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Jaxyon posted:Since this is the appropriate thread for it: Dear Lord, science reporting is awful. "In practice, US scientists fire pellets that contain a hydrogen fuel into an array of nearly 200 lasers, essentially creating a series of extremely fast, repeated explosions at the rate of 50 times per second." "In practice" this is not a thing which happens. NIF can manage maybe one shot every 8 hours if everything goes perfectly. Literally nobody anywhere in the world is firing an ICF reactor 50 times per second. But CNN blithely states that this is a thing in actual practice. What's going on here is they claim ignition, but ignition in ICF doesn't mean what it means in a tokamak. All it means is "more energy out from fusion than is in the lasers," and it's a pretty arbitrary point to compare energy inputs and outputs. They say they hit the pellet with 2 megajoules of laser energy (which checks out, that's what's left over in the beam after they frequency-double it from IR to UV), and got 2.5 megajoules of fusion. The capacitors to fire the flashlamps to pump the laser gain medium require 422 megajoules of energy. In other words, this is an incremental improvement over 8 years ago, when they were claiming they got more energy out from fusion than the pellet absorbed from the lasers, which is basically another arbitrary point of comparison.
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Dec 12, 2022 21:11
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Phanatic posted:Dear Lord, science reporting is awful. "In practice, US scientists fire pellets that contain a hydrogen fuel into an array of nearly 200 lasers, essentially creating a series of extremely fast, repeated explosions at the rate of 50 times per second." "In practice" this is not a thing which happens. NIF can manage maybe one shot every 8 hours if everything goes perfectly. Literally nobody anywhere in the world is firing an ICF reactor 50 times per second. But CNN blithely states that this is a thing in actual practice. Wait, seriously? The real ratio would then be like 422 in to get 2.5 out. I thought the major hurdle is that it's essentially worthless for commercial power generation given scaling issues, I didn't realize they were STILL trying to fudge numbers like this.
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Dec 12, 2022 21:27
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It’s all kind of irrelevant because the NIF mostly exists to do nuclear weapons research, not really for fusion energy.
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Dec 12, 2022 21:39
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Kalman posted:It’s all kind of irrelevant because the NIF mostly exists to do nuclear weapons research, not really for fusion energy. That's 100% not how lay media or fusion fanboys cover it.
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Dec 12, 2022 21:42
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Figure out a way to weaponize a magnetically confined fusion device and we will have unlimited clean energy by 2030.
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Dec 12, 2022 22:06
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Pander posted:Wait, seriously? The real ratio would then be like 422 in to get 2.5 out. Yes, seriously. The magnetic fusion people do this too, where they start talking about Q only in terms of how much energy they’re injecting into the plasma and ignoring the energy *inputs* required by their particle beams and RF oscillators. It just becomes even more apparent with ICF because neodymium glass lasers have an electrical-to-optical efficiency of like a percent or two. Like I said, this is a deliberate misinformation campaign. If prodded they can say “oh, we know what we’re talking about among ourselves, it’s not our fault if the reporters got the wrong idea” but at this point it totally is.
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Dec 12, 2022 22:27
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The idea that it is a deliberate misinformation campaign I think is a very dangerous thing to say about scientists when climate change denialism is really widespread and also tends to claim scientists are spreading misinformation. The simpler explanation is the "science media" is just bad at conveying this information, because the media is bad about conveying information about everything else, i.e trickle down economics, republican taxation policies, etc.
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Dec 12, 2022 22:43
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Raenir Salazar posted:The idea that it is a deliberate misinformation campaign I think is a very dangerous thing to say about scientists when climate change denialism is really widespread and also tends to claim scientists are spreading misinformation. The simpler explanation is the "science media" is just bad at conveying this information, because the media is bad about conveying information about everything else, i.e trickle down economics, republican taxation policies, etc. No, the researchers in question know exactly how the media will respond to their claims of "net energy gain" and could be very sure to avoid making those claims and making it very clear what the input energy requirements are, they don't get to blame the miscommunication that has everyone from NYT to Wapo to National Review trumpeting the same nonsense on the media. If it's their first rodeo, okay, but it's not, and they know how it works by now. It's not "deliberate" in the sense that they all got together in a smoke-filled room somewhere and came up with this plan, but it doesn't have to be. They need media buzz, the media needs something to buzz about, all of their interests align with reporting an end-to-end efficiency of 0.6% as an energy gain of 20%, so none of them is going to do anything to prevent that.
