Lasers may enable fusion

Its about time they start moving on this technology!!!! With the resourses we have on this planet and space (SUN), we shouldn't be so dependent on oil like we are. I know oil companies want to suppress the technology to take all our hard earned income away from us. Its just mind blosing all the energy the sun can generate yet we use almost none of it!. Its amazing how greed keeps us in the dark ages!! Ofcourse its the idiots in Washington DC who let this happen. All for the love of $.

My question would be this: What would the repercussions be of some sort of failure in the system? Fusion doesn't currently exist in full form because of the heat, power, etc.. so how safe is this way of doing it?

A failure in the system would result in rapid decay in the reaction i.e. it would stop. You would be left with a lot of hot salt. Fusion reactions are very hard to maintain and what is missing from the discussion is that it is not plain water being used but a very rare isotope. Unless the isotope is being fed into the system precisely to where the heat/pressure are sufficient, the reaction just ends. The idea is the fusion reaction creates power, that creates electricity, then then is fed to the lasers because they can precisely deliver the power. To end the reaction, just turn off the lasers.

Good question Wilhelm. I think I heard that it has the possibility of melting the earth. I guess that would be a bad thing huh? I hope that the scientists are thinking things over and not just guessing seeing that all of our lives are at stake.

@ Wilhelm...
no... Fusion does not exist in full form because we can not replicate the efficiency of fusion on earth. To simulate the fusion that takes place on the sun, we currently have to input more energy than we get out. Therefore it is not a good source of energy with our current methods.

That is the reason for the statement in the article that says "The capability to get more energy out than is put in should be available in about five to seven years."

D. Willhelm, it's incredibly safe. Do a quick web search on "inertial confinement fusion".

D Wilhelm.
The fusion process is far safer than current fission reactors. Fusion requires a constant external input of energy in order to maintain the reaction. Remove this energy input and the process stops. A controlled fission reaction on the other hand requires a constant removal of energy from the process, a more difficult task and one open to human/mechanical error.

NIF = National Ignition of Funds... this technology will fail just like all its predecessors. This has nothing to do with oil, and more to do with the laws of physics.

why arn't fusion projects getting the resources it desperately needs??? fusion is the most important and revolutionary technology we would have ever gotten are hands on and once we have it, we would enter an age of prosperity never witness before in history

stupid goverment spending all the resources on the military to kill ppl and security to keep our paronoid minds at ease , and not on the most important things to help us as a species advance: science, education, and technology. idiots wanting to keep us in the stone age or something???

The interesting aspect of sustained nuclear fusion on a commercial level, power distribution, will be s sociological one. I think a key component of an advance society is an abundant, limitless power source. Once we harness fusion, we will become such a society. Imagine enough power to fuel massive farms, water purification systems, transportation infrastructures (electric cars), the possibilities are endless. We will have in effect come close to creating a Utopian society. Can, or should I say, will mankind be comfortable in a society where "everyone" can at least have the basic fundamentals of life. I am in my early 50's, at this juncture I'm not sure whether to be excited at the potential that is on the horizon, or dread whether a new boss having unlimited energy, becoming more malevolent than anyone in history.

It would be very safe, the conditions for fusion to occur are very hard to achieve. In the event of a containment failure, the decrease in pressure and temperature would halt any occurring fusion in its tracks. It is, in theory, a built-in failsafe.

The problem thus far is making the fusion process "economical". As in getting more energy out of the process than you energy you have to put into it (very high temperatures and very high pressure). They haven't been able to do it yet. Think: ITER and the fake hoopla of "cold-fusion".

Maybe lasers will pull it off. We'll see.

Im not a specialist, however, fusion is less radioactive then fission. The process would be set to be slow and controled just like a fission reactor small amounts of fuel would be fused at a time. Enormous amounts of energy are needed to achieve ignition, point where fusion becomoes stable and self-sustaining, as long as theres fuel. Tritium, slightly radioactive and non natural occuring elemnt would be it so if something happens, like the reactor burst or something, the alpha particles will manage to scape rapdly cooling off the plasma and fusion would cease, probably within tenths of a sencod. They can also develop later on technologies to use Deuterium-another Hydroigen Isotope- thats not radioactive as tritium, as fuel.

The answer is that since everything has to be just perfect to make it work, if anything wasn't, the reaction would just stop. It would be like the lasers were shooting (at) blanks.

Solar power is moving in the right direction but it still takes lots of land and lots of sun to generate power. Even the fields in AZ dont produce that much, granted its only a small amount of the actual energy is being converted to power due to panel efficiency, which is steadily increasing =).
As for fusion, the repercussions would be that the reaction would stop. Its not like in the sun where its own mass is keeping the reaction going. This form of fusion requires an input energy to sustain itself. The byproducts are far less dangerous than fission and runaways are not possible so no Chernobyl. Wish I was there working on this project.

Tritium is required but is NOT available naturally. It is produced by uranium reactors, which produce more electricity to make one tritium atom than fusion reactors can when consuming this atom.

Fusion reactors cannot regenerate all the tritium they consume – Tokamaks neither.

Tritium can't be replaced by deuterium, helium, lithium, nor boron, as the reaction gets even much more difficult. Tokamaks can't, in short. Laser fusion nor the Z-pinch machine have such plans, because tritium reactions are already too difficult.

Worse: to produce as much electricity, fusion expels three times more neutrons than uranium does, so induced radioactivity is three times worse. Fusion energy is neither abundant not clean, and won't work any time soon.

So why do we waste thousands of physicists and tens of billions of dollars in fusion? With that effort, we would already have electricity, produced – stored – transported cheaply, from geothermal, wind, and thermal solar energies. This is realistic. Fusion isn't.

@D. Wilhelm: If you turn off a fusion reactor such as this one, or if the reactor fails, it shuts down. It doesn't explode or anything like that; the fusion reaction has to be maintained in existence moment to moment or it just stops cold.

I like to keep an eye on this.

