How about ranking potentially upcoming world-changing technologies in order of expected appearance? 1. AI that passes a Turing Test 2. Quantum Computer that solves discrete logarithms considered secure against classical computers 3. Commercially viable fusion power generation 4. Space elevator or other means of placing material into orbit significantly cheaper than chemical rockets Events listed according to my personally anticipated order. Judging by history, however, it's possible mankind's greatest achievement in the upcoming decades isn't on my list.
My vote is we will not use fusion at all. At the moment no-one knows why fusion produce net energy. They only tested that it does. I belive that while attempts will be done to comercialise this net energy, the research will heaveilly shift to find the source of the energy and an alternate way of accessing it. Make no mistake, fusion is still fossil energy. We use solid material in a violent explosion to generate electricity. Coal burning have bad side materials, BUT those are actually capturable, manipulatable, however the side material from fusion (neutrinos?) are actually not capturable and the technology that might do it could be more furthure away then anything needed for the managing of side materials from coal burning. A bit of offtopic now that I really want to share since its not pointed out anywhere: The electromagnetic field we use to contain magnetically charged material and push them togather, or shoot them at each other, or other ways entice them to get close enough to overcome their repeling force is nothing but the recreation of the same force that gravity exerts on the material inside the sun, due to being a load of material in the sun that creates that very high amount of gravitational force. So technically we use materials ON the space-time field to push against each other, to mimic a bent/warped space-time's effect occouring inside HUGE celestial objects such as the sun. I hope this puts a good comparison on the magnitude of forces we try to replicate here. Also another daily comparison is that the earth's huge magnetic field forces compasses pointy arrow into a direction, however we can easilly create forces that can override such a huge object as Earth's HUGE magnetic field's effect with a simply fridge magnet that locally on that area CAN override this field we all live in. It is kinda backwards too. The strong force that keeps atoms away from each other is the compass arrow moving magnet, and by size comparison its like we try to amp up the planets electromagnetic "weak" field to such a huge strenght that it can overcome the small fridge magnet and move back the compass arrow to north. This also a good example of the ridicilious waste of energy we do just to earn a bit back what we want. Ofcourse we mitigate that by having a lot of compasses moved at once and hopefully many times per hour. Okay back to topic, just wanna close on that one. My prediction that the research will be shifting to find where this extra energy comes from. Yeah yeah its the less then 2 part... no. We looking at a system where the energy released that was in the system aparently IS greater then the energy we need to introduce to break that containment. Containing 2 of the same material in a bigger material takes less energy and the surplus is released as net gain. OKay, but why is it takes less energy to break the containment then maintaing it? What is the concept that allows that to appear? Why atoms uses less energy to stay stable if they bigger? Is there some form of geometry topology going on that energy paths on? Are there exotic materials that may have way weaker containing forces and give up and fuse into something that takes even way way less energy to stay stable so they release way way more trough fusion? A similar concept that we talk about super conductors where exotic materials may provide the same condition to electricity to traverse then supercooled material. My belifs is that they going to research that aspect, and then starts to look for other approaches to make atoms release excess energy since they do not need as much energy as before since we enticed them to use less energy to stay stable. Thats what they all want, stay stable and they do work until they achive it.
The point is now we have proven net gain is possible, now we have a reason to improve on the designs to get even more out of it, leading to the actual goal of commercialisation
they had to put in exactly 100 times more energy then there came out. Research it... they did not talk about the energy needed to let the lasers fire. Science is shooting itself in the foot by not saying everything about that experiment. If this is the way to get funded it is not the right way
This is step 1 of maybe a million or more steps before anything viable commercially can be actually produced, but step 1 is always the most important, it proves it’s possible and not just a money pit, and that’s very important for progress.
China is already building a commercial reactor based off of their artificial sun reactor that hit a peak temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius though it can only be sustained at 69.9 million Celsius it still generates more energy than it takes to start the reaction. They do have to make redundant systems that can handle the power surges that happens as it has downtime for cooling purposes and stability.
@@Drocoh No it didn't, situation misrepresented in most media. 500 MJ of electrical energy went into the lasers, which made 1.8 MJ of optical energy, and 2.5 MJ of fusion energy release. That's half a percent of input energy returned by fusion. Hooplah about comparing light energy to fusion energy is misleading, you can't make a power plant this way.
So are they still working on proof of concept when it comes to powering a turbine and producing electricity through the fusion process? I think they need more steps to prove it's not just a money pit. I love the R&D and hope it's commercially viable.
I'm a lay person and I know a good deal about fusion just from watching TH-cam videos but you taught me things I didn't understand. You are incredibly good at explaining complex processes in simple terms. Einstein said if you can't explain it simply you don't know the subject well enough. Clearly you are a man of great intellect and sagacity and you understand fusion extremely well.
@@nicaridennie411 I understood that much, I was more confused by the "wasn't used right in the context of your sentence, nerd" part. Because, although it wasn't a necessary word, as far as I'm aware it WAS used correctly.
@@notisaiah440Like getting dressed up for a nice event, some of us like to dust off the fun words to show our appreciation for someone or something. Let the OP enjoy.
This one of the few videos on fusion that is honest and accurately reports what is really needed for fusion power to be practical. Most of the others are just PR parroting of what the laboratories press release state; mostly deceptive because they do not report the overall Q (energy out/energy in), but just the plasma Q. Bravo!
The NIF reminds me of the Death Star, its designed to produce one pulse of energy a day to detonate a fusion pellet. The image of a team of technicians to set up their laser system to produce a massive pulse of laser energy, basically to simulate a nuclear bomb explosion, which is not designed to deliver electricity to our homes but to destroy things and people, pretty much what the fictional Death Star in Star Wars was also designed to do. The explosion was what was important, not the energy produced, so long as it destroyed things and produced dead bodies and greasy shadows on the walls, that was enough.
Thx for the video! I just discovered this channel and subscribed. What helped me the most is understanding the energy gain differential. I had heard both 150% and 1% which was confusing to me. This does put it into perspective that there's a lot of work to be done before this is commercially viable.
Great explanation, many thanks. 30 years ago I asked a nuclear engineer how long will take to have stable nuclear fusion energy. His answer was: "It will take some ten years, but it has been the same for the last fifty years". He was a prophet!!
Awesome video, really well paced and edited. Sounds like they use superconductors in just about all the cool stuff, I hope we get some decent, affordable high temperature superconductors soon!
@@DrBenMiles It'd be really cool to see a video on the state of superconductors and when we might see them in consumer devices. I wonder if any device under $5000 contains a super conductor? It'd specifically be interesting to see a graph, that contains data on the specs of superconductors over the years including the cost of manufacturing/purchasing. So like, year 2000, $1000 super conductor has a length of x and a lifespan of y and a temp req of z, 5 years later what are the specs of a similarly priced component component? I'd love to see well visualized data on the progress of super conductors and a prediction based off that data as to when we might see them in a general consumer device, and what the first/simplest general consumer device to practically benefit from a superconductor will be? There must be some random gadget that benefits more from basic superconductors than something like a phone, maybe some cheaper low energy device like a wireless earbud or smart watch? A little airtag tracker? A lightbulb? If you had a state of the art superconductor factory and had to come up with a general consumer device to mass manufacture with them, what would it be? Also artificial muscles would be a neat topic! I've always wanted to clickbait an IPMC video with a thumbnail of a plane flapping it's wings like a bird, which (i hope) is a plausible future if motors become usurped by artificial muscles.
Thank you for this very clear explanation. I teach science and I often find questions about this difficult to explain. Other than technology is often difficult to develop commercially new battery chemistries are another case in point. What might work in a lab or be a theoretical energy density may not be possible soon due to additional engineering issues This video also helps explain the stellar work these scientists are doing. Even if fusion is never viable the advances in technology to achieve this will have longer lasting impacts than we can imagine. Thank you. Please keep doing this work. If I believed in God I'd say toy were doing gods work here.
I'm not sure when commercial fusion will be a thing as I'm just an average Joe. But I strongly hope it to be before 2050. It will be a greatest breakthrough toward carbon neutral, or even negative carbon society.
