US lab behind fusion breakthrough reaches ignition again | Hacker News Reader

US lab behind fusion breakthrough reaches ignition again

bloomberg.com

42 pointssaeedjabbar29 comments

My understanding is that the NIF was primarily to explore weapons research in the guise of fusion research.

We could use some nuclear miracles to help out with decarbonizing and it seems like we'd be better served investing in something that could possibly become viable (especially with the recent superconductor news).

What's the weapons angle for sustained fusion research? We've had the tech to reliably turn heavy water into 100 million casualties per warhead for >50 years.

No fission primary stage.

Ah nice, then they'd be easy to build without detection, and proliferation treaties become unenforceable. What could go wrong?

I think my mind just changed on whether fusion energy breakthroughs would end up as a net good.

Non proliferation treaties simply mean existing nuclear states can’t share with others.

They do exactly nothing, except apply a stigma/some worthless sanctions, in the event a state decides to fucking do it themselves. See: North Korea.

The Non-Proliferation Treaty actually does bar non-weapons state signatories from developing nuclear weapons themselves, and requires them to accept IAEA safeguards to ensure they are not doing so. The issue with North Korea is that they withdrew from the NPT, then re-entered it, then when they tried to withdraw again they did not give the 3 months notice required by the treaty. They claim that their re-entry into the treaty was merely a delay in their withdrawal, and thus they didn't need to give notice again. The rest of the world disagrees, and holds they are in violation of the treaty, and has sanctioned them accordingly. Sanctions are generally the worst punishment that violating a treaty can result in, barring the few exceptions where war would be both justified and practical.

Some of the implications, as far as I know:

1- A pure fusion weapon would be a "clean bomb", meaning it wouldn't emit long term radiation. Good, but bad because someone might be more willing to use it.

2- A pure fusion weapon wouldn't require a critical mass. In theory, the laws of physics don't preclude something that is really compact.

3- A pure fusion weapon would use deuterium, which is just a byproduct of heavy water. Anyone can get, or make the stuff inexpensively.

Granted, we're probably a century away from this kind of tech but if we keep getting superconductor and fusion breakthroughs it will come around sooner or later. Hopefully society will have advanced to a point where we are prepared to handle it.

point 1 is sadly wrong and I wish people would stop thinking that fusion doesn't cause radiation damage in all surrounding material.

The only thing I find more annoying that "fusion = totally 0 radiation" is the idea that it somehow will provide "free" energy. With any power plant, no matter the fuel, there will be cost of construction(with a limited lifespan) and maintenance. Same goes for distribution network.

It makes me wonder if we could improve fission reactors cost and safety, instead of performing biggest down scaling act in history of technology (700k kilometer Sun to mere meters)

I think OP meant "radioactive fallout" which would be the source of "long term radiation." Fission bombs scatter radioactive dust of uranium, plutonium, and fission byproducts that continue to emit harmful radiation for thousands of years.

A fusion bomb with no fission stage would have a massive radiation blast, but leave no radioactive fallout. 10 minutes after the bomb, radiation levels would be more or less back to background levels. Is my understanding.

Would it really be that infesaible to have a fusion bomb started by a non nuclear reaction?

probably because they can't test nuclear bombs anymore so this is alternative to gain any any new knowledge that puts US ahead of the rest? just look up NIF its a facility for weapons research

"It supports nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear explosions"

Pretty much zero afaik. If anything goes wrong the reactor just fizzles out.

> 100 million casualties per warhead for >50 years.

How did you reach 100M?

The blast radius is huge, but not that huge.

Sure its primary purpose is to gather data on nuclear fusion to help ensure that the nuclear stockpile is reliable without having to test it, but it isn't like them probing the conditions and behaviors of fusion ignition isn't meaningful for fusion reactors as well.

Yep. There needs to be a way to verify that the simulations run on all of those Department of Energy supercomputers actually translate to reality.

It's purpose is physics research, which benefits both weapons and fusion for power production, and other fields besides. Being able to study a burning plasma in a lab environment, allowing us to validate our computer models, is valuable even the power reactors we build using those models wind up looking very different.

It would be kind of cool if by accident scientists can create some wormhole. We can dump all our trash through it into Saturn or something.

Totally, or something like infinite probability drive from Hitchhiker's that would just send our trash to random other universes and timelines.

Which makes me wonder, are other universes and timelines sending us stuff? Is that where platypus' come from?

P.S. I'm not trying to say platypus' are trash, just that the don't fit in with our indigenous fauna and maybe another timeline thought they were and sent them to us.

Reminds me also of Aorist Rods.

The description of which in the book shows that not a lot has changed since Young Zaphod Plays It Safe was published in 1986.

https://alienencyclopedia.fandom.com/wiki/Aorist_Rod

isn't this the idea for The Witcher?

No?

Smart people like that would do dumb things. Why not park the other end of the wormhole in the core of the sun for dumping trash. Test it first? Nah, surely this thing is one way of course.

I know the cognitive dissonance is a bit heavy for some people on this topic but we already have fusion. Safire plasma can run for days uninterrupted on less than 300 watts of continuous input.

https://rumble.com/vbtfff-safire-project-update-2017-and-201...

This is crackpottery, right? All the links on that page point to other theories “debunking” general relativity and some “Electric Universe” fanfic.

Rumble is a haven for crackpots and frauds…not surprising.

Such as... Gleen Greenwald? Also, Safire plasma can't really be disproven.

I have personally seen one of these chambers and that they do run continuously for several hours.

> some people on Rumble I don't agree with so this raw video proof of a sustained fusion reaction is fake.

You are very very stupid. You do not belong on HN. Go back to 9gag.

Wrong.

The "other links" have fuck all to do with the plasma chamber. This method for sustained plasma had already been around for about two years, with earlier experiments going back to year 2010.

The raw video of the lit plasma is raw video, not CGI.

Teams at LLNL were involved.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com