{"id":64469,"date":"2022-12-15T14:08:10","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T19:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64469"},"modified":"2022-12-15T14:08:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-15T19:08:10","slug":"fusion-breakthrough-is-a-nuclear-nothing-burger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64469","title":{"rendered":"Fusion Breakthrough is a Nuclear Nothing Burger"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FUSION BREAKTHROUGH IS A NUCLEAR NOTHING BURGER<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory kicked off \u00a0its year-end Go-Fund-Me drive last week announcing a nuclear fusion breakthrough.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes.\u00a0Net energy gain indicates technology could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.\u201d
\n\u2013Financial Times, December 11, 2022<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These claims are nonsense.\u00a0The Wall Street Journal called the fusion announcement\u00a0nuclear fusion hype<\/a>\u00a0noting that nuclear power stations are at best decades away.<\/p>\n

The experiment used lasers to put 1.8 megajoules (MJ) of energy in and got 2.5 MJ out \u2013 proving that energy can be successfully released and gained by a Deuterium-Tritium fusion reaction. Unfortunately, they had to use\u00a0500 MJ of energy into the lasers<\/a>\u00a0so the EROI was 0.005. That\u2019s the worst net energy ratio ever.<\/p>\n

No electricity was produced in the experiment. The energy released was mostly waste heat.<\/p>\n

But the announcement was timed to support a huge funding measure by the U.S. Congress:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m\u2026proud to announce\u2026the highest-ever authorization of over $624 million this year in the National Defense Authorization Act for the ICF [Inertial Confinement Fusion] program to build on this amazing breakthrough.\u201d
\n\u2013U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let\u2019s suppose for a moment that this experiment proves that fusion is now a commercially viable new source of energy.<\/p>\n

Building fusion nuclear power stations for the country is a big project and big projects take time. If, for example, there were full funding and permits to build a major new airport, it would take about\u00a0nine years<\/a>\u00a0to complete.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding a major nuclear site with the handling of radioactive waste would make things many times harder. For an experimental and totally unproven nuclear technology like fusion, the problems are nearly insurmountable and would require decades at a minimum.\u201d
\n\u2013Thomas Overton, nuclear scientist and publisher of\u00a0PowerMag<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FUSION BREAKTHROUGH IS A NUCLEAR NOTHING BURGER The U.S. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory kicked off \u00a0its year-end Go-Fund-Me drive last week announcing a nuclear fusion breakthrough. \u201cThe fusion energy breakthrough by US scientists boosts clean power hopes.\u00a0Net energy gain indicates technology could provide an abundant zero-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.\u201d \u2013Financial Times, December 11, 2022 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[8195,5933,32684,33489,578],"class_list":["post-64469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-liberty","tag-art-berman","tag-fusion","tag-fusion-energy","tag-nothing-burger","tag-nuclear-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64470,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64469\/revisions\/64470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}