@sirpumpingtonofdumpenshire1639 love all the fear mongering like we are going to destroy this self-sustaining space rock we live on in x amount of years (where x keeps shrinking every few months) when it has sustained itself for so many years before us. Saw a video the other day explaining why we only have like 3 years before we destroy the earth with our carbon emissions. Honestly, it's kind of funny .
@@timvankuilenburg2152 That's just ad hom. Why don't you explain how he's wrong if you're going to bother replying? Personally, I'm not convinced that extending and bolstering our current interglacial period is the worse option.
@@onetortle9114all life on earth produces co2, life makes PLENTY of co2 to keep plants running. Plants even produce co2 tho much much less than they take in.
I don't suppose I'll ever see a viable fusion plant in my lifetime but I am totally behind the efforts to do it. A large surplus of renewable energy would open up so many new options such as the production of green hydrogen to replace batteries and gas boilers. Great video btw.
Dr. Miles, recently retired Science teacher here. I enjoyed your vid. Your delivery style is very 'listenable' and the vid is well-produced. I'll be looking for more. ☮
To me this is reminiscent of first splitting of the atom. This occurred in 1932. The first commercial fission power plant in the United States went online on December 2nd, 1957. This was 25 years in the making and fission power is orders of magnitude simpler than fusion power. This event was a very good day but don't hold your breath waiting for the first fusion power plant to go online.
I think this event is more significant than most understand. Now that we’ve actually done it, we know exactly what temperature and pressure we need to sustain in all reactors for them to ignite
@@Gomlmon99 Oh? Well then, by all means, please explain to an astrophysicist who’s been following fusion technology his entire adult life what the problem
Could you combine the Laser-method together with the Tokamak-reactor, meaning ignite the fusion with the laser and uphold the process within the magnetic confinement? By the way, what is the idea behind the American way for the continuous energy production with their method. How would it be accomplished?
With NIF who made the “breakthrough”, there is no plan for continuous energy production. Is a facility for studying nuclear weapons, it’s not ever meant for power generation. And the fusion is done in such a way that it never could be.
Unfortunately there is no current design/experiment to make this a continuous operation. It takes a significant amount of prep time to even ignite one pellet and it’s actually not an overall net gain of energy. The breakthrough does not include the energy needed to make the lasers in the first place. Still an accomplishment but far far from sustainable fusion energy
Fission went from proof of concept to working reactors on the grid in less than 20 years. Fusion is much more complex, but I expect it to be on line as a commercial source of energy in about that same time frame.
Thank you for your explanation, as someone with a STEM background I have been looking for the numbers around wall socket efficiency, mostly because I didn't trust the marketing numbers in the NIF announcement. Don't get me wrong it's a great achievement when it comes to research but there was a niggling I had that the numbers had been massaged to generate hype. It's also worth noting that just because you extracted +50% energy within the initial circle, it doesn't mean that the connected systems (probably some incarnation of steam generators) required to transform that energy to usable electrical energy, would be able to do so at an efficiency that still results in a net positive amount of energy out
What about Helion's Trenta reactor ? I thought this video is about it before watching ... can it be considered a breakthrough or a better and more efficient reactor ? I think we need a video explaining it as well.
was thinking the same thing. It is hard to speculate with fusion but it almost seems like they (along with general fusion's liquid metal piston system) seems to simplify the process to a point that we may see it sooner then something like, these other huge projects. Keep in mine i use the term simplify very loosely as those systems are not simple at all but have already "solved" the issue of capturing the energy in a usable way. The issue with projects like the tokomak reactor. is even if they get net gains they still have to figure out how to capture that energy.
@@nicholasjaeger3132 Agreed, capturing the released energy always seemed to me like another big obstacle that needs to be addressed with these other projects like the Tokamak reactor. Thats why when I understood how Trenta reactor works and how the magnetic field is going to directly generate electricity made a lot more sense to me. I really hope the next iteration of this reactor makes it economically viable and we might see nuclear fusion powering cities sooner than expected.
@@Amr-El-Baramawy If you have not looked at general fusions system of using liquid metal and pistons to compress the fuel and then capture the energy Take a look at that one. It is pretty cool and is on track to maybe start producing a net gain here soon as well! Though I like this idea better.
Thank you, this is the first video that addresses the energy required to create the Hohlraum, I thought I was crazy for considering it. Would it be fair to say that this result is not 'higher than 1 net gain' any more then using a matchstick to ignite a log of wood? I mean that the energy out of the wood is far greater than the energy put in by the matchstick. Or is there some specific mechanism that makes this kind of net gain in regard to fusion more special than in the case of burning wood? Also there is a 2014 article from NIF that states it achieved net gain in Nature: 'Fuel gain exceeding unity in an inertially confined fusion implosion'. Why is this result more significant than that?
Nuclear engineer here: it’s all perspective. In that article, they were specifically referencing the x-ray energy which was used to compress the fuel whereas the break through that just occurred included the laser energy on the capsule that was used to create the x-rays. In truth, it’s still not an overall net gain, as much much more energy was needed to create the lasers in the first place (in the hundreds of Mega Joules compared to the 3ish created by fusion). While this is certainly a good milestone, it’s no where near actual gain and the author’s line of commercial fusion by 2035 is frankly not realistic as there needs to be substantial improvements. In laser efficiency, energy conversion, facility design, and continuous output.
@@PieMan061 So still no total net gain, that's what I thought. Damn tabloids and for-profit channels on youtube overblowing and glancing over details as per usual.
@@PieMan061 This is a good explanation, because it explicitly shows the games they're playing in order to create undeserved buzz around their project. It's nothing but an ongoing exercise in redefining what is included in the system, in order to artificially turn a minor efficiency improvement into some kind of scientific "breakthrough". It sure looks like they just decided to include another
Fascinating video, thanks. Only issue I see in the video and the comments is the assumption that fusion is actually something we'd want or need. Fusion energy would just make us able to destroy our environment even more and for longer. CO2 is just a small part of the systemic issues we're facing. We use energy to transform our environment and turn it to waste, finding ways to access more energy is not good news.
@@morbidmanmusic try watching the first 2 mins of the panel discussion or read the paper. 300MJ was drawn from the grid to produce 2MJ of laser energy that was fired at the capsule.
They’re on a big PR drive at the moment but they’re many decades behind tokamak approaches. No one in the industry realllly is that positive about them.
HELION's technology is not new. Cambridge was using this back in the early 90s but it proved unworkable. Tokamaks are lined inside with a beryllium surface that becomes highly radioactive over time and you end up with the same problem you have with spent carbon fuel rods in nuclear reactors. Feasible, practicable and affordable thermonuclear power is still decades off. Oh yes, trillium, a primary reactive ingredient is very rare and expensive to produce (only a few thousand grams are produced every year!). That, alone, makes the current tokamaks impractical.
I worked in a physics research lab near Princeton, in the sixties. The effort there was simply to develop means of determining the internal temp of a plasma. Point is .... these things, I personally believe appear to progress in immeasureably small developments. Then SOMEONE notices something that doesn't 'fit' expected results ... and the world changes. These videos offer sooo much promise that we might be near that breakthrough. We all pray that fantasy scenario ...... happens soon.
looks like a high thrust fusion engine fuel to me. the laser would be powered by a different fusion reactor and the pellet is simply fuel. having a more than 100% efficient fuel sounds GREAT to me
Great video and I really hate to be "that guy" but at 5:37 you mention how Deuterium and Tritium are "Two pretty rare elements to find on earth" but this isn't completely true in the magnitude. Deuterium is actually quite common, so much so that you can order it online for personal use. Tritium on the other hand is incredibly rare. So much so, that there's less than 10kg of Tritium on Earth. These are magnitudes of order in difference and I think that point should be emphasized.
Thank you, Doctor! Finally, someone was able to explain how they plan to make powering the lasers more efficient. From a practical application perspective, the success seemed futile given the 300 megajoules to power the lasers.
It’s so interesting to hear something like “the sun is inefficient” I work in glass production so maybe I’m just out of the scientific loop, but holy shit does it seem like we’re making giant leaps in energy production, to have moved from dreaming about being able to create energy with the same process as the sun to saying “nah I think we can do it better” Idk if it’s gonna be a good thing in the long run, I hope it will. So I’ll just say good job humanity for today
Wait but isn't 1% efficiency realy good? I watched a video about energy some while ago and I believe they said all the energy sources we have today are all much less than 1% efficient. It was a while back so I could be REALY wrong. In that case please correct me!
