Reply To: The North Atlantic Current

[belbear]

Dr_Barnowl wrote: They are correctly identifying the advantages of fusion energy.

Lots of “It is imperative to provide funding for our programme!” for both ITER (and any potential American tokamak project), and NIF.

No mentions of anything but tokamak fusion and inertial confinement with focus on ITER and NIF.

Some focus on the potential for intellectual property rights and precision manufacturing reinvigorating the US economy.

And NIF doesn’t even offer a perspective on energy generation. It’s nothing but an excellent weapons-research tool to create mini termonuclear explosions without violating the nuclear test ban treaties. The fusion energy argument in NIF is only a decoy to draw public attention away from the nuke research. And to give Arnold Schwarzenegger something better to say than “For a better understanding of Judgement Day”

Gigantic lasers, with an overall efficiency of less than 0.5% are used, so 99,5% of all input energy is already wasted before the beams even strike the target. And this target is a “hohlraum” that converts IR light to X-rays, which again wastes about 80% of the laser input energy.

It will take an awfully high Q (Q=1000, anyone?) to compensate for that, given the fact that less than half of this DT-fusion output energy (in neutrons) can ever be converted to electricity.

Am I right that focus fusion nees a Q of “only” 3 or 4 to produce net power?

And last but not least, the NIF laser can fire only once every 5 hours. The laser delivers about 2 megajoules per pulse, so the laser pump energy must be around 400MJ. That’s more than 200 pounds of TNT. Or you could also use it to shoot an enemy satellite out of the sky when it passes over.

If I had to choose between ITER and NIF as a hope for future energy, I would definitely put my eggs in the ITER basket.