/sci/ - Science & Math

What is it?

>>2050830
The National Ignition Facility.

>>2050846

Oh, that. Yeah, that's cool.

Fusion?

Let's hope this solves our energy woes.

I'm earnestly hoping for success. Fusion could solve so many of our current problems in the long term (climate change and pollution not least of them).

>>2050874
So am I.

I was sad that the US withdrew funding from the experimental reactor in France, but maybe the higher-ups are just secretly hoping this will totally work.

You now realize that even if we had access to infinite electricity it wouldn't make the world a better place.

If the first experiments were over a month ago, what happened? did it work?

>>2050939

By what definition of "better"? By most definitions, it absolutely would.

>>2050939
It wouldn't solve every problem ever, but it would be a whole lot fucking better.

>>2050939
As a species we have done a shitload of awesome things with energy. Is the world a better place now than it was 2000 years ago?
I think there are more things we can do with more energy that make the world at least an awesomer place.
>>2050959
They shot a thingy with lasers to show they could. Now they figure out whatever they need to figure out still, and shoot a thingy with the correct amounts of deuterium and tritium in, and hopefully when they do that it will create more energy than came out.

The way they say "ignition experiment" sounds like they actually tried for ignition, and maybe they have, but that doesn't mean that they were ready to actually HAVE ignition.

I think what it means is they shot a pellet with the laser and now they're analyzing data to see if it matches what they expected to happen, so they don't put a hole in a laser or anything.

>>2050939

Mode: Full Retard

Engage.

Just think: With fusion, nuclear energy would be abundant AND clean. You could have a fission plant right next to a fusion plant, and just swap the same material back and forth until it is entirely lost due to entropy. In this way we can completely eradicate all nuclear waste in exchange for incredible amounts of energy.

Or it'll explode and kill us all.

>>2051039
Errr, how would nuclear waste be fused? Don't fusion reactors run on lightweight shit like Hydrogen/Helium?

>>2051056
What is the product of beta decay? Therein lies your answer.

>>2051039
There's no way for it to "explode and kill us all." Making the fuel "explode" is the entire point. One wouldn't do this if it would kill us all. Failure would result in less energy output, not more.

>>2051056
Well, I figured that since fission split stuff apart, and fusion put it back together, you could just put the two reactors on a loop and never worry about fuel.

>>2051122
Fine then.

Or the reactor's protection systems would fail, leaking radioactive material into the surrounding environment and possibly poisoning people.

>>2051039
With ore reprocessing, we wouldn't HAVE waste. Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that has stood since, and the US has not allowed the tons of waste to be processed in ways that would allow useful fuel to come out of it, harmless isotopes to be buried simply, and other isotopes to be given to medical and research programs.

Honestly, a significant portion of nuclear waste is fissile material reactors can use, a huge portion of it is mostly harmless depleted isotopes of uranium, and only a small amount of it is actually hazardous.

>>2051125
Fission only splits really heavy shit like uranium.
Fusion only fuses really really light shit like hydrogen.

>>2050863
Not in our lifetime broseph. Fusion MIGHT start producing more energy than it consumes before we die if we are lucky, but it won't play a major role in energy produciton until every fossil fuel from here to Titan has been used up.

>>2051130
But it's NUCLEAR waste. That means it's extra bad.

Always remember: The lowest common denominator has the most power.

>>2051125
no

The good news is that no such thing is necessary. Tritium, in the small amounts required, is not difficult to come by.

>>2051130
Bitches don't know about my dirty bombs.

>>2051132
But yeah, his point was valid. Many of the isotopes out of fission reactors might be used as particle sources for adding neutrons to hydrogen.

Then again, I think we have to get our tritium mostly from annoyingly scarce lithium.

Man, any time we want to use something, we never have more than we could possibly need of it.

>>2051141
First off, geothermal, wind, solar.
Second,
>implying mortality
http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/forever-young/manhattan-beach-project-end-aging-2029

>>2051154
>implying anyone who draws less than a high-end six figure salary will get those drugs.