The fusion experiment did not get more out than in. They ignored the containment field and ancilliary power uses. All in they produced just 1% and for not very long. Its still 40 years away if ever.
@@morbidmanmusic Anyone's youtube certainty on this topic is hilarious. I hope Fusion reactors are successful, in the future. At this point they are still fail to power turbines to produce electricity at a higher rate than the energy going in. They still are unproven. I support this R&D, but it's still a hope and no proof of concept.
What you forgot to say about that so-called breakeven, i.e. "more energy out than they put in" is that "energy in" is the energy of the lasers before it enters the hohlraum. However the plain honest truth is a bit ugly: the lasers are very inefficient and to power them up, they have to store and deliver 330 megajoules of energy (not 2 MJ as they falsely advertised, and you too at 08:20 in your video - which is only the energy OUTPUT of the lasers). One needs much more energy than that to power them! These official numbers are on the LLNL web site in the NIF section, where no journalist or TH-camr went to check, except a few non-mainstream articles online that were the only ones to report the real facts (Big Think, for example). It means that in fact, there is no "more energy out than they put in" at all, and the sad consequence is that absolutely no "clean, abundant and cheap new electric power source" based on this laser fusion scheme is on the horizon, which everyone in the public now wrongly think. The output is on the contrary only 1% of what they put in. This 300-meter long machine wastes 99% of input energy. Wonderful! But whatever, they achieved their main goal, which was not about physics. The PR was published to attract the public's attention with a clickbait lie by omission, whose purpose was to justify the capture of the bulk of the U.S. government's recently extra credits allocated for R&D about nuclear fusion. Funds unlocked! QED.
The NIF managers are masters at obscuring the real purpose of NIF since it is primarily a nuclear weapons research tool, not a fusion energy research tool. Anyone who bothers can look into the primary funding source which has always been the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)s nuclear weapons budget. The primary aim is to generate a small thermonuclear explosion (H-bomb) to test the fuel compression dynamics in such weapons and to generate an intense abrupt flux of 14 mev fusion neutrons to test weapons related materials. They failed to mention that there were material samples adjacent to the fuel capsule to test the later effects. NIF lies within the Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who's primary function has always been nuclear weapons related. When they pitch the facility to the public they have always obscured it's primary function in order to create more support for the continued funding of their weapons related projects.
When Nasa needed more funding they made up a story about a piece of Mars getting launched into space and landing on earth. They claimed without any evidence a meteorite they found on earth may be from mars and may have evidence of life on it. The media ran with it and the funding grew. I'm not implying all the people involved in this, or the video poster guy are being dishonest. In my lifetime I have seen an exponential growth of "magical thinking," in the sciences where the theoretical keeps being taught as proven. The whole point of the scientific method is to help keep our biases and magical thinking from warping the results. I still support R&D in fusion reactor technology. But too much hype and people will overleverage our money and resources in a possible pipe dream.
The NIF management failed to mention the input energy to the laser system in previous public announcements that they made regarding so-called 'breakthroughs. Outside critics have now forced them to provide more transparency in this nuclear weapons research laboratory. Still, other factors regarding the input energy remain unmentioned. The experiment took over a week to prepare. As a result the lab should have provided the facility input energy over a period of a week. It is estimated that the target assembly cost at least $100,000. Once the 3 nanosecond laser pulse hits it it is converted into a plasma and end the end that ends up as radioactive waste splattered around the interior of the target vacuum chamber that then requires cleaning out. The fusion reaction lasted approximately 0.08 nanoseconds, consuming only about 4% of the solidified fuel originally lining the interiors of the fuel capsule. The other 96% was blown away from the reaction center before it could react. If one assumes that they could repeat this experiment each week then the fusion energy duty cycle would be 0.0000000000000002 over that span of time. The lab is now suggesting that the inefficiency of their lasers can be overcome with newer laser technologies, such as laser diode pumped lasers. They fail to mention that even the most powerful of those doesn't come close to their current laser power. When the multi-billion dollar NIF became fully operational it was expected to achieve its namesake 'ignition' by 2012. That was based upon ironing out 'all' the kinks with the two previous large lasers ICF machines. NIF failed its goal by a wide margin. Despite that funding continued until the current achievement, a decade later. The NIF managers have employed increasing extreme measures to try to achieve their original goal. As they have done so they have moved further and further away from the design of a practical fusion energy reactor concept. This so-called major 'breakthrough' experiment likely cost over a million dollars, and a week's prep. time, to generate enough fusion energy to boil a couple of liters of water. All that energy was blasted away without any meaningful way to capture it. The most significant thing that needs to be looked into is why so few reporting journalists bothered to include any significant critical analysis of the announcement.
after the discovery of chain reactions it took us 20 years to make nuclear weapons and 5 more years for nuclear power plants. so with fusion I hope 15-20 years but probably 20-30 years
Breakdown of this subject was very well done regarding this video! My question to u is... What other types of elements can we utilize? Of course more resources are needed, but in your opinion, how would we harness this from of output? What would u engineer 1st? My thought immediately goes to experiments in 0 gravity. Arcmage
You can gain energy by fusion using any elements up to Iron, however they are much harder to fuse (larger and needs more energy to overcome the repulsion caused by more protons) and don’t produce as much energy when fused. Hydrogen is the most efficient and gravity does not really affect the process.
I still get free energy from the cold fusion technology they developed a few years back. Once we develop warp technology the Vulcans will meet with and mentor us and then our technological boom will be unimaginable.
4:00 I love this explanation, because that’s how the sun works, literally. It’s only not imploding due to the gravity caused by its mass, because it’s constantly exploding.
What you didn't mention in your explanation of efficiency, is the fact that in actual fusion, which is what we're trying to achieve. Once the reaction starts, it can keep itself going. So the 300 mw energy cost to get out 3.5 is a bit misleading, because how fusion works and the ultimate goal means, after that big laser is fired, it can sustain itself for multiple instances of fusion. Meaning the laser does not have to be fired again for every single instance of fusion that releases that energy. Yes it's still very far away and sustainable fusion is still a long ways away, just thought I'd mention that lack of explanation on that front might be misleading
In the big text splash at 3:53 you said "inertial" but spelled as "intertial". I have no idea if that was a typo but I find no english word spelled "intertial".
FINALLY A FULL AND GOOD EXPLANATION OF THE Q ISSUE!! I have read a ton of comments from naysayers claiming it's not a real breakthrough because the lasers used to start the reaction used so much energy, but the whole truth is that those were ancient lasers and lasers that would bring it up to the necessary Q level already exist. Is this right?
I don’t agree. This form of fusion could never be used for power generation. The purpose of this facility is to research the moments after a nuclear weapon detonates. Lasers could never be used for commercial fusion.
@@Christobanistan the reaction lasts on the order of a femtosecond, the lasers take a day to recharge, there’s no way of breeding tritium, there’s no method of energy transfer, the lasers couldn’t handle the neutrons, the lasers will never be efficient enough to break even. Just off the top of my head.
@@Gomlmon99 Thanks. This is exactly the sort of information I'm looking for. So is the experiment strictly useful for understanding fusion rections? The guy in the video seemed to be saying new lasers could, in fact, be used for much greater efficiency. He said 35% for modern lasers vs 0.5% for the ones used the experiment-a 70x increase in Q, back of the envelope with no more engineering over the next few decades. The day to recharge is also an artifact of the specific lasers used.
@@Christobanistan I don’t really know enough to say if this could be useful for civil power generation. But 70x an overall energy gain of 0.011 is still only 0.77. I can’t see why anyone would bother with laser fusion for power generation, when other methods are so much more mature, and have more solutions to the above issues I mentioned.
You are the ONLY ONLY ONLY science communicator online who quantified how much progress in laser efficiency has happened in the past 20 years! Thank you! NOBODY else mentioned those numbers at 9:45. Not even Sabine Hossenfelder. She also got sloppy with her poor analysis about the health effects from using cellphones and cellphone towers, by never including how they are used in PRACTICE.