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Dec 12, 2022 23:22
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Raenir Salazar posted:The idea that it is a deliberate misinformation campaign I think is a very dangerous thing to say about scientists when climate change denialism is really widespread and also tends to claim scientists are spreading misinformation. The simpler explanation is the "science media" is just bad at conveying this information, because the media is bad about conveying information about everything else, i.e trickle down economics, republican taxation policies, etc. It's not dangerous, it's obvious in a world where grants are the lifeblood of the scientists in question.
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Dec 12, 2022 23:48
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I don’t think NIF runs on the usual grant cycle. The hype is for public support to influence congress who cuts the checks.
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Dec 13, 2022 00:39
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Raenir Salazar posted:The idea that it is a deliberate misinformation campaign I think is a very dangerous thing to say about scientists when climate change denialism is really widespread and also tends to claim scientists are spreading misinformation. The simpler explanation is the "science media" is just bad at conveying this information, because the media is bad about conveying information about everything else, i.e trickle down economics, republican taxation policies, etc. "Renewables and fission are hard and unnecessary, miracles are around the corner, leave the hard work to us" is climate change denialism as is pouring billions into frankly anything other than crash decarbonization and hardening.
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Dec 13, 2022 00:43
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slurm posted:"Renewables and fission are hard and unnecessary, miracles are around the corner, leave the hard work to us" is climate change denialism as is pouring billions into frankly anything other than crash decarbonization and hardening. Who is saying "Renewables and fission are hard and unnecessary, miracles are around the corner, leave the hard work to us"?
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Dec 13, 2022 01:05
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Phanatic posted:Dear Lord, science reporting is awful. "In practice, US scientists fire pellets that contain a hydrogen fuel into an array of nearly 200 lasers, essentially creating a series of extremely fast, repeated explosions at the rate of 50 times per second." "In practice" this is not a thing which happens. NIF can manage maybe one shot every 8 hours if everything goes perfectly. Literally nobody anywhere in the world is firing an ICF reactor 50 times per second. But CNN blithely states that this is a thing in actual practice. I'd bet a dollar magnetized target fusion is probably going to be viable before any of these other things like ICF. They've been hitting their development milestones since 2002 and won't be ready for a commercially viable reactor until the mid 2030s. Also the principal is in concept just a piston engine except the working fluid is liquid metal and instead of combustible petrochemicals you inject a fusable helium gas, which is pretty funny
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Dec 13, 2022 05:33
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The Oldest Man posted:Also the principal is in concept just a piston engine except the working fluid is liquid metal and instead of combustible petrochemicals you inject a fusable helium gas, which is pretty funny 
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Dec 13, 2022 05:56
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The announcement itself! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r91Q4dAHnUw
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Dec 13, 2022 18:58
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Not available in my country.
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Dec 13, 2022 19:03
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Can't wait for us to have 2 completely different nuclear generation techs that we will will underutilize.
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Dec 13, 2022 19:08
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Jaxyon posted:Can't wait for us to have 2 completely different nuclear generation techs that we will will underutilize. All of them are presumably years if not decades away from maturation, unless you mean underfunded? Well they're all also underfunded and its probably a good idea to have multiple projects in parallel; they just all need to be funded a lot more but we're struggling even with just more funding to proven fission designs and moving away from coal, and other fossil fuels so.
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Dec 13, 2022 19:12
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Raenir Salazar posted:All of them are presumably years if not decades away from maturation, unless you mean underfunded? Well they're all also underfunded and its probably a good idea to have multiple projects in parallel; they just all need to be funded a lot more but we're struggling even with just more funding to proven fission designs and moving away from coal, and other fossil fuels so. I'm saying we could be doing a lot more fission but we won't and we won't be doing fusion eithr
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Dec 13, 2022 19:21
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Raenir Salazar posted:Not available in my country. Don't worry, it's not available in any country. 
