The findings themself seem like scoring after moving the goalposts. This is still very, very far from even a path towards realistic fusion-based energy production. What a farce.
We are developing literally a new way of making nuclear fire, a method which previously required an atomic bomb to produce. The first small kindled flame is definitely a triumph, even if we haven’t yet built a power plant for it.
You can hopefully make a bigger fuel pellet, but that kind of scaling hasn't been demonstrated and isn't guaranteed, because it begins to disperse as soon as fusion initiates in this inertial confinement scheme. So "just" a matter of runtime is harder than it might seem at first.
I'm curious if you could power boats like this, though. It might not be economical for electricity. But the power-to-weight ratio is probably pretty good.
That said, I'd need to think about it the design, I just don't think it's impossible.
https://suli.pppl.gov/2018/course/Ma.pdf
typical confinement time for ICF is on the order of a tenth of a nanosecond. I don't expect they have made a factor-of-millions improvement on this. I generally avoid watching videos whenever possible, but I think you are referring to the frequency at which the fuel pellets can be repeatedly ignited by a laser — there are no plans to use the output of one fuel pellet to directly ignite the next. In fact not even the "magneto-inertial" techniques with putative confinement times in the microseconds have a roadmap to achieve this.
It isn't a nuclear fission reaction where it is a chain reaction between pellets. Each pellet interaction produces energy, and you capture that energy. It is ignition for the pellet, not other pellets in the machine. The boiling of water thankfully happens on a much longer timescale, being accumulationf of energy of many pellets over a few cycles.
In this particular case, it's a quick laser pulse and an exploding fuel pellet, so there's no lengthy runtime possible.
There is no "triumph" here, just an improved $10M container that, blasted with 50 kWh of the highest-grade energy, electric power, produced 0.7 kWh of the lowest-grade energy, fast neutrons. Check the value of a kWh on your electric bill.
Science and engineering is made of hundreds of unsung triumphs with incremental decades-long payoffs. Like it or not, the "Q>1" mark has been a target for decades. I am glad to see it finally surpassed, and look forward to the order-of-magnitude increase we need to make the economics work.
What improvements are available? Get more neutron kinesis from each target, say 10 kWh? Bring the input energy down, through more efficient lasers, maybe even to 1 kWh? Bring the cost of the target down, from $10M each to, what, $10? Let us assume further that tritium is free, and that collecting the neutrons and driving a steam turbine (the major cost of operating a nuke) is also free.
But 10 kWh of hot neutrons translates to, at best, 4 kWh of electrical energy, and $2.50 per kWh is an order of magnitude more than we pay now. So, even in the best of all conceivable outcomes, this turkey does not fly.
We get "breakthroughs" of greater magnitude on a regular schedule in solar panel and wind turbine manufacture, that do not get trumpeted by the DoE.
This is a weapons program, operated by weapons researchers, pursuing weapons goals. The announcement is an attempt by the US DoE to help secure funding by making it look like they are involved in something besides nuclear weapons. How cynical do you need for it to be?
But I don't accept your premise of an exclusive or. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. The economics of fusion will not be what we need as a game changer for this generation, but learning curves and technological progress are like contributing to your 401k when you're in your 20s, and they will apply to fusion just like they did for solar. And by next generation, it would be lovely to have a gamut of technologies to choose from for different use-cases (powering spaceflight, for example).
The world is enriched by scientific and engineering progress, and just because I like Messi doesn't mean I think Ronaldo is shit. I think there is a tendency in these fusion discussions to put up a strawman and to assume that any excitement about fusion detracts from the practical tools that we can apply today. I can only assume that this tendency comes from the green-washing energy companies have engaged in (e.g. "green hydrogen" from natural gas). I understand this cynicism, because it has been earned. However cynicism can prevent us from being happy for real accomplishments -- and yes, the Q>1 is as arbitrary as celebrating the year 2000, but it IS an accomplishment.
One thing is certain: the nuke weapons will be incrementally more sophisticated.
It was advertised like the Higgs boson while it was really more like Elon Musk announcing that a fully autonomous Tesla had completed the first full circuit on a test track.
Ignition is critical as it means that, to use an analogy, a flame has been kindled. The heat of fusion is driving significantly more fusion, no longer just the laser alone. In other words, a sort of chain reaction. That is THE key to eventually scaling this efficaciously to higher gains, like the 25-50 needed for useful electricity production.
Let me put it this way, if NIF failed to achieve ignition then it would be a very ominous sign.
No one ever seriously thought that NIF would ever lead directly to a commercial reactor, LCF is far too finicky to ever reliably be used in a commercial setting.
> I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. --Stephen Jay Gould
I agree about the part of them giving credit to the current administration. While that maybe true to some extent it is not entirely true.
I disagree that this is a complete farce. This is a real breakthrough.
Just a note, no one (really, no one) is doing ICF outside of national labs because no one has the resources to fund ICF other than governments. If you're wondering why your fusion friends aren't excited about this, it's because now the pendulum will swing and people will abandon MCF in droves, because ICF actually achieved ignition whereas MCF hasn't yet.
A lot of fools who poured their money into all the trendy start ups are soon to realize they made their bets wrong. Everyone else is playing defense now.
[0] I said MCF hasn't "gotten close" but it has, that was a bit harsh. It's just NIF beat them.
Broaden to other forms of ICF and you can add First Light Fusion.
Political hoopla in exchange for further research into fusion? (Especially now that ignition has been achieved?) I'll make that trade every time.
Bonus points if they want to trumpet the heroic effort in the schools to get more kids interested in the science?
This nation has to get there first. If that causes liberals and conservatives to snipe at each other and compete to advance the frontier then that's nothing but a win for the US. I hope conservatives are mad. I want you to be butthurt.
You're complaining like I care about your cause. I don't. Neither do I care about the liberal cause. I only care about how I can manipulate the both of you and your fellow political fuzzy wuzzies to the benefit of this republic using your pseudo-religious polito-babble.