>Just one more step on the long road to commercialization
Road
noun
1. a wide way leading from one place to another
2. a series of events or a course of action that will lead to a particular outcome.
Source: google
Happy?
> Wright Brothers Plane Won't Lead to Practical Flight
> Rocket Engines Won't Lead to Human Spaceflight
> Mold Spore Cultivation Won't Lead to Penicillin Breakthrough
and so on.
I’m guessing the Wright Brothers (and the equivalent of media/intellectuals at the time) didn’t know they had a sure thing early on either.
Usually these “tipping points” are defined in retrospect aren’t they?
Sure. But watching a bird fly is a key step towards making a 747 too.
The energy that came out of the fusion reaction was more than the energy in the laser beam that ignited it. But the energy that went into the laser was about 100 times more than the energy that came out, so we've gone from -99.5% efficiency to -98.5% or something like that. Is that a key step? I suppose. Is it major progress? Maybe. Does it get us substantially closer to practical fusion? No. Not by a long shot.
You just need to read past the first sentence. They immediately qualify their statement. In the same font size as the headline...
Even if you fix all the other issues (laser efficiency, actually generating all the energy that was released - the blanket needs to absorb and produce more power than was put in and therefore will not be as efficient, waste disposal and fuel pellet replacement), the pellets themselves sound like they take MejaJoules to even make, in the form of extraction transportation, refinement, and housing.
Gold is a rare earth, diamond is not as rare as it once was but even CVD methods take 1000 deg f Temps, hydrogen is relatively cheap but still costly to produce and store.
Perhaps there is another combination of materials that are cheaper to produce/manufacture, but this is the first and largest question to be answered, energy ratio and mechanics questions aside.
Until then, it's far from inevitable that this can be done, the hidden costs are probably many order of magnitude higher than directly estimated.
And there’s the problem right there. Inertial confinement will never lead to electricity generation.
Lawrence Livermore director Kim Budil is being misleading in saying that this is necessary first step. Ignition will be a necessary step along the path to practical fusion power generation (if it can be achieved), but it is far from clear that inertial fusion is on that path.