Is this headline really news? Lasers have been used for experimental fusion reactors for decades.

I doubt if it would be self-sustaining, so the dangers would be tiny at most, and tied into the by products.

The 5 – 7 years seems optimistic, I now a lad working on this near Oxford in the UK ( ITER ), he's saying 30 – 40years, there getting back @1% of what they put in currently.

This still might not be possible on a Scale less than a small sun sadly, but we've got to try.

Although it's a million degree hot plasma, there already creating the plasma and he reckons it's safe as it shuts off instantly.

I'll believe it when it's done!!

While I like it as an alternative source of energy, I find it interesting that there are still places suffering from droughts and water conservation issues whose problems have yet to have been solved and here we are talking about using water for a fuel source. Also, just how much extra water will this end up using, and do the separated components recombine in the atmosphere or is it a permanent alteration? What happens to the planet when the balance of temperature created by a certain amount of water is altered?

Chris, You make a great point regarding those idiots in Washington and the petrol corporation's attempts, and so far successes, in squandering clean and renewable energy. But, even if fusion energy projects like the one in this article come to fruition, it will still be the big energy companies who control this energy and sell it for astronomical profits. Solar energy is great because I can just drop several thousand and take my home off the grid. But I can't have a fusion reactor in my back yard. I will still need to purchase this energy from huge corporations and they will still remain greedy as ever...

fusion and combination of the "god-particle" research at CERN should go on full steam ahead to eventually solve our energy needs. The power is in the atom and its quantum forces.

I remember I was a graduate student (in Computer Science) and had to suffer endless discussion from friends in Physics about the great debate on whether "inertial confinement" (lasers for us simpletons) or "magnetic confinement" (like the ITER that is being built for the past twenty years) would win in the end. Having an engineering background I thought they were crazy to think that they could achieve "breakeven" (the holy grail for fusion guys) within the decade. This was 25 years ago. And I see the same prediction now. Some things never change. In another 25 year the breakeven will be about a decade away at this rate.
For comparison: the neutron was discovered in 1931. Nagasaki was blown up in 1945.

if it was so easy for the sun to create helium , the whole thing would be exploded in a fraction of a second long time ego, the fact that it is still shining for so long , is an evidence that fusion is not so frequent , in fact only minute amounts are produce by a body that is 1 million times bigger the ours, fusion by laser is just a dream , but again it can generate jobs....

D. Wilhelm. I could be wrong but I believe the general consensus is that a fustion reactor is very hard to keep going. The reaction can't go 'critical' because it lacks sufficient fuel, temperature and pressure. What it can do is get out of position and go out. Sort of like a match falling into water.

Think of it like a relatively low temperature naptha fueled fire suspended in a wood box. The naptha doesn't burn very hot and if it spills onto the wood, it burns out without igniting the wood.

There are nuetron radiation issues. As I understand it, the reactor vessel would become radioactive. There would be no spent fuel storage issues as in fission reactors as the fuel is consumed.

I do not like the usage of world limitless resources. Our energy needs are very high and i would worry about eventual water resources.

"The capability to get more energy out than is put in should be available in about five to seven years, Moses said. Researchers hope to get a demonstration plant up and running in the next 10 to 15 years."

Translation:

"We will be able to violate the laws of thermodynamics...sometime in the next 15 years."

And the article's follow up? Where is the journalism? How do they plan on achieving fusion in a way that doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics?

Chris, maybe greed has kept this technology from us, but only greed will make it possible to happen. Bottom line? Consumers still will have to pay and the companies that control the energy will extract every dollar from us that they can get.

The website the pointer at the end of the article://laser.llnl.gov is actually pretty good. I'm impressed.

Chris – I don't suppose you consider yourself to be a "conspiracy nut", but your comment about the oil comanies wanting to " suppress the technology" etc. indicates that you are. You can be assured that there are no rooms full of oil company executives sitting around figuring out ways to supress any new technologies.

What you will find, however, is groups of highly motivated executives, trying to figure out ways that those "evil" oil companies can become part of the solution. You will never hear any oil executive say that we are not going run out of oil sooner or later. They all know we will.

What they also know is that we are going to be dependent on oil for a much longer time than any of us thinks we are, and they need to maximize the profits of their companies so those companies will have the incredible sums of money that it's going to take to get to the oil that's left.

And, they know that the idea of "global warming" is a political trick, perpetrated by idiots like Al Gore and the people on the Global Warming Committee (or whatever it's called), using "science" that has been totally debunked to frighten timid Americans into letting the Government "save" them by taking away trillions of their dollars in Cap and Tax schemes and the like.

Oh, yeah, and it's also not true that the salary and bonuses of the top executives in oil companies or other large companies, causes millions of others to be poor. The amount of money paid to executives of big companies is miniscule when compared to the total expenses of such companies – - expenses such as salaries for people like you and me. The truly obscene salaries are those of the heads of the major labor unions – - money extorted from every American in the form of increased costs of goods and services.

@D Wilhelm below: The repercussions are almost non-existent. The conditions required to sustain a fission reaction are so precise that if any of them failed, the reaction would immediately cease. There is no chance of a runaway reaction such as that exists with the current Fusion Generators. Basically it requires fuel and a lot of heat. Only small amounts of fuel would be fed in at any given time and if the magnetic containment broke down, the process would not be able to continue. From what I've read, any accidents would be of a scale comparable of any typical industrial accident.
If you'd like to read more about it, here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power

the safety issue is a small one. If you cut the power to the lazer the fusion process would end immediately. the hardest thing the scientists have to deal with is keeping the lazer cool enough to not over heat. They are getting really close to turning the lazer on and keeping it on Then with the combined usage of radio waves to stablize the water for the lazer to heat up and cause the fusion process begin, and then its stand back for megajoule power.

There is always someone ready to throw in fear when it comes to fusion – the covert enviro-nimby ? There is so much information about fusion on the internet – I strongly suggest using it. In case you are so very lazy – when it comes to a fusion reaction there are no safety issues unlike present day fission reactors,.........

