Talk:Inertial confinement fusion

Barrel of Oil

" Theoretically, if the reaction completes with perfect efficiency (a practically impossible feat), a small amount of fuel about the size of a pinhead releases the energy equivalent to a barrel of oil.", Since when is a barrel of oil a unit of energy? This is just bad on so many levels, please reword. --PoorLeno 19:02, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

A barrel of oil is a standard unit of energy in the oil industry, corresponding to around 6GJ.

[1]

[2]

However, considering that most electricity is derived from fission and coal perhaps better units would be tonne of coal or kg of E.U. If you don't like, you reword. On what levels is it bad? njh 21:48, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I guess you are right, but it felt very wrong the first time I read it. Obviously the BTU energy is derived from burning the said oil, though it still feels wrong to say that matter equals energy in a physics related article, and imply burning the matter... There are so many ways to extract energy from matter; it just seems unprofessional to automatically assume that everyone should understand what is meant from context. --PoorLeno 20:10, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Ok, rewrite it in terms of kW hours or GJ or something. Then you can say, 'which is equivalent to burning a barrel of oil in a diesel generator'. I'm not sure how big a pin head is in any case. njh 04:20, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I changed it, but then the whole damn article just disappeared and I can't get it back by editing an older version!--Deglr6328 06:59, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

I really like the new version! --PoorLeno 19:41, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm picking nits in a snow storm, but according to John Edwards, Associate Director, National Ignition Facility, in a report given '140321 in WDC, for 'pinhead' read 'BB' or 1.7mm hollow sphere. (There are pins with a 'BB' size plastic 'head', but most folk will think of the much smaller metal 'nail' head of an all steel straight-pin.) Although the NIF is really just trying to light the fuse to the fusion reaction, it might clarify the immensity of the NIF challenge to realize that the total system input for an event is about 500GJ but the total output of the target is about 37J as of 2014 January. The significant threshold of incident energy (~16J) less than half of total energy released (37J), is at the expense of a much stronger initial (toe) pulse(~2x) & 'slower' compression (foot) pulse, which produces a much more controlled & smoother shape than those shown in the older illustrations in the article. The 'spiky' shape seems to indicate the 'leakiness' of the event. This 'leakiness' might be analogous to a noisy slap rather than a quieter but more solid punch, to transfer the ablation energy to the jacket im/explosion. I did not notice it mentioned, but they are also playing with heavier materials for the inside hohlraum (I suspect this is German for 'hole-room'.) coating which was gold, with the added advantage of more x-ray transparency surrounding the target.--Wikidity (talk) 02:40, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

NPOV

"If this is to be typical of the development of such systems, it is unlikely they will ever be a practical power source." - this comment sticks out in an otherwise excellent article as a piece of irrelevant opinion and should be deleted - Discuss! -Rich 00:37, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't know, it smacks of unnecessary editorializing but I do completely agree with the statement itself. It's reasonable. Anyway, I would not revert if you removed it. --Deglr6328 02:55, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

The style is editorializing and I would like to see a source for the numbers. We have to know the original budget to know if it is now massively over budget., and it is important to know if the comparison is with an early estimate or the official budget at groundbreaking. Details belong in the article on the National Ignition Facility, which currently barely mentions the budget. I've sanitized it. --Art Carlson 09:43, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

And on that note, I have re-written the NIF article. It contains complete details. BTW Art, I personally consider "one order of magnitude" to be a very reasonable definition of "massively"! Maury 12:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

mr flibe

I thought flibe was LiF and BeF₂ rather than just generic salts. Does anyone know precisely? Should it be a new article, FLiBe?

flibe is just Li₂BeF₄ --Deglr6328 09:31, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Molten_salt_reactor#The_molten_salt_reactor_experiment says that it is 2LiF-BeF₂. Is this different or merely a notational change? (I'm guessing that in a mixture of molten salts all the atoms are free anyway, so the two are identical, but when it solidifies perhaps they are different?)njh 23:22, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Removal of "pure fusion weapons" section

I removed the section with the aforementioned title for the following reasons.

1- it is highly speculative at best, there is no accepted method by which a fusion weapon without a fission trigger could be built. it is thought to be impossible.

