Solar Towers producing 50% More Energy

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tortuga said:
These are all just gimmicks, perhaps well intended inventors that are good schmoozers with the right people to fund them.
All well except Fusion.

We had one in the US the now defunded Lawrence Livermore National labs achieved 'ignition'.
Once that happened it moved form a physics theory to a engineering problem.
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Well, hold on there, pilgrim. While it has faced some budget headwinds, the Lab is very much still open. It, like most federal
 
tortuga said:
We had one in the US the now defunded Lawrence Livermore National labs achieved 'ignition'.
Once that happened it moved form a physics theory to a engineering problem.
Click to expand...

They had a giant facility running all this crazy expensive equipment to produce enough energy to toast a piece of bread.

Also Livermore is a weapons lab. That experiment had zero application to commercial power production. It didn't advance fusion energy production from theory to engineering any more than the bomb did in 1949.

Consider how the first practical solar cells were developed in the early 1950s, and it took 50 years for manufacturing methods (and demand) to reach the point where mass commercial production was profitable. Fusion has not even gotten to the first part yet.
 
jaggedben said:
They had a giant facility running all this crazy expensive equipment to produce enough energy to toast a piece of bread.

Also Livermore is a weapons lab. That experiment had zero application to commercial power production. It didn't advance fusion energy production from theory to engineering any more than the bomb did in 1949.

Consider how the first practical solar cells were developed in the early 1950s, and it took 50 years for manufacturing methods (and demand) to reach the point where mass commercial production was profitable. Fusion has not even gotten to the first part yet.
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Its always been about generating electricity with Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) at National Ignition Facility (NIF). It started out of project known as PACER in the 1950's. PACER is way nuttier than solar roads, it envisioned the explosion of small hydrogen bombs in large caverns to generate steam that would be converted into electrical power.
A typical hydrogen bomb has two parts: A spark plug plutonium-based fission bomb, and a cylindrical arrangement of fusion fuels known as the secondary. The fission spark plug releases x-rays, which are trapped within the bomb casing. They heat and compress the secondary until it ignites the fusion secondary.
A pure fusion reaction does not use a fission spark plug.
 
tortuga said:
We had one in the US the now defunded Lawrence Livermore National labs achieved 'ignition'.
Once that happened it moved form a physics theory to a engineering problem.
Click to expand...

That was not a working fusion reactor. That was a great fusion experiment.

They loaded tons of energy into a capacitor bank. They used that energy to generate laser beams (with significant loss of energy). The laser beams were sent down an optical amplification and focusing system (more energy used, more energy lost). They dumped about 400 MJ of energy into the facility, which resulted in about 2 MJ of energy focused on the fusion target, and then they got more than 2MJ out of the fusion process, but much less than the original 400 MJ that went in. (1 kWh is 3.6 MJ, so ~100 kWh in for < 1 kWh out).

IMHO a fantastic physics result. And apparently valuable for something entirely separate from energy production: validating the fusion physics simulation code used for national defense. But not much of a viable fusion power plant.

-Jonathan
 
tortuga said:
Its always been about generating electricity with Inertial confinement fusion (ICF) at National Ignition Facility (NIF). It started out of project known as PACER in the 1950's. PACER is way nuttier than solar roads, it envisioned the explosion of small hydrogen bombs in large caverns to generate steam that would be converted into electrical power.
...
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Yeah, I don't think those links really support your argument that the 2022 NIF shot was about producing electricity.

To my knowledge, no one has ever built an actual fusion apparatus with the intent of generating electrical output. They're still just trying to get net thermal energy at scale, and punting the engineering of turning that heat into electricity to future engineers.

As Jon explained, using ~100kwh to get about .27kwh worth of heat and then claiming that is 'scientific breakeven' is ... well, even if it's technically correct under someone's definition it's still misleading to the general public.
 
Yeah ok, thanks for the correction. I guess they are just working on a military laser.
I wonder what military purpose it would serve if not electricity generation? 🤔
1763776656618.png
 
tortuga said:
Yeah ok, thanks for the correction. I guess they are just working on a military laser.
I wonder what military purpose it would serve if not electricity generation? 🤔
View attachment 2580708
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One of the big reasons for laser fusion experiments is to test our fusion simulation algorithms.

One of the big reasons for having good fusion simulation algorithms is to to be sure our hydrogen bombs will work without regular tests.
 
I suppose a Fusion Thermal plant would be Magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) AKA a Tokamak would use superconducting transfromer / magnet that can witstand high temperatures, not lasers.
Low-temperature superconductors (LTS) that have almost no resistance also don't create much of a magnetic field, so we'd need High-temperature superconductors (HTS) that generate higher magnetic fields.
But then the stronger the magnetic field the more they want to push apart so I guess the physics limit to the strength of a magnet is probably the strength of the supporting structure that keeps it all in one piece.
So we'd probably need a new super alloy to keep the magnets together and a High-temperature superconductor.
probably a ways off.
 
When I was in first grade in 66 they came with some kind of pole setting truck and put up a really tall wooden pole right in the middle of our playground. Teacher called me a few times to stop looking out the window, but I kept watching and she wasn't too strict because she liked me and knew what I found fascinating.

But anyway, what they put up was a big Civil Defense siren. I remember thinking the wire going to it looked heavy. It was loud as all H especially 50 feet away from your classroom window.

But Duck and Cover, or run down the steps into the "Multi Purpose" room in the basement.

I guess the plan worked, because I'm still alive
 
Joethemechanic said:
When I was in first grade in 66 they came with some kind of pole setting truck and put up a really tall wooden pole right in the middle of our playground. Teacher called me a few times to stop looking out the window, but I kept watching and she wasn't too strict because she liked me and knew what I found fascinating.

But anyway, what they put up was a big Civil Defense siren. I remember thinking the wire going to it looked heavy. It was loud as all H especially 50 feet away from your classroom window.

But Duck and Cover, or run down the steps into the "Multi Purpose" room in the basement.

I guess the plan worked, because I'm still alive
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Those days were scary, for sure, especially for those of us who were kids at the time. I was in junior high school (nowadays known as middle school) during the Cuban Missile Crisis when we were having D&C drills in school. I remember my dad telling us that we would have to shoot our dog and cats before fleeing Lake Charles, LA (there was and still is major petrochemical refining there) if we went to nuclear war with the Russians. I am so glad that we have nothing like that to fear now, sarcasm intended.
 
ramsy said:
There are at least 9 countries that have developed MIRV’s on ICBM’s.
en.wikipedia.org

Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

All it takes is one dictator to get rabies, mosquito born encephalitis, or in the case of the US, lose the next election, before wiping US out.
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Ever since I could understand the concept of war it has always been my biggest source of fear that a minuscule portion of the population holds the fate of all the rest of us in their hands, and with the inexorable advance of technology it just gets worse and worse. It is the premise of many works of speculative fiction that the self destruction of humanity is not only possible but inevitable.

There has in recent times been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over what is going on in several places in the world where the killing of civilians is being used for leverage in conflicts between political entities, but such tactics have always been used. The US's record isn't clean, either - Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden... What is especially scary to me personally is that a lot of people here in the US who are "hawkish" don't seem to realize that the days of all armed conflicts between the US and other countries happening "over there" are long gone.
 
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