Actually, this technology is very safe. The trick with a fusion reaction is keeping it contained so that it will continue, not preventing a chain reaction. The article is little bit amusing because 30 years ago power generation from fusion energy was supposed to be right around the corner. Just ask Lyndon LaRouche. Ha ha. It will be interesting to see if this time they are not overselling the technology again.

A failure? A lot safer than a nuclear fission plant. Chernobyl? Remember that? How about 3 mile island? Wasn't there a nuclear plant problem in late 2009? Oh yeah, and how about Bill Gates throwing money at nuclear power plants? C'mon Billy boy, throw some dough at the fission guys. I don't really feel like having feet the size of volkswagens courtesy of radioactive fallout.

This type of 'fusion' is fairly safe. You are taking 'neutral/stable' elements and releasing the potential energy without the fear of a chain reaction (in fusion the particles that wouldnt easily come together do and at worst, just stop coming together through natural forces). Of course, the end result 'steam energy' has its pitfalls, but has been in use for centuries.

We do not need to cool the earth as we already have learned from the disgraced scientist in the UK who stated that the story that the earth was warming up was all a big lie. In fact the earth's temperature had risen only .12 of a degree in the last 15 years.

We have been "10 to 15 years away" from practical applications of fusion for 40+ years. The science is amazing in a whiz-bang kind of way, but nobody but optimists seeking funding for their projects believes that practical application of fusion generated power systems will occur in our lifetime.

@ Wilhelm A Fusion reactor is inherently safer than a Fission reactor, unlike a Fission reaction, once the "fuel" is shut off, the reaction stops. at most, a catastrophic failure of a fusion reactor should only be a local event only, with very little long term radiation hazard. (not certain how residual radioactivity remains after long term Neutron bombardment of reactor parts)

D. Wilhelm, none, it is not like current nuclear reactors. Fusion using this method can not get out of control.

Fusion power DOES exsist in full form, in the former USSR. 'Cold Fusion' is what does not YET exsist. Next, there is no way to produce electirc power that is completely 'safe'. Even hydroelectric dams can cause terrible flooding, coal plants can cause floods of coal ash (like in Tenn recently), and wind and solar... well, they are just too new to know what hazards they really pose.
If you read about Einstein, his dream was that his research was to be used to find a way for individuals to create power for themselves. So that the citizens of very poor nations could create electricity themselves. This, of course, scared the punk out of electric companies in the US and Europe. IF people could have personal nuclear power generators, then how could power companies compete and stay rich?
Let's TRY not to focus on "what can go wrong". Everything comes with risk, even walking out your front door.

They tried to use tritium in Spiderman to create energy and look what happened. All joking aside, until we have an energy source that can create more energy that it consumes we are stuck with oil, coal, and nuclear. If these scientist are so sure of their product then lets tap into our local resources of oil and coal for cheap energy NOW!

This could be an effective way to create electricity, however, there will always be a social aspect to the use of nuclear power. The fact is scientist have already created an extremely effective way to harness power through nuclear reactors. The main reason this method isn't used in a widespread manner (to completely power the globe vs a portion of it) is because of nuclear waste and the public's view on nuclear energy.

The same issues would be present in this fusion reactor, though the physics behind the development of this technology will surely improve humans understanding of nuclear technology, it probably won't be an effective means of solving global energy issues. We should just build nuclear reactors on a massive scale and put the waste in underground containment.

But what happens when all the super-villains that get produced from the nuclear fusion rays start taking over the world and making people their butlers?

What happens then, science? HUH!?

The one problem VERY FEW warm and fuzzy articles about fusion go into . . . is the radioactive residue and the structural problems. NOTHING in our version of reality (3/4D space) likes to be bombarded with neutrons.

Lot's of things become radioactive as result of the bombardment, like some of the building materials from which the reactor will be built.

Also, the structural integrity of the fusion reactor decays as time goes on. A Scientific American article of the past said that most fusion reactors designed back then (approx 1980?) would last about 5 years before it would have to be scrapped due to structural degradation and residual radiation.

Granted, it's a LOT LESS radiation than what is left over from a fission reactor, but it's still a price to pay and leave for our ancestors.

OTOH, there is sufficently less radioactivity that bombing it by extremists will only lessen our energy source. And since Europe's only clean, contiuous solar energy is Northern Africa, it'd be better to generate the power via fusion in Europe – politically and religiously less vulnerable.

In High School I wrote a glibly positive report on laser fusion that went into even more detail and supposedly advanced science than this article. Sadly, that was back in 1975... Even back then, they were supposedly only a few years from a break even reaction. I really WANT to believe that THIS TIME IT WILL BE DIFFERENT but if 35 years of research has been so unproductive it seems unlikely that we're suddenly going to have the sun in a bottle. Still, as wastes of money go, this is a noble cause and I'd love to be proven too pessimistic.

We don't need to replace hydrocarbons.. we need to supercede them and the sooner the better to avoid heightened global tensions over dwindling hydrocarbons and climate change. Hopefully a cheap/simple/compact method will be found. The physicists have been working on conventional methods since the 50's.

This is more important to the long-term progress of the human race than going to the moon. A power source like fusion might actually allow us to synthesize new supplies of rare earths and other resources. We have run through much of the supply of cheap non-renewable metals in the last 100 years, the population is growing rapidly, and there aren't too many earths within easy reach.

Adam, the system isn't closed so it doesn't violate conservation laws. Just e=mc^2 in action: Wonderful stuff if it ever works. I hope for a truly self-sustaining fusion reactor one day, but when that will be is a question noone can honestly answer. We (US) really need to get behind each of these fusion methods because whichever country (-ies) solves the containment & sustainability problems will make a lot of money! High temperature, malleable superconductors, as well.
Anti doctor, temperature & pressure are related: a star's mass/gravity initiates fusion, whereas, we must use high temperatures in confined space (which thereby increases pressure) to start a rxn & simulate a star. The sun itself loses an extraordinary amount of mass (thousands of tons/s, if I remember correctly) as energy.
Finally Danny, soviet tokamak reactors are to what I assume you refer. Fusion has actually existed on earth even longer just not in reactor form. These present reactors all fail to produce more energy than they consume. Cold fusion "ie, @ STP" is a joke.
Please tell people about fusion in order to generate (positive) interest. The more people on board, the more grants, and the sooner we can figure this out (hopefully in the next 30)!

