Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

Vertigofrost t1_j06lq67 wrote

Reply to comment by zbobet2012 in National Ignition Facility (NIF) announces net positive energy fusion experiment by Robo-Connery

I'm not an expert either but I think I can provide some limited responses for your questions.

  1. That represents a 40x reduction in power requirements for the laser, which is only a single order of magnitude and realistically not a massive change in the energy balance.

  2. While this could be true, the current cost of a shot is over 100,000x more expensive than it would need to be for that to be true. You need shots costing pennies when they currently cost >$10,000.

  3. Tritium is naturally rare but not hard to make. Bombarding lithium with neutrons is not a super complex process, though capturing the resulting tritium requires a good set-up. Not something that's really a worry for nuclear proliferation because anyone could do it. It's currently produced in 10-20kg per year from reactors and can be stored for future use. The industrial production would need to occur for future fusion needs but its not such a big problem.

  4. The LIFE project has clear goals but not really steps to get to commercial production.

  5. I will leave this one to an expert.

2