UK joins laser nuclear fusion project | Hacker News Reader

UK joins laser nuclear fusion project

bbc.co.uk

45 pointssoitgoes14 comments

If fusion ever becomes feasible they should drop the word "nuclear". Given the current level of fear around nuclear power the possibility of people exploiting the naming similarity is worrying.

Just like you get a MRI, not an NMR imaging - I read in few places that it got renamed to get rid of the "Nuclear" word, because it scared people.

I thought the claim of NIF was for fusion research was just a huge front for nuclear weapons research?

Isn't that well documented at this point?

Which AWE are they talking about? I suspect it's this one:

http://www.awe.co.uk/

I suppose it's a good thing to have them diversifying away from their main product lines!

No, I'm pretty sure it's entirely about the Atomic Weapons Establishment's main product line. The NIF isn't actually a practical fusion reactor design -- the output energy from one of its fuel capsules is an order of magnitude less than the input energy that powers the laser, whereas a viable reactor would need to produce an order of magnitude more energy ... at least once a second, rather than once every few months, and using fuel pellets costing at most a couple of dollars, rather than several hundred thousand.

What the NIF is good for is weapons research -- it's critically important to the Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockpile_Stewardship_and_Manag... ). And of course the AWE faces much the same issues in maintaining the British strategic nuclear deterrent as the NNSA does in maintaining the US warhead stockpile ...

If they wanted to back fusion research for electricity they'd be pumping money into ITER (the conservative option) or taking a flutter on pollywell devices (the hopeful long shot that might deliver a shortcut).

It seems likely that the energy angle of NIF is mostly PR for a nuclear weapons research program.

But it is hardly serious to dismiss a research project because of test costs and that tests can only be run once a month. For instance, the Polywell WB-8 isn't exactly outputting more energy than is needed to run it, either.

High energy laser costs seems to be going down fast; maybe they really can make that pig fly...

"they'd be pumping money into ITER"

Isn't the EU paying for 4/11ths of ITER? I hope the UK is paying our fair share of that.

there is also Sandia Z machine - has reached fusion conditions 10 years ago [ and personally i think it is most promising way to get fusion at small and large scales ]. It seems though that weapons research doesn't let the energy program there to move significantly ahead.

This is promising news. I wonder, though, what is the energy cost of extracting Deuterium and Tritium, which for sure is not null, and if in the balance they are already counting that and the conversion efficiency of the heat generated by the reaction.

Tritium isn't exactly easy to come by, yet the reactor would require approx 1 million "pellets" per day to keep alive? If they do reach ignition how do they intend on sustaining the reaction with so little fuel available?

I think they can produce them within the reactor, by using a mantle of Lithium, just like fission reactors can use mantles of heavier elements.

A physics prof of mine used to say "fusion power is twenty years away, and always has been."

This article doesn't seem to do much to change that perception, can anyone else shed light on the current likelihood of a sustained, surplus-generating reaction?

"The ITER fusion reactor itself has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, or ten times the amount of energy put in."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

However, this isn't for a sustained period of time - "up to 1,000 seconds".

The follow on DEMO plant would aim to produce 2000MW continuously:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO

Fusion is always 1 year further away than the speaker's retirement date.

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