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From: rwl@uvacs.UUCP (Ray Lubinsky)
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: FUSION (``it's always 20 years down the road?'')
Message-ID: <2253@uvacs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 20-Jul-85 23:06:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: uvacs.2253
Posted: Sat Jul 20 23:06:58 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jul-85 23:48:57 EDT
References: <284@greipa.UUCP>
Organization: U.Va. CS in Charlottesville VA
Lines: 26

> Some people have been raving about how fusion will be acheived
> soon or how it won't. Well, stop me if I'm wrong, but hasn't
> this already been acheived some time ago with the shiva laser
> at AMES? When I was there they had been fusing deuterium for
> awhile( or so they said, anyway). Perhaps they're raving about
> commercial plants?
> 
--
   That's just the point.  I think that the fusion engine at Lawrence Livermore
Laboratories has only just (this year?) sustained a fusion reaction at the
break-even point.  Up to then, more energy was pumped into the lasers than was
being extracted from the system.

   This is a long way from commercial energy production.  I've always heard it
said (for completely different reasons) that AI and fusion are always 20 years
down the road.  It does seem like profitable fusion is attainable in the next
ten years, given a sufficient method for mass-producing deuterium.

   I'm glad the research is being done, but I'm curious as to how profitably
the laser implosion method will compare with the variants on the tokamak
(toroidal) scheme.  The setup at LLL seems like such a behemoth.  Anyone care
to hazard an educated guess?
-- 

Ray Lubinsky		     University of Virginia, Dept. of Computer Science
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