Fusion News, August 23, 2023

Jasmine Mund, a graduate mechanical engineer, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all the stories mentioned are included below.

1. US scientists repeat fusion power breakthrough

2. SHINE Technologies achieves visible proof of fusion

3. Scientists discover shortcut that aids the design of twisty fusion facilities

4. Department of Energy announces $112 million for research on computational projects in fusion energy sciences

5. First Light Fusion working on medical isotopes

Bonus:

[jonathancarr]

Awesome Update!! Looking forward to the next breakthrough!! It feels like we are on the verge of a new age with the advent of commercial nuclear fusion. It's a civilization game changer, especially if it can provide a virtually inexhaustible source of energy across the globe.

[raulkaap]

Pulsar Fusion seems to have actual operational non-fusion ion engines and hybrid boosters.
A very interesting company and worth looking into. I wonder how many more of this sort are out there.

[richardprice]

Fusion powered space ships can not only drasticaly redice travel times, but also the cost. The British are moving in the right direction and there is a real possibility of them succeeding in the next 2 years in a demo

[LightDiodeNeal]

Definitely a favourite channel thanks these are great. Very interesting from the outsiders' view.
4:25 4, or 3? 🙂

[mrgauges]

We can do it. Just kidding ourselves with wind and solar. In fact we need to be using traditional nuclear power until fusion is operational

[jaimecastells]

Ms. Mund, first, thank you for this very interesting and valuable update. I wish to take exception to your phrasing concerning the recent computational findings around plasma containment in stellarators. You said "...the plasma confinement is even more difficult." This is incorrect since the motivation of the more complex design is to facilitate plasma confinement. I believe your intent was something like "... modeling the plasma confinement is more difficult in stellarators compared to tokamaks." This may seem picayune, but I believe the advantages of stellarators are not well understood outside the field, so it becomes more important to avoid confusion.

[johnh]

Nice to hear that Gerald Kulcinsky is still involved in fusion energy. He was one of the first, if not the first, to suggest mining helium-3 from the moon for D-He3 fusion.

[johnh]

First Light Fusion might have an eye-catching idea of using the fusion neutrons for medical purposes but it was always assumed that all the DT neutrons, and more with neutron multiplication, would be needed for tritium breeding. One might assume that new fission reactors could be used for the same purpose if incorporated into the design.

[Mark-qijw]

interesting that my comment (no swear words, no offence to anybody... just listing some critical issues on the way to fusion development) has been deleted.... are you worried that the public could hear the other side of the story?

[raulkaap]

Interesting, I thought that the convoluted shape of a stellarator was supposed to make plasma containment easier and not harder. What am I missing?

[RojCowles]

Slight nitpick but isn't the NIF net energy gain result more of a milestone along the road to commercial fusion rather than a breakthrough since the laser pumped inertial confinement design really isn't going to form the basis, near term at least, for a viable grid fusion power plant and NIF has gradually been approaching net gain for a few years now in their test shots.

Its absolutely a fantastic result and a testament to the patience and skill of the research and engineering teams at NIF, and the management team keeping the funding at the necessary levels, but human civilization didn't change much from the day before net gain at NIF to the day after. At least I don't think it did.

For my money the real fusion breakthrough, albeit a really boring one for anyone who doesn't obsess over logistics and large scale manufacturing, will be when a factory belonging to Rolls Royce, Siemens, GE, Hyundai group. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries or some other large global engineering company rolls out its first production fusion reactor destined for a commercial power plant or ship propulsion system with many more following down the production lines.

[johnjakson]

For fusion to work with tritium breeding requires a gain of at least one with few losses, while in practice the losses are huge and the gain is improbable and all with temperatures of 100M kelvin and the preferred fuels don't even exist naturally and yet it still irradiates itself into radioactive waste.

While fission breeding in Molten Salt Reactors have actual neutron gains of around 3 with few losses at temperatures of only 1000 k or less with plentiful fuels.

What am I missing (for 50 years now), its as if studying of fusion is an act of utter futility when the world could have been powered by fission for decades.

[DavidAlanGilbert]

It seems odd to say that First Light's technique is similar to NIF

[Nick_Tag]

Hey Jas, two tips - get a condenser mic, and try to setup Nvidia Broadcast