US scientists announce fusion energy breakthrough
Associated Press,
by
Michael Phillips *
Original Article
Posted By: Dreadnought,
12/13/2022 1:17:51 PM
Washington - Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced a "major scientific breakthrough" Tuesday in the decades-long quest to harness fusion, the energy that powers the sun and stars.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the first time produced more energy in a fusion reaction than was used to ignite it, something called net energy gain, the Energy Department said. The achievement will pave the way for advancements in national defense and the future of clean power, Granholm and other officials said.
"This is a landmark achievement for the researchers and staff at the National Ignition Facility who have dedicated their careers to seeing fusion ignition become
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Dreadnought 12/13/2022 1:18:48 PM (No. 1355690)
Think intra solar system travel at relativistic speeds.
4 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
Bur Oak 12/13/2022 1:24:26 PM (No. 1355697)
What they are talking about is only the energy in the laser beams compare to the energy released by fusion. It is not about the power consumed by the gargantuan machine used to generate the beams.
9 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Quigley 12/13/2022 1:24:31 PM (No. 1355698)
Anything for a headline from the global warming crowd. According to them the earth will be over with before this technology has commercial application. Maybe they’ll pick up a couple of votes today though.
8 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
greyseal 12/13/2022 1:25:57 PM (No. 1355699)
I'm cautiously optimistic. Early reports indicated that the sensors/monitors had been damaged and they couldn't validate if they actually produced more output energy than they used to create the ignition.
We'll see - it's a little early to buy stock in Mr. Fusion.
greyseal
10 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Califedup 12/13/2022 1:28:28 PM (No. 1355700)
If you get into the details, this is a bogus announcement. As usual it is a lie. The Scientists leave out a big part of the energy amount that is input into this fusion experiment. Seriously does anyone with any integrity believe a single word that comes out of the evil mouth of big ears Jenny Granholm? More green energy lies. Practical Fusion Energy is decades away at least.
21 people like this.
Deja vu.
3 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
MarkTwain 12/13/2022 1:40:25 PM (No. 1355706)
It's best to remain extremely skeptical about this. The Fusion-Industrial-Scientific complex is great at producing gee whiz announcements but no real progress. Every ten years for as long as I've been alive they've promised fusion is only 10 or 15 years away, if only we had more funding. 50 years later and we've only scratched the surface on fusion. The National Ignition Facility is a truly Rube Goldberg contraption of enormous size and complexity, but the DoD loves it because they keep designing huge lasers of enormous power. When you hear Fusion Research, think corporate and scientific welfare to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. But it's a government project so they will periodically declare some small measure of success so they can throw more money down the same bottomless hole.
19 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Laotzu 12/13/2022 1:41:17 PM (No. 1355707)
Yeah, and in 1989 the University of Utah made international headlines when they announced they had created a cold fusion reaction. You can always count on the stupidity of the media. In a few years we'll find out why this PR blitz happened now. And it will have nothing to do with science.
9 people like this.
I think cautiously optimistic is the right approach, because we have seen "breakthrough" announcements before. Look for a rash of "but this should not affect efforts to reduce global warming" stories. Already saw one in the NYT. The left needs the global warming issue like it needs the race issue.
4 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
spacer 12/13/2022 2:08:49 PM (No. 1355731)
Well as long as it cures AIDS and stops the Alaska Pebble mine from opening.....
4 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Catherine 12/13/2022 2:19:15 PM (No. 1355734)
I understand nothing about this stuff. I do remember, tho, years ago there was a lot of excitement about cold fusion. It was going to save the world. Then I never heard about it again. Greenies are trying to fix something that isn't broken.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
red1066 12/13/2022 2:26:25 PM (No. 1355738)
It will be decades before anyone sees a practical working model. I was reading about research into this when I was in high school back in the late 60's. It's taken that long to have a breakthrough.
6 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
hershey 12/13/2022 2:34:02 PM (No. 1355744)
It'll be a long time before we get to the point where we can throw a bananna peel into our DeLorean a la Back To The Future....to go anywhere...
4 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
Dipi 12/13/2022 2:34:07 PM (No. 1355745)
I am sure that will be the Chicoms hightest priority now; to steal the secrets from the United States.
5 people like this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
bpl40 12/13/2022 2:47:28 PM (No. 1355755)
Every few years they pull this story out. We are not an iota closer to lower electric bills than before.
5 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
joew9 12/13/2022 3:07:04 PM (No. 1355767)
The big headline. Must be budget time again.