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Dec 13, 2022 19:22
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Sundae posted:Don't worry, it's not available in any country. It's just maybe two decades away from being everywhere though!
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Dec 13, 2022 19:26
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Does this affect ITER at all or is that a completely different approach to fusion?
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Dec 13, 2022 19:28
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Trevorrrrrrrrrrrrr posted:Does this affect ITER at all or is that a completely different approach to fusion? ITER seems to be a magnetic confinement reactor while the result above is about inertial (?) confinement.
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Dec 13, 2022 19:29
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Trevorrrrrrrrrrrrr posted:Does this affect ITER at all or is that a completely different approach to fusion? It's a completely different approach to fusion.
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Dec 13, 2022 23:05
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There are dozens of different approaches and each one has the goal of collecting enough data to build a few more and better prototypes to collect more data. None of these designs will produce a net power, because that's not the immediate goal.
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Dec 14, 2022 01:36
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Has anyone tried doing fission and fusion at once?
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Dec 14, 2022 01:59
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Raenir Salazar posted:Who is saying "Renewables and fission are hard and unnecessary, miracles are around the corner, leave the hard work to us"? This is the whole "thing" with fusion, I'd be interested to see how much fusion PR is funded by fossil fuels.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:07
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Discendo Vox posted:Has anyone tried doing fission and fusion at once? Yeah, we did that 70 years ago.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:11
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slurm posted:This is the whole "thing" with fusion, I'd be interested to see how much fusion PR is funded by fossil fuels. It isn't though? Please provide evidence to back up your claims.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:12
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Discendo Vox posted:Has anyone tried doing fission and fusion at once? Yes, actually. 
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Dec 14, 2022 02:12
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Discendo Vox posted:Has anyone tried doing fission and fusion at once? Yes, we've placed many such devices at the top of large rockets. Very futuristic. e: f,b
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Dec 14, 2022 02:17
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Phanatic posted:Yeah, we did that 70 years ago. Q was greater than one, too.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:23
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Raenir Salazar posted:It isn't though? Please provide evidence to back up your claims. Tbqh it might be necessary to post evidence that any particular "don't bother changing, science will save you" message isn't backed by fossil extraction interests. I can't speak to the other guy's "the fossil industry acts in self interest" claim other than to say that it's completely plausible if not historically likely to preponderance, but I do now have an aggravating amount of firsthand evidence that people are reading "oh okay, climate solved, yay" into it  I don't remember if it was in here or somewhere else that someone pointed out that fission is cheaper than fusion will be, so it's not like our cost-obsessed, government-doesn't-exist-to-act society would allow fusion to actually take off at scale necessary to address climate change. We could address climate change today, yet we aren't. Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 02:31
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Raenir Salazar posted:It isn't though? Please provide evidence to back up your claims. First google result, lol: https://www.geekwire.com/2022/more-funding-for-fusion-seattle-startup-lands-160m-and-reveals-technology-breakthrough/ https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/07/19/google-chevron-invest-in-fusion-startup-tae-technologies.html Etc.
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Dec 14, 2022 02:38
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there is often an educational earmark attached to grants ultimately subsidizing fossil companies. infuriatingly, paying to mislead the public counts I know this because I used to do policy work at a university and this would come up as the ultimate source of some contacts for liberal arts deliverables lol lmao
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Dec 14, 2022 02:48
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Potato Salad posted:Tbqh it might be necessary to post evidence that any particular "don't bother changing, science will save you" message isn't backed by fossil extraction interests. The problem here is slurm wrote their post in such a way as though they were implying that it was my position; hence my reasonable request that they provide evidence of the strawman that they put in quotes they wrote in response to my post. Also non-falsifiable idle speculation isn't very interesting, the least they can do is expand on their position that fusions entire "thing" is that "renewables are unnecessary". I don't think there is anyone suggesting anywhere that fusion means we don't need to do anything else to decarbonize, and if this is the messaging somewhere I think its reasonable to ask for evidence. As for random commentors online going "yay", I think its people assuming that based on current trends re: renewables and other efforts by governments and organizations to cut down on emissions and improve efficiencies, that fusion might be the last key in an otherwise intractible puzzle to avoid the worst case scenario of climate apocolypse. See this video by Kurzgesagt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw in a well actually posted:First google result, lol: Did you read the links? I feel like that these don't actually substantiate the argument slurm was making. 
