<story><title>Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough</title><url>https://theconversation.com/why-fusion-ignition-is-being-hailed-as-a-major-breakthrough-in-fusion-a-nuclear-physicist-explains-196475</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rob74</author><text>Still unconvinced why this is such a major breakthrough - it may be the first net-positive controlled fusion, but the distinction between controlled and uncontrolled fusion is a bit academic in this case. In uncontrolled fusion (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Thermonuclear_weapon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Thermonuclear_weapon&lt;/a&gt;), you are using a nuclear fission primary stage to generate enough energy to start the fusion reaction in the secondary stage. In the NIF, you are using lasers (that have to be aligned to trillionths of a meter and damage their own guiding optics everytime they fire) to start the fusion reaction in a smaller pellet (that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars). So the only real difference between the first and the second case is that the H-bomb is smaller, much more expensive per amount of energy released, and explodes inside a chamber. And it&amp;#x27;s obvious to pretty much everyone who is paying attention that transforming this setup into a working and cost-effective fusion power plant is a very tall order. Also, what somehow always gets left out of these articles is that the NIF is a &lt;i&gt;military facility&lt;/i&gt; financed from the &amp;quot;(Nuclear) Stockpile Stewardship&amp;quot; budget. So its primary objective is studying fusion in a controlled way, but for building better bombs (and retaining the expertise necessary to build them), not for energy production.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sigmoid10</author><text>You greatly underestimate the order of magnitude difference of produced energy in these two examples. You can&amp;#x27;t contain a bomb&amp;#x27;s hydrogen fusion reaction in a chamber for the simple reason that you need a nuclear fission warhead just to ignite it. So if you want to produce useful, controlled energy outside of killing things, the lasers are your only shot for inertial confinement fusion. Yes they still get damaged, but lasers have seen ridiculous advancements in precision and instantaneous power over the past few decades. This news shows that practical fusion is now only an engineering problem, not a fundamental physics one - like it still is for Tokamaks and Stellarotors. For them noone knows if it is even possible to e.g. control turbulence long enough to achieve net positive energy gain.</text></comment>
<story><title>Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough</title><url>https://theconversation.com/why-fusion-ignition-is-being-hailed-as-a-major-breakthrough-in-fusion-a-nuclear-physicist-explains-196475</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rob74</author><text>Still unconvinced why this is such a major breakthrough - it may be the first net-positive controlled fusion, but the distinction between controlled and uncontrolled fusion is a bit academic in this case. In uncontrolled fusion (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Thermonuclear_weapon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Thermonuclear_weapon&lt;/a&gt;), you are using a nuclear fission primary stage to generate enough energy to start the fusion reaction in the secondary stage. In the NIF, you are using lasers (that have to be aligned to trillionths of a meter and damage their own guiding optics everytime they fire) to start the fusion reaction in a smaller pellet (that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars). So the only real difference between the first and the second case is that the H-bomb is smaller, much more expensive per amount of energy released, and explodes inside a chamber. And it&amp;#x27;s obvious to pretty much everyone who is paying attention that transforming this setup into a working and cost-effective fusion power plant is a very tall order. Also, what somehow always gets left out of these articles is that the NIF is a &lt;i&gt;military facility&lt;/i&gt; financed from the &amp;quot;(Nuclear) Stockpile Stewardship&amp;quot; budget. So its primary objective is studying fusion in a controlled way, but for building better bombs (and retaining the expertise necessary to build them), not for energy production.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Systemic33</author><text>With regards to NIF being a military facility, I&amp;#x27;d very much think that energy production (cheap, safe, limitless?) is very much a military needs as much as a civilian need.
Even if said energy goes further to power laser weapons or other exotic power hungry systems; energy is energy, and something has to produce it.</text></comment>