2- what is the connection between laser/ion/Z ICF research and pure fusion weapons?! there is little to none so far as I can see.

3- the section is a VERBATIM COPY of the "pure fusion weapon" article! redundancy on articles like this is not how wikipedia is intended to be built. Just put a link.

--Deglr6328 16:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

The material in that section was not an exact copy of the pure fusion weapons article (although some material should be merged). Note the different references, etc. Since there was actually a reference to a paper explaining how a pure fusion weapon might be possible (using current day technology), it seems unreasonable to just claim that fusion weapons are 'impossible' without any explanation. In fact, building an economical power station using ICF may actually be more difficult than building a deliverable weapon (the technical hurdles are different, of course).

The link between ICF and pure fusion weapons is that any pure fusion weapon would be inertially confined, would use similar fuel, etc (after all, the aim in ICF is to produce small fusion explosions). Quite a few people have thought seriously about how to weaponize ICF (and written articles about it). ICF research would be essential to the development of a pure fusion weapon: certainly ICF research has more relevance to developing new weapons than to weapons stewardship. So I think the link between ICF and pure fusion weapons is just as strong as to weapons stewardship or fusion power (even though ICF is not publicly promoted as a path to new weapons). I have rewritten/removed some of the material from the end of the ICF and nuclear weapons section because it seemed a bit vague and unreferenced. I think that weaponizing of ICF deserves some more writeup. Dashpool 07:25, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

OK maybe it wasn't verbatim but the only difference was the middle bit claiming that they are possible. I added that paragraph to the page. I would vey very much like to read that article, but who the heck has a copy of Science and Global security, Volume 7 p129-150? Anyway, I still seriously doubt the claim that it is possible to have a pure fusion weapon with anything near today's technology and would be willing to bet that the article lays out either some wildly exotic method for non fission triggered fusion or that it is an absurd extrapolation of pulsed electric power device miniaturization scheme. Arjun Makhijani has written several articles breathlessly worried about the possibility [3] but frankly I find the arguments contained within to be somewhat silly. His only (extremely remotely) plausible suggestion for a possible pure fusion weapon seems to involve EPFCGs studied at Arzamas-16 which purportedly barely reached a yield of 10^14n. That's at least a factor of 1-10 thousand away from just breakeven and probably (very roughly estimating) somewhere around a factor of a billion off of what would need to be achieved to do something like a Kt of TNT. So yeah, I just don't buy that its possible. However, Hans Bethe apparently thought that it was worrisome enough a prospect though that he actually warned the president not to pursue research in the area. But he was obviously badly shaken by previous experiences and such cautiousness is fully understandable. I just don't know where you would start with regard to edits linking ICF to pure fusion weapons research when there seems to be virtually no literature linking the subjects. --Deglr6328 08:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

May be you are not aware of all EPFCG devices designed in Russia, the EPFCG english article not being comprehensive. Have a look on fr:Générateur magnéto-explosif (if you can read French), or on this LANL document. Croquant 10:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

yes I have already read that document.--Deglr6328 20:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

This does bring up the question of why we do not already have a MTF article though.--Deglr6328 22:10, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

U of R

Why is there no reference to the University of Rochester's Laboratory for Laser Energetics? It jas the OMEGA laser system there, where they carry out tests now, not years from now when the NIF of ITER will be finished/started.

Perhaps because you haven't added it yet ;-)? Feel free to be bold and edit your information into the article!

Atlant 13:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Definition of ICF

The article seems a bit inconsistent as to what constitutes ICF. The introduction defines ICF as involving lasers or heavy ion beams. Some of the article is written as though lasers are the only possible drivers, but there is a mention of Z-pinch and heavy ions as well. In the template an the bottom, 'Inertial confinement' has laser driven, z-pinch, and bubble fusion next to it. Does it only count as ICF if lasers or heavy ions are involved? Seems like Z-pinch driven hohlraums are very similar to laser driven hohlraums. And what about laser fast ignition of a fuel compressed by a Z-pinch? (Also, I second the idea that there should be an article on magnetised target fusion.) --Dashpool 12:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I've tried to clean this up a bit. Maury 12:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a heavy ion irradiation facility has ever even been built. all the papers I've ever seen are theoretical or are plans for facilities that were never pursued..... --Deglr6328 05:43, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Requested Move (2006)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