The entire reason for going back to the moon is to mine tritium. And yes this process produces huge amounts of Gamma radiation. That's what we need to learn to convert directly into electricity. And no, fusion reactors are not as safe as fission reactors. Don't kid yourself.

They have been working on this technology with lasers for the last 15 years. It would be an extremely safe process. They would only be using minute amounts of water pumped into a very small chamber. It is not a self sustaining reaction. If you terminate either the fuel source or the laser, the process is over. It has several problems, one is focusing the laser on to a small drop of water ( they have also tried this with other fuel sources) and the big big one is the power and reliability of the laser. Lasers are fairly fragile and produce great amounts of secondary heat.

If this is successful, our energy problems will be over. The radioactivity from fusion reactors is only dangerous for... I think I read once 50-100 years ?? Not sure, but not for thousands+ like fission reactor waste. Also fusion reactions require that the processes which start them, continue. If those processes stop fusion will rapidly halt, unlike fission which will on its own.

My problem with this is why are we still talking about energy sources that convert matter from one form to another? Especially a resource as precious as water. The fusion process used here is converting the hydrogen from liquid water into gaseous helium. What happens to the oxygen from the water? What does it convert into or combine with? Short term, fine, we have a "virtual limitless supply", but the same thing was said about coal and oil. So what are the long term ramifications? How quickly is the fuel depleted (we are talking about water here, not some otherwise useless material sitting inert underground)? Burning coal at least is self sustaining, you don't have to put hardly any energy back into the process to keep it going relative to the amount of energy you get out of it.

Fusion is the Energy Source of the Future – And always will be. It has been 5 -10 years in the future for the last 40 years. It does fund many research careers though.

This keeps coming up...what happened to SHIVA from the late 70's early 80's NOVA program about using lasers for starting and maintaining a controlled fusion reaction...

Two things: This is NOT an endless power supply. Unless they can get rid of the necessity for Tritium, then we are still looking a limited fuel supply without a massive expansion in the U.S. nuclear power industry. Tritium is a closely guarded resource, since it is the main component for thermonuclear weapons. So don't get your hopes too high. This would however be a great leap forward in scientific research.

Second, there would be no residual radioactivity from a Fusion plant once shut down. the nutrons do not pass on radioactivity to other inert elements. Theey provide pure energy. Since no radioactive material would be used (other than the miniscule amounts of Tritium), there would be little worry for contamination (transfer of radioactive material to an inert object).

D. Wilhelm in response to your question.

A fusion reaction must exist highly compressed and contained state in order to be sustained. This is why fusion has been such a challenge. We haven't been able to contain it without using more energy than it puts out.

The good news; If the containment is broken, the fusion reaction ceases to exist. No explosions – it just stops. To boot, there is no radioactive byproduct if the reaction goes wrong. In laymens terms, it is 100% safe.

Keep in mind that existing corporations will try to suppress or control new developments of any kind. Solar is an example, while solar cells are not all that efficient in enough numbers they can put out very large amounts of power. Figuring that there are 50 million single family homes in the US and if each of them was equipped with 3-5 kw solar arrays we could supply our own electric needs provided we had a way to store the power. Why are we only pushing forward on corporate supplied power from coal, oil, nuke, wind, solar ? I would say that stock holders and executives have a major say in that and because they pretty much own DC it will stay that way.Yup, solar is inefficient but then so are hybrid and gas/diesel engines but we do use them.
I firmly believe that if someone were to come out with a cheap pill that would convert seawater to gas they would have a very short life expectancy. Yes, I'm cynical but I've seen govt and corporations do some pretty stupid things during my life so I have earned that right )

Ha! the guy's last name is Moses... So Moses instead of parting the water, now Moses is fusing the water.

Interesting research, but not cost effective until oil reaches $1000 a barrel and the radioactive waste problem is solved. Fission is more practical as it is a natural process that even occurs in your backyard at terrestrial temperatures. Fission power generation’s direct and indirect by-products, such as radioactive xenon and cobalt 60, are nasty and solutions are needed to fix this radioactive waste problem. Fusion is not a natural process and break-even with a deuterium-tritium mix will produce high energy neutrons that will eventually irradiate the power generation system to again reproduce the radioactive waste problem. Hence, most of the research money should be used to solve the waste problem first.

Chon, the amount of water used would be ludicrously low compared to the amount of energy generated. If it takes a typical swimming-pool-sized volume of water to generate enough power for California (a state with 50 mln people) for a year, then the quantity contained in 12 such swimming pools (infinitestimally small fraction of water compared to all the water in the earth's oceans) would be able to provide enough energy for the rest of humanity anually for literally millions of years.

Fusion, btw, would enable us to extract far more fresh water from the ocean through the process of electrolysis, solving all the world's fresh water problems, essentially for free.

Do some research on Nikola Tesla and see some of the ideas that he had for cheap\free energy generation and wireless power transmission.

See how he was shutdown and threatened because there was no way to slap a meter on it.

You know, it doesn't take much to figure out that the big power players and producers want things to continue running the way they are. Any innovations they want to fully control and continue making money off of.

Fusion?? Sounds good but it's way off. It's real purpose right now is to keep the public thinking the gov is doing something for future energy needs and DoE scientist busy.

Did you know that electric cars have been around since the early 1900's? Why are there still so few on the road? Why is the infrastructure not there STILL not being build to accommodate them.
Do you think the gas companies are going to pay for them? If not them then who? The government?