Ben, pls don't say silly things like "Fusion power is actually within reach". It isn't a realistic statement to a reasonable, informed person. If I understand correctly, NIF is largely a research facility that allows us to do nuclear weapons stockpile maintenance without actually having to shoot off warheads. In support of that objective, it seems to me a tremendously important facility that needs our support. If we can learn more about nuclear physics along the way, fantastic. I haven't seen any videos explaining what we've learned in that regard though. Is that because the learning is national security info? Don't our adversaries already have hydrogen bombs? What are we actually learning in detail that would get us closer to commercial fusion energy?
What's missing from this discussion, is if it was done once, how easy is it to do it again. Currently it sounds like me landing a skateboard trick by flicking the board and then hoping to land on it. Sure I land it that one time randomly, but how much do I need to practice to make it true?
@@ahhmm5381 That's why proof of concept is so important. It cuts through the speculation. Science in the past 50 years has become more and more about magical thinking and political kickbacks. (I don't mean the guy posting the video is part of that, at all) I'm hoping this technology pans out, in the future, but we ain't there, yet. And that means it may not be viable if we find out Physics limits the technology too much for our plans and needs. Our culture keeps trying to tell Physics what will work, and what is possible, instead of visa versa.
@@bl8388 Proof of concept is necessary, but far from sufficient to demonstrate practical application. I am sure you have seen clickbait scientific articles. These are often actually proof on concept studies. The problem is, they will almost never be practically useful, nor have the authors bothered to think about this. How is fusion any different?
I've lived here since I was a kid, I remember in 2nd grade my science teacher was telling us how by the time we're in college they will have figured out fusion energy. It's weird how some of the most important science and breakthroughs in humanity's history is happening literally down the street from me, like I can walk there.
Very good video but for people not accustomed to the Fusion process it is confusing why fission and fusion create energy. Maybe you should add in that fusion up to iron produces energy while fusing heavier elements consumes energy which you are setting free by fission.
Your overview is very interesting & informative. It puts into perspective some of the hype I've seen recently. In essence, what they have done is produce a hydrogen bomb, on a very tiny scale, & using lasers to initiate the compression process, rather than an atom bomb. This technology has been broadly around for 50-60 years. The energy yield is likely in the form of a short duration 'spike', so would have to be replicated many, many times every second to be a viable source. The most interesting part is where you 'zoom out' your reference frame, to consider not just the local area of the reaction cell, and its energy input, but the entire building. That radically debunks many of the initial claims. Tokamak experiments have long been able to produce q values close to 1, but much more work has been done to produce long lasting & 'stable' plasmas, and plasma 'burns' of > 1s have been achieved.
Nuclear Fusion Yeah….I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s always been a sliding scale. Even with this minor advancement, they have clearly stated we remain a minimum of a “decade” away from practical use. Which translates to several more decades. I doubt I’ll live to see it, but I do hope the next couple of generations manage to witness it achieved.
@@Gomlmon99 The very scientists who made the announcement stated this. If you rewatch the video you'll hear them state exactly what I quoted in my post. Thanks.
You’ve been watching too much TH-cam. They did a PR effort and now gullible people on the internet are proclaiming a company decades behind the rest of the industry as the saviour of fusion.
Thanks for cutting through the hype! My idea of mini atomic reactors in the trunks of cars that I had jn 1956 never happened but mini fusion generators... there is another idea!
@@Md-sd2go You aren't sure, though. In recent years politics have become "the science," and this is all too similar to cold fusion a few years back. They still haven't been able to harness the energy with a turbine, which will always lose you some of the energy, if they can even figure out how to do it in this situation. The officials didn't even mention that. Be more scientifically curious and skeptical. That's how the scientific method keeps us humble.
Does the pressure to make fusion a practical human source of energy impeding our understanding of fusion process? In a star like the sun atoms are force to get close together but electromagnetic force form an impenetrable barrier impeding fusion. Thus fusion is only possible through the quantum tunnelling effect. This is what we need to understand. How can we increase the chance of tunnelling effect? Is that a fixed property or can we amplify it in any way?
One fact that has never been told regarding the NIF result is, how long did it last? Nano second, micro second, milli second? This result was bandied around the world as a massive breakthough in fusion energy, but it was only an, experiment. However, this is the first video I've seen on fusion energy, that is devoid of journalistic BS. Thank You!!!
Thank you for the excellent presentation on nuclear fusion! While the world waits for fusion reactors to become a reality, we should continue to invest in fission reactors which have already been proven to be very efficient and reliable and, yes, clean (aside from the nuclear waste, which is solved when properly buried underground) Countries like France have demonstrated that nuclear fission power can be used reliably and responsibly. It should be harnessed along with wind and solar energy to provide an alternative to fossil-based power plants.
why do we persist with the centralised power generation model? we already have access to a fusion reactor thats working really well. the future is distributed power generation within microgrids
I'm going to put down a line in the sand - I think the first early commercial fusion reactors will be coming on line in 2035. What's your vote?
13 years sounds right, but it's really hard to predict with such a new technology. I hope it's soon!
I think we will have WW3 before that and in consequence of this get catapulted back into stone age. So I say: no way.
Itll take however long it needs to take, as long as it happens
How about ranking potentially upcoming world-changing technologies in order of expected appearance?
1. AI that passes a Turing Test
2. Quantum Computer that solves discrete logarithms considered secure against classical computers
3. Commercially viable fusion power generation
4. Space elevator or other means of placing material into orbit significantly cheaper than chemical rockets
Events listed according to my personally anticipated order. Judging by history, however, it's possible mankind's greatest achievement in the upcoming decades isn't on my list.
My vote is we will not use fusion at all. At the moment no-one knows why fusion produce net energy. They only tested that it does. I belive that while attempts will be done to comercialise this net energy, the research will heaveilly shift to find the source of the energy and an alternate way of accessing it.
Make no mistake, fusion is still fossil energy. We use solid material in a violent explosion to generate electricity. Coal burning have bad side materials, BUT those are actually capturable, manipulatable, however the side material from fusion (neutrinos?) are actually not capturable and the technology that might do it could be more furthure away then anything needed for the managing of side materials from coal burning.
A bit of offtopic now that I really want to share since its not pointed out anywhere: The electromagnetic field we use to contain magnetically charged material and push them togather, or shoot them at each other, or other ways entice them to get close enough to overcome their repeling force is nothing but the recreation of the same force that gravity exerts on the material inside the sun, due to being a load of material in the sun that creates that very high amount of gravitational force.
So technically we use materials ON the space-time field to push against each other, to mimic a bent/warped space-time's effect occouring inside HUGE celestial objects such as the sun. I hope this puts a good comparison on the magnitude of forces we try to replicate here. Also another daily comparison is that the earth's huge magnetic field forces compasses pointy arrow into a direction, however we can easilly create forces that can override such a huge object as Earth's HUGE magnetic field's effect with a simply fridge magnet that locally on that area CAN override this field we all live in.
It is kinda backwards too. The strong force that keeps atoms away from each other is the compass arrow moving magnet, and by size comparison its like we try to amp up the planets electromagnetic "weak" field to such a huge strenght that it can overcome the small fridge magnet and move back the compass arrow to north. This also a good example of the ridicilious waste of energy we do just to earn a bit back what we want. Ofcourse we mitigate that by having a lot of compasses moved at once and hopefully many times per hour.
Okay back to topic, just wanna close on that one. My prediction that the research will be shifting to find where this extra energy comes from. Yeah yeah its the less then 2 part... no. We looking at a system where the energy released that was in the system aparently IS greater then the energy we need to introduce to break that containment. Containing 2 of the same material in a bigger material takes less energy and the surplus is released as net gain. OKay, but why is it takes less energy to break the containment then maintaing it? What is the concept that allows that to appear? Why atoms uses less energy to stay stable if they bigger? Is there some form of geometry topology going on that energy paths on? Are there exotic materials that may have way weaker containing forces and give up and fuse into something that takes even way way less energy to stay stable so they release way way more trough fusion? A similar concept that we talk about super conductors where exotic materials may provide the same condition to electricity to traverse then supercooled material.
My belifs is that they going to research that aspect, and then starts to look for other approaches to make atoms release excess energy since they do not need as much energy as before since we enticed them to use less energy to stay stable. Thats what they all want, stay stable and they do work until they achive it.
