Fusor Forums

This is to be expected, as usual. More folks excited by the big news in the world of fusion care enough to dig deeper and land here where they will be privy to the full disclosure of the 100 to 1 net energy loss by NIF due to the real scientific Q total of the NIF wonderment. Of course one must be able and willing to absorb the scientific truth of what really took place here in relation to a "real soon now" fusion powered future that DOE is pushing in this latest "puff piece" on fusion. Real fusion advance relies, as always, on Q total not Q plasma or Q photons.

300 megajoules of energy drawn from the electrical grid to power the single NIF "power" shot. 300 megajoules of energy created 2.05 megajoules of photons from the lasers which in turn created 3.15 megajoule of fusion energy.

Q laser 2.05/300 = 146 to one net loss of energy supplied to the lasers. .6% laser efficiency
Q total fusion 3.15/300 = 95 to 1 net loss of energy supplied to the entire fusion effort here. 1.05% input energy to fusion out efficiency.

Fusion energy gain of 3.15/2.05 = Q photon of 1.5 this is what they are excited about. Great! Now to address where they are going to get 2.05 megajoules of photons to duplicate this without this laser system? And even then, it is putt-putt boat fusion. Miniature H bombs set off in nanosecond time frames. The A bomb as an initiator in H bombs is hereby replaced with photons of similar but scaled back power to create a similarly scaled back H bomb. This is what NIF was created for. NOT fusion power or energy, but U.S. nuclear stockpile stewardship!

Fusion is the energy of the future and it always will be....

Richard Hull

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Yes, I also noticed we have had a few new registrants in the past week or two. I'm a tad curious how they find us, this site doesn't rank very well for a pure 'nuclear fusion' keyword search. I might do a little research on that. But I digress. What I really want to talk about...

Richard Hull wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 3:04 pm Fusion is the energy of the future and it always will be....

Well, yes, Richard, you do keep saying that.

And, yes, based on what we know now, that is hard to argue with.

But what did Donald Rumsfeld said (I know, I can't believe I'm quoting Rumsfeld either, but this might be his entire legacy to modern culture):

There are things that you know;

There are things that you know you don't know;

And there are things that you don't know that you don't know.

So, yeah, based on what we 'know,' what Richard keeps saying is indisputable.

The question that must be asked is "what is it that we don't know that we don't know?"

As Albert Szent-Gyorgy says in the epigraph that opens my Farnsworth bio,

Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.

I think Richard has done an estimable job of falling into the former category. His depth of knowledge in the known realm is beyond reproach.

Perhaps somebody fresh to the site can find their way to the latter half of Szent-Gyorgi's axiom.

--PS

[Albert Szent-Gyorgi, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry 1937
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Szent-Györgyi]

The unknowable is unknown until it is known. I never give up on the lucky donkey which as all who have been here a long time know is my fall back point. The lucky donkey is part of the unknowable. Will it be necessary for him to see what others have seen and ignored. No! For then he would not be a lucky donkey, just a smart observational cookie.

A lucky donkey is like the two, who a year apart changed our world without even being part of it. Roentgen and Becquerel. They showed that research can actually be doing what you are doing while not knowing what you are doing. You are just pokin' around in your lab trying to learn from what others have been pokin' around in for 10 years without trying to improve upon it, just pokin' around in the unknown, in the lab to learn stuff. No fixed objective, no theory directing you at all. No desiderata of outcome at the end. But in the end, stumbling over a rock no one else has ever stumbled over. Thus, opening an entirely new concept of science that was unknowable heretofore. A rock that would lead from the sun being a huge, long burning ball of carbon of their day to an atomic bomb in 46 years and distributed nuclear energy in 55 years from their lucky donkey moment pokin' around in the lab.

Their discoveries would make the 20th Century, a Century like no other. 54 years later, the sun moved from a raging carbon fire to a thermonuclear reaction that had burned for 4 billion years and would burn for more than 4 billion more years. The last 4 years of the 19th century would change the world and its understanding of itself, forever.

It is now true in the sciences...."There is physics and then everything else."

Richard Hull

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I dunno, Richard, I will have to let this one simmer a bit.

In the meantime, for the sake of the newcomers to whom this post is part of your welcome, here's a little history on Richard's "Lucky Donkey" Theorem.

I just searched the entire forum for the keyword 'donkey'

The search result does not tally the number of results, but it looks to be well over 100 - going all the way back to 2003!

That's nearly 20 years of lucky donkeys!

And still no viable fusion!!!

Here's one from 2013 that explains the Lucky Donkey (can we just call it 'The Hull Theorem'?) as well as any.

viewtopic.php?p=60401#p60401

Your mileage may vary.

--PS

I am not hopeful, nor am I waiting for a lucky donkey. That would be as bad as saying that I believe in power ready fusion in the future. Not so. I do know that lucky donkeys have bungled their way into discoveries that can change the world in the past. The lucky donkey is merely my out should the lucky donkey appear. At 76 I will never see the lucky donkey. I am fine with that as any aged, nay saying, curmudgeon would be.

I can say, "I have done fusion with my own hands and money.... Have you?" ... Flying in the face of any detractors who usually know nothing of "current" fusion physics. Most of these are those who have swallowed the usual codswallop from recent puff pieces from the fusion pros' PR guys out to get more funding for whatever kind of fusion they are pushing.

Richard Hull

It is always interesting how small discoveries excite people, exciting the population inspires people to take interest. Your site is inspirational and i wish i was part of it sooner. Evolution always requires the inspiration of others. Your site does this. Noting the lax of there research will inspire others to correct and quesripn everything. From what im seeing on this site, there is more nollige than i could absorb in my life time. The more people that becone interested the close to answer we get.

Ah yes, only in a perfect world. Wish I lived in one. But then, what fun would that be?

Richard Hull