Where is the money to be made in providing clean, consumer renewable energy?

You don't have to be a "conspiracy nut" to figure out that cheap, clean producible energy is being blocked by the big corps.

Nothing truly innovative in power production will come out to the masses unless it's completely unavoidable to do so otherwise.

You can bank on that.

Enthalpy's reservations are spot on. In fact the tritium issue is even more daunting, because Uranium reactors cannot produce tritium at anywhere near a rate fast enough to match the consumption that would be required for fusion energy production at economically significant amounts. The Deuterium-Tritium fusion can only work if the reactor can generate its own Tritium using some of the neutrons it generates.

Also, the laser reactor as it is currently designed uses a solid pellet of Deuterium-Tritium, that has to be machined into a nearly perfect sphere, or else the reaction will fizzle. It currently costs millions of dollars to machine a single pellet, and the lasers can blast one pellet every few hours or so. To make a practical power generator, we'd need to feed these pellets in at several hundred a minute, like a machine gun, and the pellets would have to cost a few cents each at most.

These and other similar challenges are probably why fusion power has been "20 years away" continuously now for the last 60 years at least. Even if we achieve positive net energy, actually using fusion to generate energy on a commercially viable scale will still be a long way away.

This is not to say that we shouldn't research fusion. It is the only means of energy production (well, potential energy production) we have that is not completely dependent on the sun, and as such, in the long term, fusion power is absolutely required for our long-term survival as a species.

But it would not be realistic to think that this in any way represents a realistic short term energy option.

Yes, get this new power source and electric recharagable cars. Less polution and reduced oil imports from countries that want to get rich so they can kill us. Sounds like a plan to me!

We should not forget that there is, in the long term, a global warming issue with fusion energy also. Not indirectly by producing greenhouses gases or anything like that, but directly by adding extra non-solar derived energy into the environment.

All other renewal energy sources extract solar energy, either directly or indirectly, from the present environment. All fossil fuels extract solar energy collected and stored in the distant past. In other words, all of these energy sources are really just manipulating energy that has already been added to earth's environment by the sun. (The only exception as geothermal)

Fusion, on the other hand, does not rely on the sun. Every fusion reactor is, in essence, an extra, very small, sun. Certainly in the beginning the total extra energy produced by fusion will be minuscule compared to the total energy received from the sun and thus make an insignificant contribution, even if we postulate the total conversion of all current energy production to fusion.

But if our civilization continues to grow and expand and continues to increase its energy needs, inevitably there will come a tipping point above which the amount of energy we generate from fusion becomes large enough to noticably warm the planet.

Chris, your comment contains a degree of insight and an attention to detail that is truly... amazing. Oversimplification is not a currency you dabble in, my friend... it's a pool you swim in.

Would we be able to use contaminated water and/or polluted water? In other words will it help get rid or things we need to dispose of and at the same time save the best cleanest water for drinking, ...

Seems like while we're in the tesing and development phase we should see it we can kill to brids (sorry GOD it's just an expression) with one stone. That's the best way to save money. The more problems you can solve the better. Sometimes fixing several problems at the sametimes actually makes it easier. Example if you have to use clean water, you have to find it or clean it first, plus you might create shortages. If you design it to use dirty water, the water might be cheaper to get. In fact it might get deliveried free of charge. You'll never know if you don't try.

Chuck Lentine
(AKA GOD'S Cowboy)
HTTP://GODSCowboy.VIVITI.COM

For those of you who don't understand fusion please go do some research, and make sure it isn't wiki your using. As some people have previously stated, this source of limitless energy could create a great society in which everybody has what they NEED every problem in africa could be solved, you name it and the power of this energy can make it happen in one way or another. (can't stop violence of the human nature and our need to consume and have a hierarchy over eachother though) This especially could take us to deep corners of space! You want the future people, here it is.

According to IEER's 1996 report about the United States Department of Energy, only 225 kg of tritium has been produced in the US since 1955. Since it is continuously decaying into helium-3, the stockpile was approximately 75 kg at the time of the report

I'm not sure how tritium is considered abundant; especially seeing as there is a severe He-3 shortage. I work with all of the National Labs and tritium production is a serious problem right now...

Fusion/fission...who cares...the real safe energy is solar/wind.

I only pray the us of a can find a way to replicate the solar towers of spain. Simple concept and yet we are still in the 1990's when it comes to energy plans and actual doing instead of talking.

side note, US no longer cherishes the scientist. Only actors and athletes are known in this country, and unfortunately only they receive support

I can remember an autumn Sunday afternoon in 1965 spent touring the United States first and only civilian nuclear freighter, the USS Savannah. On that same day the NY Times published an article that proclaimed that in fifteen years fusion reactors would be built on man- made islands off the East coast and would provide an infinite source of cheap and clean power.

Forty five years later the same slop is being sold... let's sit on the edge of bed and talk about how good its going to be ... The prangs of the sizzle left me cold twenty-five years ago.... Lets buy it from the Chinese.

Sensible Sam, having been in the industry, I had to laugh when I read your response. it seems as though you ARE the oil companies.

I agree that many of these oil magnates are worried about what will happen after the oil runs out. I also agree that there is an end to the supply, and that every year it gets more costly to get the oil from the ground. However, there ARE rooms of non-executives looking for ways to maximize profits, and others that look at new technologies that could be slowed/purchased and otherwise stymied. Those technologies that may have an opportunity may be acquired for their own profit.

I will further give credit to the fact that the bloated paychecks of these oil baron's are not causing others to live in squalor, but they are still amounts that could easily feed entire countries for the year.

I am surprised that you missed the chance to say that the government shouldn't drop the tax shelters that the oil industry has, because they are barely making it now?!? Or did you just miss that one?

@enthalpy. yes because we all know that the sun isn't realistic.

Yep big oil is also the reason I stubbed my big toe. Get a life. The technical and economic hurdles are incredible and will take allot of time while you impatiently stamp your feet like a child.

