Reply To: Global Warming

[jamesr]

asymmetric_implosion wrote:
Bad news though, NIF will hit breakeven first. It is dubbed too big to fail by NNSA and others in DOE.

NIF will fail – the only way they’re going to get ignition is by a clever PR redefinition of what ignition is.

They may be able to get the hot-spot at the centre of the pellet to ignite, but some new models show that if you take account of electron degeneracy properly, the alpha particles do not have sufficient stopping power to heat the compressed pellet and create a burn wave propagating outwards.

So I expect if NIF do come out with any news of having reached ignition, take it with a pinch of salt and look out for the burn-up fraction. Getting a pinpoint in the centre to ‘ignite’ is pointless unless it results in fusing of a reasonable fraction of the pellet.