Fusion Yawn.
As much as they did to create expectations, and as much in the end they didn't announce anything, the Californian academics could also have spared themselves this figure. I don't know how much longer the press will play along with calling it a revolutionary discovery, but in fact it isn't, and I find it suspicious to read about anyone who claims otherwise.
When you calculate the "yield" of an energy plant, that is, you calculate the ratio between the quantity of energy introduced and that which comes out as excess, which will then end up in the electricity grid.
The problem is that it is an "onion" process, ie with concentric spheres.
In the center is the actual production. Then there is a microscopic cylinder that is transformed into plasma by two hundred very powerful lasers. When the laser light hits a tungsten sphere in all directions, it transforms into plasma instantly because the power is 2 megajoules, and on a small sphere it is enough to disintegrate it.
This plasma explosion does nothing but cause fusion reactions in some spheres that are placed around. The explosion releases an average of 2.4 megajoules, which therefore makes a yield of 1.2, i.e. 120%.
And then you'll say cool, just gather this energy and we're good to go.
But no. Because to produce the wavefront of 2 megajoule lasers, you need… 300 megajoules. Transferring energy via laser is NOT exactly the most effective method. (otherwise we would have solar power plants on the moon that send us energy via laser).
So we're at the second sphere, and already the second onion skin sucks. But we still haven't gotten the heat out of there. If we put water pipes in to power a turbine, then we would lose about 30%. Which would worsen the already 'catastrophic overall balance.
So, it's nothing special, indeed, almost all the other methods already give better results, even in Frascati.
But you will tell me that it is revolutionary to trigger such an explosion using lasers and yes, I guess the military are interested because it is a step forward in the construction of the pure fusion bomb: https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Pure_fusion_weapon
Even such powerful lasers are of interest to the military, but beyond this, civilian interest is very limited: the inefficiency is terrible, the bang can only be done once a day, and many other reasons.
Before you get me out that "theoretical" or "pure" research is always good, I can show you how to do the same thing at home, by yourself. (and die from radiation).
Welcome to the world of nuclear melters, which have been around since the 1970s:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor
which can also be made by hobbyists for home "use". The use is to die for X-rays and neutrons. Instead, there are commercial models with which neutrons are produced, for use in research and enrichment.
In Italian it is called fusion, or
Farnsworth-Hirsch fuser:
I was saying, it is an instrument that produces nuclear fusion, using an electrostatic confinement. And it actually does nuclear fusion, and if you go there and you look at the residue, you actually find helium, and you can measure the neutrons, et cetera.
As you can see, nuclear fusion itself is not as complicated as they say. The problem is that so far it's useless.
Let's repeat the reasoning of the onion. If you use the innermost layer, the part that in the photo above looks like a plasma cloud, (and it is), then – as long as you use deuterium and tritium – the energy production is definitely positive.
However, if you go to the second layer of the peel, and look at the energy you input to increase the ion density, you immediately discover that the ratio falls far below number one.
If we were to extract energy we would need pipes filled with water to drive the turbines, and this would further decrease the yield.
Moral of the story: the Farnsworth-Hirsch melter has been around for decades, it has an internal yield higher or similar to that of the American experiment, and it's so simple that with the right knowledge you could make it at home. If you're not prejudiced against death by radiation, I mean.
And considering a factor of 300 for lasers, the Farnsworth-Hirsch Fuser could be less inefficient than the American one discovered yesterday.
Then you will wonder why all this fuss, and the answer is that it serves two things:
- seek funds for their own projects
- defund competing projects
that is, the two reasons why academics do “research” today.
And I'm putting research in quotes because, in case you haven't noticed, lately it's happened that the COVID vaccine was made by a company, BioNTech. Or rather, a group of companies.
If we had waited for academic research, we would still be locked up at home reading in the newspapers that a new virus protein has been discovered, with which the virus can be treated in the future.
Of course, now you will object that even the bioNtech researchers had academic qualifications and that the studies were necessary, but on the other hand I would like to point out that the multiplication tables are also useful but we cannot say that elementary schools do research .
The truth is that this announcement is probably an attempt to attract funds, and to shut down funding to other sectors.
It already happened in the early 2000s: the world was going fast in the search for ceramic materials, which are truly fantastic and still little exploited, and at one point the USA was behind its British cousins.
What are they doing? They discover graphene, and make it a buzzword. Result: all the money goes to graphene, and ceramics see a sharp reduction in funding.
Of course, graphene has turned out to be what it is, and even so the specialty ceramics have far more industrial uses. But when you think of the "big thing", you think of graphene and not ceramics.
The problem of the academic world is that the search for funds and the sabotage of other people's funds are now predominant on the production of good science. Within academia, Americans are the ones playing dirty.
It is not the first time that American academics play on the media impact to get funds, or to definance research in other countries.
Until the next epidemic, therefore, remember that the cure/vaccine, if it arrives, will not come from academics, but from individuals.
For the rest, what to say? If you want to make your own fuser, and maybe die of radiation, you can follow the instructions that you can also find on youtube:
You can find hundreds of videos like this one, and you will notice one thing: they will all be doing “demo” fusers, for different reasons:
- don't die of radiation
- hard to find deuterium
- it is "vaguely" forbidden by law to cause nuclear reactions of any kind in the garage.
But for the rest, a simple fuser (which won't last long because the internal electrode will wear out) isn't difficult to make. Add your deuterium tank, and you die in a hell of neutrons and X-rays. But you die scientists.
The difficult part is to give us energy instead. Nonetheless, if you add deuterium or tritium to the chamber, the overall yield of these domestic melters is higher (or rather: less tragic) than that announced today by the USA.
That's all to say.