No, nuclear fusion is still not just around the corner

Nuclear fusion has been "just around the corner" for decades, kind of like strong AI. Now, while strong AI photo-scrapping has become ever more a cause for concern and even alarm, overall, it's still not just around the corner. However, something more than weak AI does seem closer to just around the corner.

Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, has seemed to remain metaphorically, but not actually, just around the corner.

That's contra the breathlessness some have expressed over a supposed surplus energy from a brief fusion burst at the National Ignition Facility, per Science News:

At 1:03 a.m. PST on December 5, researchers with the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., ignited controlled nuclear fusion that, for the first time, resulted in the net production of energy. A 3-million-joule burst emerged from a peppercorn-sized capsule of fuel when it was hit with a 2-million-joule laser pulse.

Sounds promising, no?

Especially with this?

“These recent results [at] NIF are the first time in a laboratory anywhere on Earth [that] we were able to demonstrate more energy coming out of a fusion reaction than was put in,” NIF physicist Tammy Ma said at the news conference. She predicted that pilot projects for power plants based on the fusion approach will be built in the “coming decades.”

But Tevye knows this one IS just one small, very small, step for mankind. Because it didn't actually result in the net production of energy, when one, to riff on creationists and evolution, looks at the full closed system involved:

But this latest fusion burst still didn’t produce enough energy to run the laser power supplies and other systems of the NIF experiment. It took about 300 million joules of energy from the electrical grid to get a hundredth of the energy back in fusion. “The net energy gain is with respect to the energy in the light that was shined on the target, not with respect to the energy that went into making that light,” says University of Rochester physicist Riccardo Betti, who was also not involved with the research. “Now it’s up to the scientists and engineers to see if we can turn these physics principles into useful energy.”

That's where we're at. 

And, in terms of net power production at the fusion itself, it's not THAT far ahead of 16 months ago.

Per Tommy Ma, focus on that "decades away." If not "fifty years in the future," it's almost surely no closer than 40 years. In other words, really nothing massively new here and in other words, not in my lifetime.

Plus, as Counterpunch reminds us, a lot of the PR two weeks ago was exactly that: fusion-industrial complex government-industry PR. And, also per Counterpunch, future tritium shortages and materials costs will impose bottlenecks.

Apollo at 50: No, we DO NOT need to return

Manned missions to the moon did make science discoveries that robotic landers couldn't have, 50 years ago, tis true. And the tech for manned missions, while not inventing Tang or Velcro, did benefit human life on earth in other ways.

And, it WAS fun seeing men on the moon. I vaguely remember Apollo 11 myself. I remember later ones even more. And I have met the second-last (to date) man to walk on the moon, Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17.

But, 50 years later?

First, there are NO earthshaking (moonshaking?) scientific discoveries to be made. Lesser discoveries can be made fine by unmanned vehicles.

Second, there are no mining needs that we have on the moon. Metals can be mined here on earth for much cheaper, after you throw in the lunar transportation overhead, etc.

As for helium 3? We are still decades away from the commercial fusion power plants that have been "just around the corner" since ... well, since the time Neal Armstrong took his small step and giant leap.

Patriotism?

Absolutely not.

Apollo itself was dick-swinging enough. If "we" go back to the moon, it should be "we" the world.

Otherwise, we don't need to waste gummint money on this.

If Elon Musk or some private-sector dick-swinger wants to put men on the Moon, let alone Mars, and with ZERO direct or indirect government help, be my guest. And I mean ZERO both direct and indirect. If he plans an ocean splashdown, he can hire private ships for the astronaut pickup. Private helicopters for a land based return.

We also, contra Stephen Hawking before his death and many others, do NOT need to embrace landing on Mars as a way of escaping environmental problems on Earth, including not trying to escape climate change. Such an attitude almost insures that we'll just have import the same problem-causing mindset there. It's also elitist as, per Dr. Strangelove, no way everybody on this planet or even close to it can go.

Fusion power: Stop me if you've heard this before

Stewart C. Prager, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, a Department of Energy national laboratory, is giving us the old song-and-dance about how peaceful nuclear fusion power is just around the corner. He's also probably got ulterior motives for this, which I'll address at the end.

He says:

Seven partners — the European Union, China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States — have teamed up on an experiment to produce 500 million watts of fusion power for 500 seconds and longer by 2020, demonstrating key scientific and engineering aspects of fusion at the scale of a reactor.

However, even though the United States is a contributor to this experiment, known as ITER, it has yet to commit to the full program needed to develop a domestic fusion reactor to produce electricity for the American power grid. Meanwhile other nations are moving forward to implement fusion as a key ingredient of their energy security.

Indeed, fusion research facilities more modern than anything in the United States are either under construction or operating in China, Germany, Japan and South Korea. The will and enthusiasm of governments in Asia to fill their energy needs with fusion, as soon as possible, is nearly palpable.

What has been lacking in the United States is the political and economic will. We need serious public investment to develop materials that can withstand the harsh fusion environment, sustain hot plasma indefinitely and integrate all these features in an experimental facility to produce continuous fusion power.

This won’t be cheap. A rough estimate is that it would take $30 billion and 20 years to go from the current state of research to the first working fusion reactor. But put in perspective, that sum is equal to about a week of domestic energy consumption, or about 2 percent of the annual energy expenditure of $1.5 trillion.

Fusion used to be an energy source for my generation’s grandchildren; now, plans across the world call for a demonstration power plant in about 20 years.

First, just because other countries are sinking more money into fusion than the U.S. doesn't guarantee they're right.

Second, his time/money estimates are what we've always heard from fusion folks, just like AI ones. There's no guarantee they're close to true; "rough estimate" is probably an understatement.

Third, desal for drinking water is pricey enough, and has environmental consequences of its own right now.

The ulterior motive? Prager works for DOE lab.

Given that the reality of the last space shuttle flight, and a hiatus of at least a few years in U.S. manned space flight is settling on on the collective minds of the scientific world, and given the hard-nosed debt talks in DC, etc., well ...

Expect more op-eds from this from more managers/administrators of federal labs, research centers, etc., whether in fusion, complemenary medicine pseudomedicine, nanotech or whatever.

Look at NASA's fake exobiology arsenic PR smokescreen earlier this year. We probably ain't seen nothing yet.

Fusion folly? More than likely

The government’s new National Ignition Facility is, more than likely, nothing more than the latest outbreak of hype in 40 or more years of “peaceful fusion power is just around the corner.” Even many of its boosters hedge their bets as to the likelihood of the NIF achieving something besides burning through billions of dollars.