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Dec 14, 2022 02:48
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Raenir Salazar posted:As for random commentors online going "yay", I think its people assuming that based on current trends re: renewables and other efforts by governments and organizations to cut down on emissions and improve efficiencies, that fusion might be the last key in an otherwise intractible puzzle to avoid the worst case scenario of climate apocolypse. actually these are acquaintances in my personal communities, and no your hypothesis about their conclusion is incorrect it's interesting that you asked for evidence a few posts up, then started offering hypotheses with no evidence or direct experience whatsoever was it in here or the climate thread where we had a pretty good conversation about toxic positivity last month? Potato Salad fucked around with this message at 02:54 on Dec 14, 2022 |
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Dec 14, 2022 02:51
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Raenir Salazar posted:The problem here is slurm wrote their post in such a way as though they were implying that it was my position; hence my reasonable request that they provide evidence of the strawman that they put in quotes they wrote in response to my post. It is well documented that Shell et al do these investments as greenwashing; at Shell I know alternative energy projects come out of the PR/marketing budget instead of R&D. Shell isn’t rolling up to the NYT with a giant Publisher’s Clearing House check with “a good alternative energy 4q22” in the memo line. But you can count that zap can use Shell’s PR network’s contacts of every energy and science reporter in the country to pitch stories.
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Dec 14, 2022 03:03
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Potato Salad posted:actually these are acquaintances in my personal communities, and no your hypothesis about their conclusion is incorrect Okay... Well first of all, I think its clear I was giving your acquaintances the benefit of the doubt and assuming what you relayed is 100% accurate; but if we're going to be pulling teeth here for no reason at all; (1) Anecdotal evidence is at best a kind of hearsay which is at best a 'kind of evidence'; (2) I have no evidence that what you said is an accurate representation of what your friends said, or what they believe; it could've been garbled in a game of telephone. (3) Even if what you conveyed was an accurate word for word transcription it still might not be an accurate representation of what they believe in their heart of hearts, so I feel it is perfectly reasonable for me to for the purposes of conversation and for the sake of the argument, the best possible interpretation benefit of the doubt version of the argument your friends are actually making. Because that's more interesting to discuss than the worst version of what they're saying. This has nothing to do with evidence or needing someone to back up their claims, you said someone else said something potentially silly and all I did was suggest what if they meant something that was slightly less silly. There is no reason for you to be doing this? Like it isn't like I can ask your friends to elaborate on their position; I'm not quite sure where you're getting the idea that this is "evidence for me and not for thee" I just don't understand how that follows. in a well actually posted:It is well documented that Shell et al do these investments as greenwashing; at Shell I know alternative energy projects come out of the PR/marketing budget instead of R&D. I think there's a wide difference, between the claim that "Fossil fuels fund fusion PR in order to get society to avoid renewables and Fusion has no other benefit" and what's happening here? Like just patently on its face these are different things? Like is it not a good thing that these companies ARE in fact seemingly deciding to bet on new emerging technologies that might help with climate change now that there's a market and goodwill to be earned from doing so? Its probably not the most efficious investment w.r.t combating climate change but its hardly "green party astroturfing", like in the grand scale of things this is a very small amount of money but this isn't like to use another example; Musk proposing the hyperloop to avoid the expansion of actually effective mass transit. This isn't taking away any investment that would have gone to renewables or taking attention/messaging away from the need for continuing to shift to renewables.
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Dec 14, 2022 03:20
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Deuce posted:Yes, we've placed many such devices at the top of large rockets. Very futuristic. Phanatic posted:Yeah, we did that 70 years ago. Deteriorata posted:Yes, actually. 
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Dec 14, 2022 03:59
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