Tritium can be recovered from standard water by first electrolizing the water to reduce it by 1,000-10,000 to 1...what's left is the deuterium/tritium "heavy water". Do this all over again starting with the deuterium/tritium as feedstock and you have the tritium you need.

Nothing needed for this other than electric power and water – say, like a big solar panel next to the ocean. Fusion is tough to maintain because it requires intense concentration of energy to accomplish outside of the core of a star. Failure in the magnetic containment system allows plasma to burn physical containment systems and they fail. Laser-pumped reactions last only the briefest of moments and then end, requiring another cycle to produce more energy.

Failure in a fusion production system would result in a shutdown, not a bomb. The fuel is nothing more than concentrated material from your average swimming pool. It will not blow up on its own – it is safe and plentiful.

And that is why it will not ever reach operational status until all other forms of fuel are consumed – too many people wield too much control through costly energy systems. Cheap ones with readily available fuel will not facilitate that continued control.

Look at what happened in the 1970's when the OPEC issues causes people to start looking at alternative energy solutions – the price of fuel was dropped so low that funding for alternatives dried up. Same thing happened a few years ago: the oil-rich countries made sure that alternatives lost their funding by dropping the price of fuel again.

Be careful!! Once you invent a clean plentiful energy source everyone involved will "disappear" or have an "accident, or be offered lucrative jobs or buy the invention (and shelve it) outright!. If by some miracle it does go forward toward commercial use I'm sure the oil financed congressman & senators will forever come up w/ ways to stall its implementation w/ countless committee hearings..further research..as well as the public hearing about oil financed smear campaigns about how dangerous it is & that coal & oil is the more cleaner...safer energy blah blah.

Face it world! The status quo will be maintained until the oil runs dry and THEN when civilization or the economy is threatened then will the new, miraculous fusion products be made available (w/ some type of government bailout incentives) of course.

While you could also bombard lithium or boron to get tritium, electrolytic reduction of seawater would also produce commercially useful quantities of Oxygen and Hydrogen. Recombination of these ina fuel cell yields more electrical energy, while simple combustion produces heat for steam production or the gasses can be used for standard internal-combustion generators. Thermoelectric extraction of the heat produced in these reactions provides another layer of energy output.

Even the decay of tritium stocks into He-3 provides ready fuel for second order fusion reactions, while the reaction between He-3 and deuterium extracted earlier in the reduction process can provide direct solid-state production of electricity since the output (protons) provides charge potential directly.

@Adam
None of this violates any laws of thermodynamics. Fusion occures in stars continuously without any violations, or even speeding tickets. Try looking into this simple little equation:

E=MC^2

Perhaps fusion will move closer to the marketplace with this development, I certainly hope so but I am not holding my breath. Fusion has held infinite theoretical promise for decades but so far our only real success in fusion is the hydrogen bomb and that was developed 60 years ago. The infamous oil companies have done nothing to stand in the way of fusion, they can and do sell all they make. It is a total joke to even think conspiracy, fusion is quite simply out of our league technologically. In the interim, fossil fuels will continue to drive commerce and heat and cool our homes and power our vehicles. It is totally arrogant to think that we are ever going to see a reduction in CO2 emissions, the best we can hope for is a slowing down in the rate of increase. BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, & China) will never give up their chance to grab the brass ring of affluence in exchange for some sing-song perceived benefit doled out by rich fat do gooders in the US and Europe.

This is not new news! I worked on laser fusion more than 30 years ago, and everyone was predicting breakeven energy attainment in less than 5 years at that time. It still has not been achieved, and is expensive to commercialize during the initial phases. Much research is still needed...

25 years ago I heard about laser initiated fusion reaction, and I heard something like "it will be ready in 5-10 years". I'll see what happen this time.

The reaction uses heavy water or tritium. It is rarer than regular water but still plentiful. This sounds a bit to good to be true though. Scientist have been working on trying to get fusion to happen for a longtime now. Science just isn't there yet for getting this to work. I would be real curious to see what kind of power requiremnets they need for these lasers and what the energy return is. Effciency cannot be that great in this design and without that this is just another science experiment that won't go anywhere.

More energy out than in? I doubt it. What powers the laser?

Come on, seriously folks? How many people are going to redundantly chime in on how safe fusion is? After the first thirty or so messages, I think D. Wilhelm and anyone else reading gets it.

What's amazing is that with all this high tech effort to achieve fusion...in the end it's simply going to heating up water so as to make steam, to turn turbines, to generate electricity.

Same ol, same old.

When I was an undergrad at the University of Rochester 20 years ago, they were using lasers to experiment with fusion reactions. I would be interested to know what advancements have been made in the past 20 years that prompt this article and the suggestion that self-sustaining fusion is only 5 to 7 years away.

What a weapon this would make! I'm sure the American Taxpayer is eager to borrow another Trillion Dollars to develop this technology. Then we share it with Israel and they sell it to China, who weaponizes it into a Fusion Bomb. They demand our surrender or they'll take out the US with a single weapon. We refuse. They drop the bomb. 330 Million people vaporized in an instant and Communist China rules the world. I think I'll stick with oil, thank-you very much.

When I was in the 5th grade, back in 1979, we were shown a movie in school about alternative energy. Fusion was touched on as having some major technological hurdles, but nonetheless the development of a practical fusion reactor was "confidently predicted" within the next 10 years. That would have been 1989, or 20 years ago. The story presented in this article is not news.

I love listening to alarmist who think fusion will melt the Earth or that the LHC will create a blackhole or whatever todays alarmism calls for. Fusion is a margin game, we've known its possible for a while but every method of creating it requires orders of magnitude more energy than it outputs. The process discussed in the blog is fascinating, but I'm shocked at how incredibly inefficient it would be.... but if you can create even slightly more energy than is input, eventually its just a matter of scale...

@Enthalpy

Basic law of physics.
matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed. you can't consume more energy than you create. it might be creating energy in an unusable form (at least unusable at first)

...give it time.