This article is entirely about lasers, while ignoring inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) and acoustic inertial confinement (AICF). It should therefore be renamed to Laser inertial confinement fusion or similar. Actually, Laser fusion redirects here. It should be moved there. — Omegatron 15:04, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

No. The term "inertial confinement" is almost always used to refer to compression of pellets with beams, so this should remain the main article. I would like to see more on heavy ion beams, light ion beams, and electron beams here. We could put a note at the top mentioning IEC and bubble fusion, if we are worried about the occasional stray. --Art Carlson 16:13, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Historical problem only. To date no-one's actually gone ahead and built a full-sized machine using anything other than lasers. Focusing was the primary concern. The recent move to indirect drive and hohlraums has changed things, however, and now there is some ongoing research into heavy ion beams again. In a couple of years "laser fusion" will no longer be appropriate. Maury 22:28, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Beam confinement fusion, then. Look at our own navigation template. Magnetic and inertial confinement are the two large categories, within which are many specialized types. Acoustic, electrostatic, Z-pinch, and various types of beams are all types of inertial confinement with their own articles. Naming this article after the general category when it's only about beams is misleading. — Omegatron 22:42, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem with that title is that it's a neologism. Searching Google for it gives me zero hits. - mako 00:03, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

No. The term ICF is not generally used to refer to IEC or AICF. Also, the physics of these is different enough that it would be out of place in this article. I agree that it is confusing that some techniques which utilise inertial confinement to produce fusion aren't classified here as 'ICF' but we have to stick with the established usage. I don't like Beam confinement fusion either: is a neologism and too restrictive. I think a slightly broader definition than Art suggested is appropriate: ICF is compression of pellets with pulsed energy sources (I rewrote it this way in the intro to include indirect drive and Z-pinch). It is also logical for this article to explain Z-pinches/ion beams/indirect drive because the physics is so similar. Even though direct laser compression is historically dominant, I think a wikipedia audience will be interested in a more broad discussion of the concept of ICF and the various promising techniques (these are emerging technologies, so competing approaches are worth considering). I'm not sure what a 'full size' machine is but the Z machine looks pretty big to me.--Dashpool 15:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Inertial confinement fusion (beams), then. I'm sure one of you can come up with a name that is accurate, sticks with established usage, and isn't misleading, but no one is trying. — Omegatron 14:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

If somebody types in "inertial confinement fusion" then this is probably the article they want to see. If the name is changed, then I would plead for a REDIRECT from [[inertial confinement fusion]] to [[Inertial confinement fusion (beams)]], so what's the point? --Art Carlson 15:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - please take any requested moves to WP:RM and go through proper procedure. Patstuart^talk|edits 21:18, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Requested move (2007)

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was not to move the article. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 01:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Inertial confinement fusion → Inertial confinement fusion (beams) — No one wants to move the page because "inertial confinement fusion" is the term usually used for lasers or ion beams. But there are actually several other types of fusion that are also "inertial confinement fusion", including z-pinch, acoustic inertial confinement, inertial electrostatic confinement, and so on. I'm not a physicist, but I think Inertial confinement fusion should be a summary of all the various types and general concepts, and this article should be moved to a more descriptive title. — Omegatron 21:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC) — Omegatron 21:33, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Survey

Add  # '''Support'''  or  # '''Oppose'''  on a new line in the appropriate section followed by a brief explanation, then sign your opinion using ~~~~.

Survey - Support votes

1. Support — Omegatron 02:59, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Survey - Oppose votes

• Oppose From what I understand reviewing the articles and the discussion above, the current situation is sensible. If the article isn't clear that ICF is not necessarily laser-driven, that's something that can be solved without moving the article. The other articles have names that do not conflict so there's no need for disambiguation. –  Anþony  talk  01:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose. Current article is sensible, and even if there is any real, significant ambiguity as proposer claims, this article belongs at primary disambiguation of the term (if anything, a separate page with (disambiguation) in its name could be created—but so far, I don't even see justification for that). Gene Nygaard 02:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments:

