program is continuing.

Obama suggested another round of arms talks and arms reductions to Putin. However, with regard to Snowden, Putin just "gave the finger" to Obama and "poked the fingers into his eye". Secretary of State Kerry said that wasn't the way an ally should treat another ally. We could have reductions with an ally that we trusted.

However, it is clear that we can't trust Putin's Russia. Putin turned "thumbs down" on the Snowden issue, as well as Obama's proposal for arms reductions. Putin's Russia is going to be just as belligerent as it has ever been.

Given that attitude from Russia, the USA will continue "Overhaulin'" its nuclear weapons, and to do so without conducting underground nuclear tests. Since the NIF can approximate thermonuclear conditions, it can serve as a surrogate for the underground nuclear tests that we have chosen not to conduct.

PamW

[wtmusic]

7. Thanks for info. nt

[hunter]

13. Yep. These weapons are all well past their "use by" dates.

Radioactive widgets decay and plutonium recrystallizes.

A can of beans from the 'seventies would taste a little "off" too.

It's also interesting that bomb refurbishers are making what's speculated to be aerogels again.

[PamW]

23. Not the aging of plutonium....

hunter,

It's not the radioactive parts and plutonium that are the problem. See this article courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Lab:

US Weapons Plutonium Aging Gracefully

https://www.llnl.gov/str/May07/Schwartz.html

https://www.llnl.gov/news/aroundthelab/2012/Dec/ATL-121712_plutonium.html

As per the articles, scientists at LLNL have artificially accelerated the aging of plutonium, and have produced plutonium that is the equivalent of 150 years old, and it's still good.

The problem is more with the plastic parts that age like the plastic parts of your car's dashboard:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-10-08/news/9910080383_1_weapons-labs-nuclear-weapons-test-explosions

Plastics and composites that go into the precision-milled parts of a nuclear weapon can warp or split with age.

The problem is not merely finding these flaws but in judging whether they might prevent a weapon from exploding or cause it to explode by accident.

PamW