The point is now we have proven net gain is possible, now we have a reason to improve on the designs to get even more out of it, leading to the actual goal of commercialisation
Exactly! It turns the impossible into the late.
they had to put in exactly 100 times more energy then there came out. Research it... they did not talk about the energy needed to let the lasers fire. Science is shooting itself in the foot by not saying everything about that experiment. If this is the way to get funded it is not the right way
@@runePV my statement remains
Process used 100x the energy. This is BS.
@@Mister_Durden what if we reduced that with "engineering"
This is step 1 of maybe a million or more steps before anything viable commercially can be actually produced, but step 1 is always the most important, it proves it’s possible and not just a money pit, and that’s very important for progress.
Step 1 has taken 70 years.
It returned 50% more energy than it used so I'd say the commercial use is closer than you think.
China is already building a commercial reactor based off of their artificial sun reactor that hit a peak temperature of 160 million degrees Celsius though it can only be sustained at 69.9 million Celsius it still generates more energy than it takes to start the reaction. They do have to make redundant systems that can handle the power surges that happens as it has downtime for cooling purposes and stability.
@@Drocoh No it didn't, situation misrepresented in most media. 500 MJ of electrical energy went into the lasers, which made 1.8 MJ of optical energy, and 2.5 MJ of fusion energy release. That's half a percent of input energy returned by fusion. Hooplah about comparing light energy to fusion energy is misleading, you can't make a power plant this way.
So are they still working on proof of concept when it comes to powering a turbine and producing electricity through the fusion process? I think they need more steps to prove it's not just a money pit. I love the R&D and hope it's commercially viable.
I'm a lay person and I know a good deal about fusion just from watching TH-cam videos but you taught me things I didn't understand. You are incredibly good at explaining complex processes in simple terms.
Einstein said if you can't explain it simply you don't know the subject well enough. Clearly you are a man of great intellect and sagacity and you understand fusion extremely well.
Sagacity isn't a necessary word and it wasn't used right in the context of your sentence, nerd
@@notisaiah440 What? Sagacity means showing good judgment in a specific situation, does it not?
@@whyplaypiano2844 he just means it wasn’t a needed word and makes you sound like you’re trying to be smart just ignore him say what you want
@@nicaridennie411 I understood that much, I was more confused by the "wasn't used right in the context of your sentence, nerd" part. Because, although it wasn't a necessary word, as far as I'm aware it WAS used correctly.
@@notisaiah440Like getting dressed up for a nice event, some of us like to dust off the fun words to show our appreciation for someone or something. Let the OP enjoy.
I'd like to express my appreciation for how well this video was made. Was an absolute pleasure to view and very exciting material to learn.
One of the few realistic viewpoints of what was announced with a good explanation that anyone can understand
This one of the few videos on fusion that is honest and accurately reports what is really needed for fusion power to be practical. Most of the others are just PR parroting of what the laboratories press release state; mostly deceptive because they do not report the overall Q (energy out/energy in), but just the plasma Q. Bravo!
The NIF reminds me of the Death Star, its designed to produce one pulse of energy a day to detonate a fusion pellet. The image of a team of technicians to set up their laser system to produce a massive pulse of laser energy, basically to simulate a nuclear bomb explosion, which is not designed to deliver electricity to our homes but to destroy things and people, pretty much what the fictional Death Star in Star Wars was also designed to do. The explosion was what was important, not the energy produced, so long as it destroyed things and produced dead bodies and greasy shadows on the walls, that was enough.
Even when you achieve a positive Qtotal, you're not even close.
Thx for the video! I just discovered this channel and subscribed. What helped me the most is understanding the energy gain differential. I had heard both 150% and 1% which was confusing to me. This does put it into perspective that there's a lot of work to be done before this is commercially viable.
Great explanation, many thanks. 30 years ago I asked a nuclear engineer how long will take to have stable nuclear fusion energy. His answer was: "It will take some ten years, but it has been the same for the last fifty years". He was a prophet!!
Your explanations are incredible, I didnt retain much of what was said in this video but its awesome to see how far our species has gone
this is the best explanation out there about the breakthrough
been heard about this for weeks
What can I say, good job USA, hi from Europe!
Edit: Turns out the experiment was overhyped but still a nice first nevertheless
I love country Europe I live in the listenburg state
@@The_MRC. Europe is not a country, which means you are not in a country.
We trying lmaoooo
This is amazing for the world. We just have to stop the "1%" from playing gatekeepers to the technology.
@@The_MRC. bro thinks eu is a country 💀
Awesome video, really well paced and edited.
Sounds like they use superconductors in just about all the cool stuff, I hope we get some decent, affordable high temperature superconductors soon!
Thanks 👍 🔥
@@DrBenMiles It'd be really cool to see a video on the state of superconductors and when we might see them in consumer devices. I wonder if any device under $5000 contains a super conductor? It'd specifically be interesting to see a graph, that contains data on the specs of superconductors over the years including the cost of manufacturing/purchasing. So like, year 2000, $1000 super conductor has a length of x and a lifespan of y and a temp req of z, 5 years later what are the specs of a similarly priced component component?
I'd love to see well visualized data on the progress of super conductors and a prediction based off that data as to when we might see them in a general consumer device, and what the first/simplest general consumer device to practically benefit from a superconductor will be? There must be some random gadget that benefits more from basic superconductors than something like a phone, maybe some cheaper low energy device like a wireless earbud or smart watch? A little airtag tracker? A lightbulb? If you had a state of the art superconductor factory and had to come up with a general consumer device to mass manufacture with them, what would it be?
Also artificial muscles would be a neat topic! I've always wanted to clickbait an IPMC video with a thumbnail of a plane flapping it's wings like a bird, which (i hope) is a plausible future if motors become usurped by artificial muscles.
We have them right now!!!!!
@@CORNDODGER Really? Where can I find more information about them? It'd be neat to buy a few just to play with, if I could afford it.
@@OwenWithAHammer You got a few MILLION to throw around look up HORNE TECHNOLOGIES
Thank you for this very clear explanation. I teach science and I often find questions about this difficult to explain. Other than technology is often difficult to develop commercially new battery chemistries are another case in point. What might work in a lab or be a theoretical energy density may not be possible soon due to additional engineering issues
This video also helps explain the stellar work these scientists are doing. Even if fusion is never viable the advances in technology to achieve this will have longer lasting impacts than we can imagine.
Thank you. Please keep doing this work. If I believed in God I'd say toy were doing gods work here.
Great work making this accessible to those who are interested!
I'm not sure when commercial fusion will be a thing as I'm just an average Joe. But I strongly hope it to be before 2050. It will be a greatest breakthrough toward carbon neutral, or even negative carbon society.
@sirpumpingtonofdumpenshire1639 love all the fear mongering like we are going to destroy this self-sustaining space rock we live on in x amount of years (where x keeps shrinking every few months) when it has sustained itself for so many years before us. Saw a video the other day explaining why we only have like 3 years before we destroy the earth with our carbon emissions. Honestly, it's kind of funny .
@@onetortle9114 Fuck the plants. Eat steak.
@@onetortle9114dunning-kruger at its finest
@@timvankuilenburg2152 That's just ad hom. Why don't you explain how he's wrong if you're going to bother replying? Personally, I'm not convinced that extending and bolstering our current interglacial period is the worse option.
@@onetortle9114all life on earth produces co2, life makes PLENTY of co2 to keep plants running. Plants even produce co2 tho much much less than they take in.
This is the first honest reporting I’ve seen on this subject. Thank you.
I like Helions approach, which eliminates the traditional steam power, and has accounted for cost of fuel supply.
I work for DOE. This is the best video yet I have seen. Enjoyed it very much thanks.
Amazing work Dr.Ben, Thanks for explaining what's important.
My pleasure!
It took me about 10 videos to finally find the one that asked and answered the right questions. Thank you!
I think it's a strong indication of progress when fairly large investments are being made in factories to manufacture fuel (tritium).
I don't suppose I'll ever see a viable fusion plant in my lifetime but I am totally behind the efforts to do it. A large surplus of renewable energy would open up so many new options such as the production of green hydrogen to replace batteries and gas boilers. Great video btw.
Every 80 years. A major breakthrough happens.