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Ratings

Although I'm hardly a fan of ratings, it seems a lot of people think they are important. So can anyone suggest a reason this isn't A or FA? It certainly meets every one of the criterion for the A rating, it's clear, well written and organized, has a great intro, is reasonable length given the topic, and well supported by "hard" sources. So how do we move this process along? Maury 14:04, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

The FA Nazis would argue that there need to be more sources. They believe that practically every sentence, and certainly every paragraph, should have a direct reference to a source, even if it is pretty obvious to someone who understands the topic. My only objection is that the history is alternatively inspecific and overspecific; i.e. there is no mention of Nuckolls, Wood, et al. and the 1972 Nature article, while at the same time we get a lot of technical details thrown at us which are not given much importance or context. --24.147.86.187 13:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Add section for Fusion-Fission method (fuel pellet using depleted Uranium shell)?

Can anyone qualified please add a section on the use of hybrid Fusion-Fission fuel pellets which rely on the excess of neutrons produced by the fusion process in the instantaneous conversion and fission of a depleted Uranium shell? I have been hearing about this process, but I can't find any mention of it in this article or other articles which I have cross-referenced. This should be the most appropriate article, since inertial confinement and fusion is key to the process. The use of Uranium is a short cut to getting a net positive power output. I realize that there may be some negative feelings, since the Holy Grail of fusion is the clean (radioactive by-product-free) generation of power. On the bright side, at least the tiny size (and non-sustaining chain reaction) means that it has limited accident potential. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pmarshal (talk • contribs) 00:26, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Re: Fusion-Fission method. I went ahead and added a link to the site for the LIFE project at LLNL. That's Laser Inertial-Confinement Fusion-Fission Energy. It's not pure ICF, but I thought it was interesting and I agree that it is sufficiently related to have some mention. Although it's not strictly fusion energy, it seems to me that it is an application for ICF. On that basis, I think it might deserve its own discussion section on this page. In any case, at this point I just put the link. --Pballen (talk) 19:07, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Reference to LMJ as well as NIF

IMHO, it is biased to refer to the NIF page and not to the LMJ one: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/LMJ I'll try to amend the article in that sense as soon as I find some time, unless somebody does it first :D —Preceding unsigned comment added by MarmotteNZ (talk • contribs) 03:21, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Description Under Fuel Microcapsule Picture

The description states 'sometimes called a microballon'. I believe this should read 'microballoon'. I would have just corrected it if i was certain, so can anyone confirm? Cameron McCormack (talk) 11:41, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

Overly broad name

The article's name is still too large for its subject. ICF should be a summary that points to more specific articles. Laser is a subset of beam which is a subset of inertial. Why is this hard to understand? Lfstevens (talk) 08:21, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

See the discussion above of Requested Move from January 2007. The conclusion was that the name was fine as is. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 17:17, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Prospects for ICF in 2012?

The article says "The first credible attempts at ignition are scheduled for 2010" with nothing more current. On the one hand Nature reported this March that laser energy was up to 2.03 megajoules (reduced to 1.875 by diagnostic and other optics). On the other the program ends this year. It's now June. What are the current odds of (a) ignition by 2012 and (b) continuation beyond 2012?

It would be very sad to see all those billions down the drain for an approach to fusion that looks looked to stand a much better chance than magnetic confinement. --Vaughan Pratt (talk) 05:33, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

@Vaughan Pratt: A sadly ironic post, in retrospect. NIF is currently locked at about 1/3rd of the way to ignition. The late 2013 bro-ha-ha was a hail-mary deliberately designed to increase output from the core at the cost of rapid disassembly, and does not (apparently) represent a path to ignition. Time will tell, but it looks like we have another round of LASNEX upgrades coming... Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:25, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Maury. I edited my comment accordingly ("looks" → "looked").

