“Energy Matters”

The Moon has helium-3, an important substance for fusion power — and the Chinese have taken notice

It’s been hard to miss the excitement since the Energy Department announced that its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had produced a fusion reaction, which, for the first time, unleashed more power than it took to create.

Using an array of 192 lasers to superheat and compress hydrogen atoms to more than 180,000,000°F, scientists managed to release 3.15 megajoules of energy for every 2.05 megajoules their experiment required.

Sounds impressive. But what exactly do these developments mean, and, more importantly, what do they foretell? Many things, certainly, including a fight for the Moon.

The Guardian newspaper recently ran a story about a library in Suffolk where, among others, “young families, restaurant workers and a former NHS cleaner” were taking refuge from the cold. They couldn’t afford to heat their homes because energy prices have risen so steeply in the last few months. Such “warm banks”—that is to say, heated public spaces where people may go to keep warm—are springing up everywhere.

Your attention please. This century’s scheduled performance of the apocalypse has been postponed indefinitely, ladies and gentlemen. Your tickets will be refunded at the box office.

On Dec. 5, 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in California aimed 192 laser beams at a pinhead-sized target containing deuterium and tritium and a fusion reaction succeeded in releasing more energy than the amount delivered by the lasers. But this achievement of inertial confinement fusion is not only the first time in history that nuclear fusion has worked under controlled conditions (in contrast to a thermonuclear bomb); those lasers also disintegrated the green energy fanatics’ arguments in favor of dismantling the world’s 90 percent-plus fossil fuel-based $85 trillion economy. They have now been discredited as much as Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons’s sloppy claims of having conducted fusion at room temperature in 1989, despite the two’s up-until-then impressive scientific credentials.

Good article and I hope his optimism is justified however I remain skeptical that near term life changing practical application is only a decade or two away. He’s Bang-On about the plans the Climate Nazis have in store for us however.

h/t YM

Livermore National Laboratory’s announcement is certainly a breakthrough, but it’s a commercially limited one.

Nuclear fusion has long been hailed as the next great energy source, capable of providing nearly limitless power without the harmful emissions and waste associated with other forms of energy generation. This week, the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that it had achieved “ignition,” which occurs when the energy output from plasma in a fusion reactor exceeds the energy put into the plasma. With continued investment from government and the private sector, we are likely to see many such scientific milestones reached in the next few years.

No Flying Cars? Crap.

The authorities failed to foresee the predictable winter gas demand

It’s cold outside. In the 10 years that I have lived here, I do not think I remember seeing so much snow coverage in London. The markets are feeling the cold too: over the weekend the energy markets recorded record prices. On Sunday, the price for power at peak time (5-6pm) for the following day hit £2,586 per megawatt-hour — a record. It appears that promises of a warm winter were greatly exaggerated.

Let’s see what Survival Lilly is up to…

The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain — a major milestone in the decades-long, multibillion-dollar quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap, clean power.

A Fusion Breakthrough That Could Change the World

… The reason we need fusion is to destroy the Malthusian belief system, which, in my estimation, is the preeminent threat to human civilization today. If one accepts the idea that resources are limited, then all nations are fundamentally enemies, and the only issue is who is going to kill whom in order to claim what’s available. At bottom, this was the source of the major catastrophes of the 20th century. It could cause far worse in the 21st. This mindset, however, is false. We are not threatened by there being too many people. We are threatened by people who think there are too many people.