Dr. Miles, recently retired Science teacher here. I enjoyed your vid. Your delivery style is very 'listenable' and the vid is well-produced. I'll be looking for more. ☮
To me this is reminiscent of first splitting of the atom. This occurred in 1932. The first commercial fission power plant in the United States went online on December 2nd, 1957. This was 25 years in the making and fission power is orders of magnitude simpler than fusion power. This event was a very good day but don't hold your breath waiting for the first fusion power plant to go online.
I think this event is more significant than most understand. Now that we’ve actually done it, we know exactly what temperature and pressure we need to sustain in all reactors for them to ignite
This is a way of finding out if someone is who you need as a friend. If they know and are amazed by this keep talking to them.
@@genebohannon8820 i dont follow
@@genebohannon8820 yea it sucks none of my friends are interested and amazed. Most people do not care its kinda sad.
We already know that. That’s not the problem at all lmao
@@Gomlmon99 Oh? Well then, by all means, please explain to an astrophysicist who’s been following fusion technology his entire adult life what the problem
Very well put together, explained and presented.
Could you combine the Laser-method together with the Tokamak-reactor, meaning ignite the fusion with the laser and uphold the process within the magnetic confinement? By the way, what is the idea behind the American way for the continuous energy production with their method. How would it be accomplished?
With NIF who made the “breakthrough”, there is no plan for continuous energy production. Is a facility for studying nuclear weapons, it’s not ever meant for power generation. And the fusion is done in such a way that it never could be.
Unfortunately there is no current design/experiment to make this a continuous operation. It takes a significant amount of prep time to even ignite one pellet and it’s actually not an overall net gain of energy. The breakthrough does not include the energy needed to make the lasers in the first place. Still an accomplishment but far far from sustainable fusion energy
The Twitter files aren't getting the coverage they deserve but this is fucking brilliant!
Fission went from proof of concept to working reactors on the grid in less than 20 years. Fusion is much more complex, but I expect it to be on line as a commercial source of energy in about that same time frame.
That would be nice.
As good an explanation as I wanted, without feeling lost somewhere along the line. Thx.
Thanks! very well explained.
Thank you for your explanation, as someone with a STEM background I have been looking for the numbers around wall socket efficiency, mostly because I didn't trust the marketing numbers in the NIF announcement. Don't get me wrong it's a great achievement when it comes to research but there was a niggling I had that the numbers had been massaged to generate hype.
It's also worth noting that just because you extracted +50% energy within the initial circle, it doesn't mean that the connected systems (probably some incarnation of steam generators) required to transform that energy to usable electrical energy, would be able to do so at an efficiency that still results in a net positive amount of energy out
What about Helion's Trenta reactor ? I thought this video is about it before watching ... can it be considered a breakthrough or a better and more efficient reactor ? I think we need a video explaining it as well.
was thinking the same thing. It is hard to speculate with fusion but it almost seems like they (along with general fusion's liquid metal piston system) seems to simplify the process to a point that we may see it sooner then something like, these other huge projects.
Keep in mine i use the term simplify very loosely as those systems are not simple at all but have already "solved" the issue of capturing the energy in a usable way. The issue with projects like the tokomak reactor. is even if they get net gains they still have to figure out how to capture that energy.
@@nicholasjaeger3132
Agreed, capturing the released energy always seemed to me like another big obstacle that needs to be addressed with these other projects like the Tokamak reactor.
Thats why when I understood how Trenta reactor works and how the magnetic field is going to directly generate electricity made a lot more sense to me.
I really hope the next iteration of this reactor makes it economically viable and we might see nuclear fusion powering cities sooner than expected.
@@Amr-El-Baramawy If you have not looked at general fusions system of using liquid metal and pistons to compress the fuel and then capture the energy Take a look at that one. It is pretty cool and is on track to maybe start producing a net gain here soon as well! Though I like this idea better.
@@nicholasjaeger3132
I haven't ... I will take a look at it right now, Thanks
Thank you, this is the first video that addresses the energy required to create the Hohlraum, I thought I was crazy for considering it. Would it be fair to say that this result is not 'higher than 1 net gain' any more then using a matchstick to ignite a log of wood? I mean that the energy out of the wood is far greater than the energy put in by the matchstick. Or is there some specific mechanism that makes this kind of net gain in regard to fusion more special than in the case of burning wood?
Also there is a 2014 article from NIF that states it achieved net gain in Nature: 'Fuel gain exceeding unity in an inertially confined fusion implosion'. Why is this result more significant than that?
Nuclear engineer here: it’s all perspective. In that article, they were specifically referencing the x-ray energy which was used to compress the fuel whereas the break through that just occurred included the laser energy on the capsule that was used to create the x-rays. In truth, it’s still not an overall net gain, as much much more energy was needed to create the lasers in the first place (in the hundreds of Mega Joules compared to the 3ish created by fusion). While this is certainly a good milestone, it’s no where near actual gain and the author’s line of commercial fusion by 2035 is frankly not realistic as there needs to be substantial improvements. In laser efficiency, energy conversion, facility design, and continuous output.
@@PieMan061 So still no total net gain, that's what I thought.
Damn tabloids and for-profit channels on youtube overblowing and glancing over details as per usual.
@@PieMan061 This is a good explanation, because it explicitly shows the games they're playing in order to create undeserved buzz around their project. It's nothing but an ongoing exercise in redefining what is included in the system, in order to artificially turn a minor efficiency improvement into some kind of scientific "breakthrough". It sure looks like they just decided to include another
Fascinating video, thanks. Only issue I see in the video and the comments is the assumption that fusion is actually something we'd want or need. Fusion energy would just make us able to destroy our environment even more and for longer. CO2 is just a small part of the systemic issues we're facing. We use energy to transform our environment and turn it to waste, finding ways to access more energy is not good news.
Add the energy required to store the initial load burst, make the capsules and to generate electricity, you then get a net loss.
Citations?!
@@morbidmanmusic try watching the first 2 mins of the panel discussion or read the paper.
300MJ was drawn from the grid to produce 2MJ of laser energy that was fired at the capsule.
Capacitors aren't as lossy.
Never understood fusion until now. Thanks man
I'm curious to see your opinion of Helion. Engineering explained just put out a great video on it.
Thanks 👍 I'll check it out
They’re on a big PR drive at the moment but they’re many decades behind tokamak approaches. No one in the industry realllly is that positive about them.
HELION's technology is not new. Cambridge was using this back in the early 90s but it proved unworkable. Tokamaks are lined inside with a beryllium surface that becomes highly radioactive over time and you end up with the same problem you have with spent carbon fuel rods in nuclear reactors. Feasible, practicable and affordable thermonuclear power is still decades off. Oh yes, trillium, a primary reactive ingredient is very rare and expensive to produce (only a few thousand grams are produced every year!). That, alone, makes the current tokamaks impractical.
@@eNigma011 don’t think the beryllium is anything like spent fuel rods whatsoever
I worked in a physics research lab near Princeton, in the sixties. The effort there was simply to develop means of determining the internal temp of a plasma. Point is .... these things, I personally believe appear to progress in immeasureably small developments. Then SOMEONE notices something that doesn't 'fit' expected results ... and the world changes. These videos offer sooo much promise that we might be near that breakthrough. We all pray that fantasy scenario ...... happens soon.
looks like a high thrust fusion engine fuel to me. the laser would be powered by a different fusion reactor and the pellet is simply fuel. having a more than 100% efficient fuel sounds GREAT to me
Great video and I really hate to be "that guy" but at 5:37 you mention how Deuterium and Tritium are "Two pretty rare elements to find on earth" but this isn't completely true in the magnitude. Deuterium is actually quite common, so much so that you can order it online for personal use. Tritium on the other hand is incredibly rare. So much so, that there's less than 10kg of Tritium on Earth. These are magnitudes of order in difference and I think that point should be emphasized.
Thank you, Doctor! Finally, someone was able to explain how they plan to make powering the lasers more efficient. From a practical application perspective, the success seemed futile given the 300 megajoules to power the lasers.
Even much worse - a useful reactor needs to fire a shot about once per second, not once per day.