ZZZzzzzz...
I worked at an elelctro optical crystal company in when I was going to college (mid '70s) that provided optics for LLNLs laser fusion program. Back then, practial fusion powered electricity was "at least" 20 years in the future. Well, there's one prediction of the future that came true. The "at least" part that is.
Dont hold your breath for Mr Fusion yet. Actually crossing the "break even" point (where you release more energy from a fusion reaction than it took to fire the lasers or whatever that ignited it" is certainly a significant milestone. But figuring out how to create a practical energy generation system is another story. I predicit its at least 20 year in the future

This technology is the only known way to supply our future energy needs. If you follow the money you'll find that fusion research is intentionally underfunded. If we ever needed and Apollo type project to secure the future of the planet and humanity, this is it. It is no surprise that nobody in control will benefit from a limitless source of clean energy.

the comments in this article are so full of misdirection and foolishness I dont know where to start.

first of all I should point out that ICF reactors operate in pulses. Depending on the exact design used these pulses may be anywhere from a few seconds apart to 100's of times a second. if an ICF reactor has a problem then the simple action of the laser is switched off (yes, it is simply a matter of switching a switch, just like a lightbulb). fusion reactions only happen for nanoseconds after each laser pulse, so if the pulse stops the chain of reactions stops. dead.

is there no radioactivity from a fusion reactor? No. there is intense radiation emitted when the reactor runs as well as the structure of the reactor is made radioactive over time. reactivity during operation is no big deal. it can be shielded. induced radioactivity is a much easier problem to deal with in a fusion reactor because there is a lot of design flexibility to use materials that will not provide any long term radiation concerns. and of course there will be no long term waste as in a conventional fission reactor.

with regards to the tritium issue. all fusion reactions produce an excess of neutrons. that means by deffinition they can be self sufficent in terms of tritium via breeding from lithium IF tritium is used int he fuel cycle. I dont know why some posters are arguing otherwise but breeding does NOT require the consumption of a neutrons kinetic energy – what gets used to generate power and generating power does not consume a neutron keeping it from breeding tritium. any left over tritium that is not burned as fuel can be scaveneged from the vacuum vessel's pump exhaust with a palladium membrane (as was previously done at the Nova laser)

will NIF bring about any breakthroughs that allow us to make a power plant out of this technology in 5 or 10 years? no. NIF will hopefully demonstrate the engineering we will need to do to produce a pusion power plant, but right now the technology behind the lasers is not mature enough. todays technology can make a laser big enough to power NIF but it is so inefficent that there would be no net power production. furthermore the laser technology used in NIF can only be fired once every few hours to avoid overheating. this is technolgy that existed in the 60's, just scaled up. Modern laser technology allows lasers of the sort used at NIF to run at many pulses per second, continuously non stop. total system efficency can be as high as 25% or more, vs 0.1% for the lasers used at NIF. these newer technolgy lasers however are MUCH more expensive. That said since newer technology lasers use many electronic components their cost and complexity has followed something of moore's law in the last 15 years, dramatically reducing in cost and increasing in terms of performance. 10 or 20 years from now, especially with the establishment of large scale manufacturing the sort of lasers we use today can be scaled up in size to what is required for NIF or a power plant.

the cost of fusion fuel targets is insignifigant. KMS Fusion, a private company that was researching ICF in the 80's was making them for under 1$ a go in lab size quantitiy. I think one poster is confusing the cost of setting up a particular fusion experimental target shot with the cost of the larget it's self. holoraum targets are more expensive than direct drive targets, but direct drive targets are nothing more than small plastic microballoons.

finally global warming. this is a funny one. look at the total incident energy on the earth from the sun then look at the total worldwide demand for electricity. if there comes a time when we really need to worry about that we can just start painting everything white to increase the albeido of the earth.

in short – YES there are problems with fusion, and there are many engineering difficulties to overcome, but it has the potential to generate clean, virtually limitless energy in the not too distant future.

Safety is relative, not absolute, when protons and neutrons are flying around. However, this inertial confinement system seems much less volatile than tokamak, because this system does not sustain a continuous reaction.

Tokamak has never approached self-sufficiency, despite decades of funding. This particular system is not expected to do so, either. It is simply a test bed.

I'd argue that using tritium fuel is a guarantee of commercial failure, due to the scarcity of tritium. Deuterium is far more abundant than tritium in seawater.

It seems unlikely that OPEC can eliminate the national security motivation for extraction of deuterium from seawater. OPEC can no longer afford to keep the price of crude low for the long term.

You guys got it all wrong. You just need a few beakers in Utah to make fusion work cold.

As a graduate student researching fusion, I'm glad to see that - for the most part - there is healthy debate going on out there. There are a lot of misconceptions out there, and a number of us are trying to do our best to present the benefits AND costs of an economical fusion reactor. Rather than just repeat what's been said before me, I encourage you to visit this Facebook group page that's been set up:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=55990887861&ref=ts

Please remember to keep a constructive tone whenever you discuss these issues because in my experience, almost everyone has bad information, and the only way we can move forward is to drop our attack stances and consider others' viewpoints. Fusion is our future.

This will never happen. It would lessen the amount of oil being consumed and that simply wont be allowed by the rulers of this planet.

For all the intelligent talk that is happening in this blog.... The last individual that successfully started and maintained a fusion reaction (I.E. the SUN and Stars).... Was GOD!

Wow, Fusion power in 20 years? Sounds like every single prediction about fusion power from the last 60 years. Write about fusion when they are predicting it for next year, not a generation from now. We have been burned by fusion predictions too many times.