3 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
Fosterdad 12/13/2022 3:12:15 PM (No. 1355773)
Even if we ever perfect fusion energy, there is no way environmentalists will allow anyone to build an actual fusion power plant. They'll come up with every excuse in the book why any plant should not be built and then run to activist judges who will put a kabosh on the whole thing. They'll say things like this plant disturbs the habitat of the spotted slug, or that plant's wastewater will poison some river that's 200 miles away, or some other nonsense. The last thing the far left wants is cheap energy for everyone. They want all of us, except for wealthy liberals, to go back to living in the stone age.
7 people like this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Zeek Wolfe 12/13/2022 3:15:04 PM (No. 1355774)
This so-called breakthrough in fusion research has sucked endless amounts of money into a black hole, a bottomless black hole. We have been promised for over half a century that fusion was a mere 10 years away and electricity would reach a puppies and rainbow point where it would not even be metered. Fusion is a dead end, eggheads pushing for more research money know this. Politicians, mostly lawyers and incredibly stupid in scientific matters, will no doubt continue the funding. In the meantime, clean nuclear like thorium and other forms of energy are ignored or shot down by environmental wackos
5 people like this.
Reply 19 - Posted by:
DVC 12/13/2022 3:24:33 PM (No. 1355782)
Maybe someday, #1.
Fusion is the ultimate power source.
While certainly an important milestone, perspective is important. I did some design work for supporting equipment for the NIF about 20 years ago. NIF is gigantic, requires HUGE amount of input power to get a tiny spec of fuel heated in a tiny fraction of a second to incredibly high temperature and pressure.
Going to be a long slog to get practical power output, and a lot longer than that for a unit that can move at any speed.
3 people like this.
Reply 20 - Posted by:
Proud Texan 12/13/2022 3:29:04 PM (No. 1355787)
If they ever do get this fusion power working, more than likely we will find out about it in a bright flash rather than a newsflash.
2 people like this.
Reply 21 - Posted by:
zoidberg 12/13/2022 3:33:14 PM (No. 1355790)
If and when it's replicated, I'll have reason for optimism.
3 people like this.
Reply 22 - Posted by:
swarfer 12/13/2022 3:38:28 PM (No. 1355796)
Let’s see, at the rate of EV introduction which is just battery stuff, we can guess at least 100 years before anything of use will come from fusion power except unending grants to the scientific community. Never underestimate how long it takes scientific breakthroughs, if that’s what this is, to become practical. They have been fooling around with this for at least 50 years contriving ever larger and more costly machines. Most likely they figured out or had enough computer power to accurately measure what was going on. It was likely a funding milestone. Make it work or get cut from the budget. This will definitely pave the way for more federal money.
4 people like this.
Reply 23 - Posted by:
Venturer 12/13/2022 4:27:56 PM (No. 1355824)
I look at this the same way I look at the carburetor that was going to give my car 100 miles to the gallon.
6 people like this.
Reply 24 - Posted by:
Jesuslover54 12/13/2022 4:40:05 PM (No. 1355836)
Been reading this same story since high school in the 50's.
7 people like this.
Reply 25 - Posted by:
JackBurton 12/13/2022 4:57:11 PM (No. 1355844)
Why aren't they behind or celebrating the skunk works fusion project??
https://lockheedmartin.com/en-us/products/compact-fusion.html#:~:text=Building%20on%20more%20than%2060%20years%20of%20fusion,our%20devices%2010%20times%20smaller%20than%20previous%20concepts.
3 people like this.
Reply 26 - Posted by:
DVC 12/13/2022 6:35:02 PM (No. 1355903)
Re #23. Invalid comparison. The "200 mpg carburetor" was always toral BS, never even a remote possibility of happening.
Fusion power is absolutely real......look at the sun
But, the time when we can used controlled fusion power as a stationary power source is probably at least decades in the future, possibly a century. But it IS a real possibility, just not likely practical within most of our lifetimes today.
4 people like this.
Reply 27 - Posted by:
DrOstrow 12/13/2022 7:16:03 PM (No. 1355932)
#26 is right. The '200 mpg carburetor' never was even possible - there simply isn't enough
energy in a gallon of gasoline to move a car's mass 200 miles. Just physics.
On the other hand if you like things like that, look up ROVAC sometime.
It was an air conditioner , originally designed for cars and it used no refrigerant, simply
air. Leaks ? Not a problem ! no freon. It had some problems ( it was noisy, for one )
but nothing that was a show stopper. Circa mid 1970's.
2 people like this.
Reply 28 - Posted by:
mifla 12/14/2022 5:09:46 AM (No. 1356118)
Let me know when it powers Air Force 1.
2 people like this.
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