Lies Of Nuclear Come DUE In The Cancer Lotto
It’s so interesting to hear something like “the sun is inefficient”
I work in glass production so maybe I’m just out of the scientific loop, but holy shit does it seem like we’re making giant leaps in energy production, to have moved from dreaming about being able to create energy with the same process as the sun to saying “nah I think we can do it better”
Idk if it’s gonna be a good thing in the long run, I hope it will. So I’ll just say good job humanity for today
Wait but isn't 1% efficiency realy good? I watched a video about energy some while ago and I believe they said all the energy sources we have today are all much less than 1% efficient. It was a while back so I could be REALY wrong. In that case please correct me!
Yea I think hydrogen combustion comes in at around 0.00001% mass to energy so yea 1% is OP
Its taken 20 years to go from 0.7% to 1%. Not going to get much better, ever.
@@fivish Oh, you've done the math to know this? Want to share with the class?
Once it is used to power a turbine, it won't be 1% anymore.
This video is so well put together
The fusion experiment did not get more out than in. They ignored the containment field and ancilliary power uses. All in they produced just 1% and for not very long. Its still 40 years away if ever.
Your TH-cam certainty is hilarious.
@@morbidmanmusic Anyone's youtube certainty on this topic is hilarious. I hope Fusion reactors are successful, in the future. At this point they are still fail to power turbines to produce electricity at a higher rate than the energy going in. They still are unproven. I support this R&D, but it's still a hope and no proof of concept.
And there is another point: the positive energy gain reported ignores the 500MJ of energy that was put into the lasers themselves. to get 0.4 MJ
They're still gonna charge me out the ass for my electric bill when this matures arent they....
More energy out than in you have to count all the equipment being used too.
What you forgot to say about that so-called breakeven, i.e. "more energy out than they put in" is that "energy in" is the energy of the lasers before it enters the hohlraum. However the plain honest truth is a bit ugly: the lasers are very inefficient and to power them up, they have to store and deliver 330 megajoules of energy (not 2 MJ as they falsely advertised, and you too at 08:20 in your video - which is only the energy OUTPUT of the lasers). One needs much more energy than that to power them! These official numbers are on the LLNL web site in the NIF section, where no journalist or TH-camr went to check, except a few non-mainstream articles online that were the only ones to report the real facts (Big Think, for example).
It means that in fact, there is no "more energy out than they put in" at all, and the sad consequence is that absolutely no "clean, abundant and cheap new electric power source" based on this laser fusion scheme is on the horizon, which everyone in the public now wrongly think. The output is on the contrary only 1% of what they put in. This 300-meter long machine wastes 99% of input energy. Wonderful! But whatever, they achieved their main goal, which was not about physics. The PR was published to attract the public's attention with a clickbait lie by omission, whose purpose was to justify the capture of the bulk of the U.S. government's recently extra credits allocated for R&D about nuclear fusion. Funds unlocked! QED.
The NIF managers are masters at obscuring the real purpose of NIF since it is primarily a nuclear weapons research tool, not a fusion energy research tool. Anyone who bothers can look into the primary funding source which has always been the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)s nuclear weapons budget. The primary aim is to generate a small thermonuclear explosion (H-bomb) to test the fuel compression dynamics in such weapons and to generate an intense abrupt flux of 14 mev fusion neutrons to test weapons related materials. They failed to mention that there were material samples adjacent to the fuel capsule to test the later effects. NIF lies within the Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) who's primary function has always been nuclear weapons related. When they pitch the facility to the public they have always obscured it's primary function in order to create more support for the continued funding of their weapons related projects.
When Nasa needed more funding they made up a story about a piece of Mars getting launched into space and landing on earth. They claimed without any evidence a meteorite they found on earth may be from mars and may have evidence of life on it.
The media ran with it and the funding grew.
I'm not implying all the people involved in this, or the video poster guy are being dishonest. In my lifetime I have seen an exponential growth of "magical thinking," in the sciences where the theoretical keeps being taught as proven.
The whole point of the scientific method is to help keep our biases and magical thinking from warping the results.
I still support R&D in fusion reactor technology. But too much hype and people will overleverage our money and resources in a possible pipe dream.
The NIF management failed to mention the input energy to the laser system in previous public announcements that they made regarding so-called 'breakthroughs. Outside critics have now forced them to provide more transparency in this nuclear weapons research laboratory.
Still, other factors regarding the input energy remain unmentioned. The experiment took over a week to prepare. As a result the lab should have provided the facility input energy over a period of a week.
It is estimated that the target assembly cost at least $100,000. Once the 3 nanosecond laser pulse hits it it is converted into a plasma and end the end that ends up as radioactive waste splattered around the interior of the target vacuum chamber that then requires cleaning out.
The fusion reaction lasted approximately 0.08 nanoseconds, consuming only about 4% of the solidified fuel originally lining the interiors of the fuel capsule. The other 96% was blown away from the reaction center before it could react. If one assumes that they could repeat this experiment each week then the fusion energy duty cycle would be 0.0000000000000002 over that span of time. The lab is now suggesting that the inefficiency of their lasers can be overcome with newer laser technologies, such as laser diode pumped lasers. They fail to mention that even the most powerful of those doesn't come close to their current laser power. When the multi-billion dollar NIF became fully operational it was expected to achieve its namesake 'ignition' by 2012. That was based upon ironing out 'all' the kinks with the two previous large lasers ICF machines. NIF failed its goal by a wide margin. Despite that funding continued until the current achievement, a decade later.
The NIF managers have employed increasing extreme measures to try to achieve their original goal. As they have done so they have moved further and further away from the design of a practical fusion energy reactor concept.
This so-called major 'breakthrough' experiment likely cost over a million dollars, and a week's prep. time, to generate enough fusion energy to boil a couple of liters of water. All that energy was blasted away without any meaningful way to capture it.
The most significant thing that needs to be looked into is why so few reporting journalists bothered to include any significant critical analysis of the announcement.
after the discovery of chain reactions it took us 20 years to make nuclear weapons and 5 more years for nuclear power plants.
so with fusion I hope 15-20 years but probably 20-30 years
Yeah fusion power is within reach!!!! Thank you Dr.
Breakdown of this subject was very well done regarding this video! My question to u is...
What other types of elements can we utilize? Of course more resources are needed, but in your opinion, how would we harness this from of output? What would u engineer 1st? My thought immediately goes to experiments in 0 gravity.
Arcmage
You can gain energy by fusion using any elements up to Iron, however they are much harder to fuse (larger and needs more energy to overcome the repulsion caused by more protons) and don’t produce as much energy when fused. Hydrogen is the most efficient and gravity does not really affect the process.
Its a good time to be alive .... more power to these talented people working hard ...
I still get free energy from the cold fusion technology they developed a few years back. Once we develop warp technology the Vulcans will meet with and mentor us and then our technological boom will be unimaginable.
4:00 I love this explanation, because that’s how the sun works, literally. It’s only not imploding due to the gravity caused by its mass, because it’s constantly exploding.
What you didn't mention in your explanation of efficiency, is the fact that in actual fusion, which is what we're trying to achieve. Once the reaction starts, it can keep itself going. So the 300 mw energy cost to get out 3.5 is a bit misleading, because how fusion works and the ultimate goal means, after that big laser is fired, it can sustain itself for multiple instances of fusion. Meaning the laser does not have to be fired again for every single instance of fusion that releases that energy. Yes it's still very far away and sustainable fusion is still a long ways away, just thought I'd mention that lack of explanation on that front might be misleading
That makes sense, thnx
Everything starts with step 1. Now that we’ve broken a barrier we may not see it in this generation but decades from now it’ll be the normal
Amazing video bro
In the big text splash at 3:53 you said "inertial" but spelled as "intertial". I have no idea if that was a typo but I find no english word spelled "intertial".
Thanks for explaining this to the common folk very interesting
FINALLY A FULL AND GOOD EXPLANATION OF THE Q ISSUE!! I have read a ton of comments from naysayers claiming it's not a real breakthrough because the lasers used to start the reaction used so much energy, but the whole truth is that those were ancient lasers and lasers that would bring it up to the necessary Q level already exist.
Is this right?
I don’t agree. This form of fusion could never be used for power generation. The purpose of this facility is to research the moments after a nuclear weapon detonates. Lasers could never be used for commercial fusion.
@@Gomlmon99 Why not?