@ the proponents for Solar and Wind. Wind and Solar power is just starting to show benefits, however they are both horribly inefficient at the moment. Like Fusion, they show a lot of promise, however, by themselves, will not provide the answer. Fusion will ultimately provide power for commercial use, but it is unlikely it will ever become available on a personal scale. There is no single technology envisioned at this point that will provide all of our energy needs.
It will take a combination of these technologies to ultimately free us from our use of hydrocarbons.
Commercialy viable Fusion is at least 40yrs off, from what I've read. In the meantime we'll need to put a lot of money into improving the efficiency of Solar and Wind.
In the future, I can see solar and wind providing for our personal needs (ie, transportation and home) while Fusion can provide power for our commercial needs. Most of us here won't see any major revolutions in energy in our lifetime, however, the next generation is the one that will more than likely benefit from all of this reasearch and spending.

Every time I see an article like this I always hear people say something dumb like big oil is supressing this. Trust me. If big oil thought this was possible or even viable long term replacement, they wouldn't seek to surpress it. They would seek to control it and then commercialize it as fast as possible.

The real reason this will probably never be a reality is something far less sinister like resource supply...

http://pastabrain.blogspot.com/2010/02/laser-fusion-science-or-dream.html

Adam, fusion does not break the laws of thermodynamics. That should be obvious considering the Sun is an example of fusion at work.

Obviously, the goal of a fusion reactor is to convert enough matter to energy so that the energy created is greater than the energy requried to create the fusion reaction. Again, an example would be the Sun.

We already have the technology to get more energy from fusion than the amount we put in. It's called hydrogen bomb. The problem is controlling the release of energy in an orderly manner, so that it can be used as a power plant.

Enthalpy said "Worse: to produce as much electricity, fusion expels three times more neutrons than uranium does, so induced radioactivity is three times worse. Fusion energy is neither abundant not clean, and won't work any time soon."

The holy grail of fusion is to produce an aneutronic reaction using something like p-B which will produce < 0.8% of the level of neutrons emitted from D-D or D-T. Based on the current progress of z-pinch, I will wager a bet that this will be accomplished within 10 yrs., and that they will achieve positive net energy within 5 yrs.

OK, those of you with the big brains, help me out here...I thought fusion produced much more energy and radiation than fission? Also, isn't this isotope they are planning to use for their test only found in a) stars and b) nuclear reactors as a by-product of fission? Where does the swimming pool full of water come in?

Random points:

** Not only is Fusion safe from a "Radioactive" perspective, it will facillitate the neutraliziation of existing radioactive materials including waste that we currently store, should we choose to pursue this.

** Although we currently invest more energy into a fusion reaction than we extract, a larger issues is that we lack the technology to sustain the reaction. This laser theory intends to resolve this.

** To "David" who claimed fusion might have the ability to melt the earth. Where did you hear this? I believe you are reading science fiction, or maybe you work for the oil industry?

Fusion makes no sense. The requirements to sustain fusion are debilitating. Fission on the otherhand is much easier to accomplish and we have enough fissile material to power mankind for thousands of years. People are over paranoid about it however, so our own stupidity and ignorance are holding us back.

I thought that the NIF was going to test DT fusion. Since tritium isn't a component of water in any usable quantity, why is water even mentioned? The fuel isn't going to come from water if it requires tritium. Tritium must be manufactured – IN A FISSION REACTOR.

Why do they keep wasting time and money on Fusion?

25 years ago they were saying the same thing. The physics just doesn't work. It consumes more energy than it produces.

We should be looking more at Thorium reactors (safer than uranium and shorter-lived by-products) or maybe depleted Uranium (only because we have a lot of it available now).

I have been working in laser fusion for almost 40 years!! Don't believe all the hype! It is still a very difficult problem! In order to make a power plant- the laser would have to fire at ~ 10 times per second. Right now – the technology is able to fire a laser about twice per hour. We have a long way to go!

For those looking for serious information, please visit the University of Rochester's site about laser research:
http://www.lle.rochester.edu/index.php
download a guide to "Inertial Confinement Fusion: An Introduction"
LLE has created a book for readers of all backgrounds to learn about and share the excitement of inertial fusion research.
http://www.lle.rochester.edu/pub/documents/ext/ICF.pdf

wow...fusion at last. Has anyone thought about how we can use this technology in warfare??...it must have some applications in defence...lol

Fusion energy is safer than gasoline. For one thing, the amount of fuel in the reactor is tiny. Second .. fusion reactions are EXTREMELY hard to sustain, actually nobody has proven they can do it even. So a runaway reaction is impossible because

a) there is not enough fuel in the system
b) it takes a lot of carefully timed lasers that are dynamically adjusting in order to sustain the reaction. For one thing the lasers themselves would melt first.
c) THERE IS NOT ENOUGH FUEL

Really we are arguing over something that hasn't even been completed. We need to cut our dependency to oil, I agree with that but for now that will not happen. Corporations run the world, and thats sad. We will be dependendant on oil for quiet some time, unless we do something about that. I lived in Iceland for two years, they have hydrogen fuel there and guess what they have no problems with cars going BOOM! So why the heck aren't we going to that, cause we are owned by companies, we all buy products like gas because we aren't given an alternative, but I bet if you had an alternative that was cheaper you would do it. The real money needs to go to researching hydrogen fuel, ways to make it safer, etc. Last I checked hydrogen was a renewable fuel source, or even better lets all get a bio diesel vehicle and run our cars on vegtable oil. I know this discussion is about powering homes, and commercial buildings, but we have to start somewhere on cutting our dependency to oil, The middle east loves the fact that we fund them to try to kill us..... seems like a vicious circle to me.

Fusion will be the biggest breakthrough in the history of mankind. To be able to produce endless, clean energy and possibly to be used to propell spacecraft to other stars at relativistic speeds instead of the very slow 35,800 miles per hour that is our limit with current technology. We will be able to travel to Mar within a week instead of 6 months.

What we know about fusion now will not be what know about fusion within 100 years. By that time we will have perfected fusion to be a safe, reliable source of energy. Oil will be the dinosaur along with coal. I pray that we perfect this new energy source before we totally screw up the Eath's climate for good by burning all oil, gas, and coal on the planet.

Cool:)
Spencer Shein

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