I just noticed something that confused me Don't get me wrong, any experiments done to create more efficient sources of energy and a better understanding of physics always get me interested.

Thing is, it says that they want to reach the goal of "ignition", or producing more energy from the reaction than what was put into it.

Doesn't that fly in the face of the laws of physics in general? One of the first things that I learned in chemistry was that it is impossible to get more energy out of a reaction than what was actually there at the beginning.

I'm not criticizing it, I'm just confused and I need an explanation, that's all. Any help would be appreciated.

>>2051151
Dirty bombs can't generate as much radiation damage as CELL PHONES!

>>2051141
I think you're being overly pessimistic. Assuming, for instance, that the NIF works as planned, its design could conceivably rise above the break even point just from incremental improvements in its various individual components.

Capacitors, for instance, can be improved tremendously with near-term nanotechnology (energy storage will be one of the first viable, widespread applications: this prediction is not far-fetched at all). The target could also be improved through nanotechnology as its precise architecture largely dictates the efficiency of the ignition. Running the numbers to determine the ideal structure for the target would require some serious computing power, but improvements are almost certainly possible.

The point is that the overall system is modular enough that technological improvements anywhere in the process have potential to enhance the overall efficiency.

>>2051203
The total energy will remain constant (including the energy introduced to the system). This is always true. But when you light gasoline on fire, a lot of energy appears to be produced. So how is the total energy conserved? Chemical energy was lost and converted into mechanical energy and light, which is perceived as heat and fire.

So the hope is that the energy emitted by the reaction (aka the light and heat) is greater than the energy required to initiate the reaction, although the energy will always be constant. Help?

>>2051203
A part of the matter in the fuel is converted to energy. When they talk about getting more out than you put in, that's not counting the fuel (otherwise, strictly speaking, there's no way to "generate energy," but that hasn't stopped us from building other kinds of power plants).

>>2051245
>>2051254

Ah, thanks. I didn't know that they weren't counting the fuel when they were talking about ignition. If they manage to succeed with that, this could be a major game changer in the field of energy generation

Another follow-up question: How are they going to harness the energy from this reaction and turn it into something usable?

In the long run, fusion may be the solution. But NIF isn't going to be much help there. A tokamak such as ITER is much more realistic for sustained fusion (NIF is a general high-temperature physics facility rather than a fusion facility per se).

Even assuming that ITER can manage sustained, above break-even fusion, that isn't going to help so long as it costs tens of billions to generate relatively small amounts of power.

>>2051132
> Fission only splits really heavy shit like uranium.
> Fusion only fuses really really light shit like hydrogen.

Not strictly true. However, as you move towards the middle, less energy is produced, and once you go beyond that, the reaction requires more energy than it releases.

The dividing line is iron. Fusion of elements heavier than iron or fission of elements lighter than iron requires more energy to initiate than is released.

>>2051125
IN THIS HOUSE WE OBEY THE LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS

>he uses megajoule lazors to ignit a fusion

>>2052377
Well, you have to keep in mind that most of the infrastructure is stable indefinitely (with some maintenance costs), and you get essentially "free" power out of it (the fuel is pretty insignificant, economically). It's like a perpetual annuity, the payments don't have to be that big to justify it, as long as you can keep collecting indefinitely. I don't think it needs to be very far above break even to justify the expense.

>>2051334
That's not their goal. They're trying to get ignition first, or any effort they put into building energy capture devices might be for nothing at all.

>>2051137
Yes, but the amount of nuclear, legitimately dangerous w... oh, I see.

Yes, it's nuclear waste and anything nuclear must be bad. Nuclear families, too. That shit just scares me.

america can still into super science.

>>2054108
Hell, yes, we can.

>>2054108
FUCK YEAH AMERICA

>>2056046
stop posting photo of ralph macchio

>this thread