@@Christobanistan the reaction lasts on the order of a femtosecond, the lasers take a day to recharge, there’s no way of breeding tritium, there’s no method of energy transfer, the lasers couldn’t handle the neutrons, the lasers will never be efficient enough to break even. Just off the top of my head.
@@Gomlmon99 Thanks. This is exactly the sort of information I'm looking for. So is the experiment strictly useful for understanding fusion rections?
The guy in the video seemed to be saying new lasers could, in fact, be used for much greater efficiency. He said 35% for modern lasers vs 0.5% for the ones used the experiment-a 70x increase in Q, back of the envelope with no more engineering over the next few decades. The day to recharge is also an artifact of the specific lasers used.
@@Christobanistan I don’t really know enough to say if this could be useful for civil power generation.
But 70x an overall energy gain of 0.011 is still only 0.77. I can’t see why anyone would bother with laser fusion for power generation, when other methods are so much more mature, and have more solutions to the above issues I mentioned.
Should we also consider the effort put into producing tritium needed to fuel the reaction?
Thanks Dr. Strange
This video was incredibly helpful! Thank you
5:40 I think what you meant to say was isotopes, and not elements. Deuterium and tritium are isotopes of hydrogen.
Mastering fusion energy is a race against the destruction of Earth.
This can change the world forever
Excellent explanation!
You are the ONLY ONLY ONLY science communicator online who quantified how much progress in laser efficiency has happened in the past 20 years! Thank you! NOBODY else mentioned those numbers at 9:45. Not even Sabine Hossenfelder. She also got sloppy with her poor analysis about the health effects from using cellphones and cellphone towers, by never including how they are used in PRACTICE.
3:20 low-key roasting the Sun. Very cool
Fusion ignition? More like “Friggin amazing innovation!” Thanks for helping spread this information.
never forget that with that unlimited energy, we could just go where we couldn't before, destroying what is left on this earth
Our boys will figure it out. Like you said. This was the hardest part.
Awesome video.
Thanks for the explanation 👍
Excellent video and great summary Ben ♥
Thanks! 🙏 glad you liked it
Thank you
Ben, pls don't say silly things like "Fusion power is actually within reach". It isn't a realistic statement to a reasonable, informed person. If I understand correctly, NIF is largely a research facility that allows us to do nuclear weapons stockpile maintenance without actually having to shoot off warheads. In support of that objective, it seems to me a tremendously important facility that needs our support. If we can learn more about nuclear physics along the way, fantastic. I haven't seen any videos explaining what we've learned in that regard though. Is that because the learning is national security info? Don't our adversaries already have hydrogen bombs? What are we actually learning in detail that would get us closer to commercial fusion energy?
What's missing from this discussion, is if it was done once, how easy is it to do it again. Currently it sounds like me landing a skateboard trick by flicking the board and then hoping to land on it. Sure I land it that one time randomly, but how much do I need to practice to make it true?
He did mention the railgun idea, which also seems ludicrously impractical. There is reason railguns are not used, they destroy themselves.
@@ahhmm5381 That's why proof of concept is so important. It cuts through the speculation.
Science in the past 50 years has become more and more about magical thinking and political kickbacks. (I don't mean the guy posting the video is part of that, at all)
I'm hoping this technology pans out, in the future, but we ain't there, yet. And that means it may not be viable if we find out Physics limits the technology too much for our plans and needs. Our culture keeps trying to tell Physics what will work, and what is possible, instead of visa versa.
@@bl8388 Proof of concept is necessary, but far from sufficient to demonstrate practical application.
I am sure you have seen clickbait scientific articles. These are often actually proof on concept studies. The problem is, they will almost never be practically useful, nor have the authors bothered to think about this. How is fusion any different?
I've lived here since I was a kid, I remember in 2nd grade my science teacher was telling us how by the time we're in college they will have figured out fusion energy. It's weird how some of the most important science and breakthroughs in humanity's history is happening literally down the street from me, like I can walk there.
Very good video but for people not accustomed to the Fusion process it is confusing why fission and fusion create energy. Maybe you should add in that fusion up to iron produces energy while fusing heavier elements consumes energy which you are setting free by fission.
Your overview is very interesting & informative. It puts into perspective some of the hype I've seen recently.
In essence, what they have done is produce a hydrogen bomb, on a very tiny scale, & using lasers to initiate the compression process, rather than an atom bomb. This technology has been broadly around for 50-60 years.
The energy yield is likely in the form of a short duration 'spike', so would have to be replicated many, many times every second to be a viable source.
The most interesting part is where you 'zoom out' your reference frame, to consider not just the local area of the reaction cell, and its energy input, but the entire building. That radically debunks many of the initial claims.
Tokamak experiments have long been able to produce q values close to 1, but much more work has been done to produce long lasting & 'stable' plasmas, and plasma 'burns' of > 1s have been achieved.
Great breakdown
After all of this fuss about regular fusion, I forgot about the magical tech of cold fusion.
What a break through _that_ would be.
Even better than solar freaking roadways? Even better.
Nuclear Fusion
Yeah….I’ll believe it when I see it.
It’s always been a sliding scale. Even with this minor advancement, they have clearly stated we remain a minimum of a “decade” away from practical use. Which translates to several more decades.
I doubt I’ll live to see it, but I do hope the next couple of generations manage to witness it achieved.
Who says a decade? Don’t think many people in the industry think that
@@Gomlmon99 The very scientists who made the announcement stated this. If you rewatch the video you'll hear them state exactly what I quoted in my post. Thanks.
@@averagejoe8255 scientists or politicians?
@@Gomlmon99 Did you even watch the video? I respect you want all the this magic yesterday, but I'm one who will believe it when I see it.
@@averagejoe8255 no, didn’t think I needed to. All these ignorant TH-camrs are the same. who said it’d be ready in 10 years?
Awesome video!
The best of all ideas by far is Helion approach
You’ve been watching too much TH-cam. They did a PR effort and now gullible people on the internet are proclaiming a company decades behind the rest of the industry as the saviour of fusion.
Well done Ben, even my simple donkey brain followed this and understood what you were saying. That’s a testament to your great communication skills.
There was a helix based system producing 2MJ as well. They have a prototype introduction video on this platform!
Thanks for cutting through the hype! My idea of mini atomic reactors in the trunks of cars that I had jn 1956 never happened but mini fusion generators... there is another idea!
Outro goes hard
Very nicely done. Earned my sub, and looking forward to more. :)
I wonder if the numerical amount net energy gain is far away from any experimental error of the measurement equipment.
I’m sure they checked for it multiple times before announcing it to the public.
@@Md-sd2go You aren't sure, though. In recent years politics have become "the science," and this is all too similar to cold fusion a few years back.
They still haven't been able to harness the energy with a turbine, which will always lose you some of the energy, if they can even figure out how to do it in this situation.
The officials didn't even mention that. Be more scientifically curious and skeptical. That's how the scientific method keeps us humble.
great explanation!
Does the pressure to make fusion a practical human source of energy impeding our understanding of fusion process? In a star like the sun atoms are force to get close together but electromagnetic force form an impenetrable barrier impeding fusion. Thus fusion is only possible through the quantum tunnelling effect. This is what we need to understand. How can we increase the chance of tunnelling effect? Is that a fixed property or can we amplify it in any way?
One fact that has never been told regarding the NIF result is, how long did it last? Nano second, micro second, milli second?
This result was bandied around the world as a massive breakthough in fusion energy, but it was only an, experiment.
However, this is the first video I've seen on fusion energy, that is devoid of journalistic BS. Thank You!!!
Thank you for the excellent presentation on nuclear fusion! While the world waits for fusion reactors to become a reality, we should continue to invest in fission reactors which have already been proven to be very efficient and reliable and, yes, clean (aside from the nuclear waste, which is solved when properly buried underground) Countries like France have demonstrated that nuclear fission power can be used reliably and responsibly. It should be harnessed along with wind and solar energy to provide an alternative to fossil-based power plants.
Hello (B)Angel, I think it's a defective corroded aluminum layer pipe from a kitchen sink.Dit it makes bang with H - reaktion in kitchen acid action?
Great vid! Thanks!
why do we persist with the centralised power generation model? we already have access to a fusion reactor thats working really well. the future is distributed power generation within microgrids