It occurs to me that a prize of $10M or more for the first team to reliably reproduce ball lightning, analogous to the Longitude Prize, the DARPA Grand Challenge, etc., might incentivize fruitful research into an alternative path to plasma stability. Ball lightning research appears to have faded in much the same way autonomous driving had faded prior to 2004. The prize money if won would likely be a pittance by comparison with the potential value of the resulting insights. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 17:09, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

@Vaughan Pratt: Funny timing again; ball lightning fusion was really referring to spheromaks, which were pretty popular in the 80s and 90s (along with their close cousins, the RFCs and similar). It appears that there is some renewed interest in the spheromak field via General Fusion, although the last I read there were strong theoretical underpinnings suggesting any basic spheromak system wouldn't work - but GF is a combo system including a crusher so I'm not sure it applies. I'm keeping my eye on this to see if anything new shows up in the lit'. Maury Markowitz (talk) 17:08, 7 November 2014 (UTC)

Dirtiness of thermonuclear bombs

An unsupported statement is made that "... the smaller a thermonuclear bomb is, the "dirtier" it is ..." This is misleading, if not untrue.

Bombs are optimised for an entirely different purpose. It is true that in small and large bombs, the bulk of the yield is from fission, but this is a design decision, and can easily be eliminated by using a non-fissile tamper material. The secondary of a small multi-stage bomb is just another boosted fission stage, fusion yield negligible. The largest bomb ever tested (~50MT) was fairly clean, but only because the fissile tamper was removed from the secondary to reduce contamination. Small ultra-clean bombs have also been tested.

The article is about the current art of laser-driven ICF. Fission-driven ICF was the first mechanism used and has been proven, so a summary definitely belongs here. The details of using large explosions for power belong in another more general nuclear power article.

Thomasonline (talk) 06:47, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

This is misleading, if not untrue.

I think you are missing the key point, the relative dirtiness is measured in terms of yield, and that we're comparing t-nukes.

The smallest amount of fissile material you can have in a multi-stage design is the amount of fissiles in the primary. For argument's sake, let's say we have a primary that has a fissile mass of 1 and yield of 1. If you explode that bomb, you'll get a ratio of 1 mass of fissiles to 1 yield. Let's call that a cleanliness of 1.

Now let us add the smallest possible secondary. I don't know what that is in practical terms, so for argument's sake let's say it also has a yield of 1. In typical designs that would get about half of it's yield from fissiles, so we might at first think that means 1/2 a mass of fissiles. So now we have a bomb with yield 2 and mass 1.5. That is a cleaner bomb, let's call it 1.33 clean.

Ok, now let's consider that exact same primary in a secondary with yield 10, which would in our simplified model, add another 5 masses of fissiles. Now we have a bomb with total yield 11 and mass 6. This is, again, cleaner, now we're up to 1.83.

Consider the ultra-clean 15 kT design you noted. If that had been doubled to 30 kT of fusion, it would have been cleaner still - by definition.

In reality, you don't need 1/2 a mass of fissiles to get that 1/2 yield due to practical issues like rapid disassembly and such, which drives the efficiency of the tamper reactions up.

Long and short: every gram of fusion you add is cleaning the bomb up. Since the smallest bomb is the fission primary, a t-nuke based on that is automatically cleaner.

This is ignoring other considerations like ERW or salting, of course, but that's not part of your argument.

Maury Markowitz (talk) 22:11, 5 November 2014 (UTC)

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Max fuel capsule size to avoid RT instability?

The article says "The implosion process must be extremely uniform ... For a beam energy of 1 mJ, the fuel capsule cannot be larger than about 2 mm ..." Is this correct? Beam energy of 1 mJ? Did the author mean 1 MJ? Discostu5 (talk) 04:56, 8 May 2023 (UTC)

Description of X-ray compression under the Thermonuclear Devices Section is incorrect I think.

The section says, "These X-rays are absorbed by a special material surrounding the secondary stage, which consists mostly of the fusion fuel. The X-rays heat this material and cause it to explode." I read the "special material" to be the polystyrene that's typically used in the radiation channel. If this is a correct interpretation; this becomes a plasma and is transparent to X-rays meaning that the secondary is directly compressed by X-ray pressure not by explosion of the "special material". Certainly the cited source seems to indicate this: "As the radiation channel approaches this temperature the foam will become completely ionized and nearly transparent to thermal radiation" Am I incorrect? NBeddoe (talk) 12:02, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Two Fast ignition Sections?

Why are there two sections on fast ignition? They both seem to be poorly sourced as well. Guthrette (talk) 17:47, 20 November 2023 (UTC)