Thursday open thread: Fusion!
And I don't mean jazz fusion!
Yes, I know. Today the Supreme Court hears Donald Trump's case against Colorado barring him from the ballot under the provisions of the 14th Amendment barring insurrectionists from holding office. And this is very important. But I know y'all will talk about it. And if five out of the nine justices can read—and we know that the three liberal justices can—the plain meaning of the text is self-evident, and states should be able to bar Trump from their ballots. Am I sanguine this will happen? Mercy no. But if the past few years have taught us anything is that surprises abound in this universe. So, today will be interesting.
In December of 2022, the National Ignition Facility announced that it had achieved the holy grail: in an experiment, it produced via fusion more energy than was put in.
This was Big News. This was the first experiment in the history of the search for nuclear fusion which had produced more energy than was put into it. But, of course, this was a preliminary result, and had to be confirmed.
Well, my friends: here's the confirmation:
The age of nuclear fusion is upon us. After decades of work by thousands of scientists, this fabled tree has started bearing its fruit: it is possible to have a fusion reaction on Earth that releases more energy than what is put in. The breakthrough, announced in late 2022, has now been confirmed. Fusion breakeven has happened. And that is not all – a series of papers highlight how there’s a lot to be hopeful about too.
So, nuclear fusion was achieved. Huzzah! But wait! There's more!
Having surpassed the “scientific breakeven” is truly a breakthrough – but it is not enough for a full-scale power plant. The yield needs to be over 10 times the initial energy to make sense. For this reason, the team has taken the time to study in detail everything that happened 14 months ago. One intriguing event was that the fusion led to a reheating of the hohlraum to energies higher than what the laser could have supplied.
“In summary, we have observed for the first time substantial reheating of indirect-drive hohlraums from burning fusion capsules, at levels comparable, and exceeding, the original NIF laser drive,” the scientists wrote in one of the five papers presented today.
The ability to create a stable burning plasma might be the game-changer scenario to bring Inertial Fusion to a real-life power plant.
For fusion energy to be the thing which powers us into a future of clean, limitless energy, it needs to be self-sustaining. From the analysis, it appears that this was achieved in this experiment. A system which produces and recycles its own energy is what scientists have been working towards for decades. And it was achieved not at the sexy ITER fusion reactor, which still won't come online for a few more years. No, it was us, Americans, who made the breakthrough.
Yes, I feel a rush of patriotic pride. But more than that, I feel a rush of pride for our human ingenuity. However dire things may seem, we will not perish from this world and this universe, because we have a spark of the divine in us, however you want to define it.
I've written this before: when—not if—we achieve nuclear fusion at an industrial scale, our future as a species is secured. And we won't be limited to just this bright, blue-green marble in the darkness of space. Fusion will usher in a future more like Star Trek, and avoid one more like Mad Max. Medievalist, autocratic societies with hydrocarbons will no longer hold us hostage to their whims. Everyone on this planet will be able to live full, productive, prosperous lives, without despoiling the environment. The earth will heal. We as a species will be able to become the enlightened beings which the better parts of our faith and philosophical traditions say we are.
Yes. Maybe I'm being too optimistic. But my reading of history teaches me that we, bit by bit, climb up from superstition to humanism. What will Muslim radicals be able to offer in response to cheap, unending energy? With what will Christian fundamentalists be able to scare their flocks when material needs are all taken care of? A reassessment of the spiritual life will occur, one in which humanity and nature are no longer separate, at odds, but symbiotic. This is my hope. And this news makes me think I'm onto something.
Whatever happens at the Supreme Court, today is a good day. Choose hope. Choose life.
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