Talk:Laser Inertial Fusion Energy

Why they gave up on fusion-fission

In 2015 I emailed several of the former LIFE team members to understand why they changed the design from the fusion-fission hybrid to a pure fusion model. I got two detailed responses in return, and they both agreed on the reason: when their corporate liaison team went to talk to their industrial partners in the energy business, they found universal disinterest for any system that incorporated any amount of fissile materials. That is a very interesting state of affairs. Maury Markowitz (talk) 18:04, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Laser Inertial Fusion Energy/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Hawkeye7 (talk · contribs) 03:40, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it well written?

   A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:

   B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:

2. Is it verifiable with no original research?

   A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:

   B. All in-line citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines:

   C. It contains no original research:

   D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:

   B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):

4. Is it neutral?

   It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:

5. Is it stable?

   It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:

6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

• The lead and the body are supposed to be able to be used separately, so it would be preferable if LLNL and ICF are defined in the body

Fixed and fixed.

• Link Rayleigh–Taylor instability in lieu of the red link

Fixed.

• "Natural uranium is a mix of several isotopes, mainly U-235 and U-238". Actually, there are only three; the other is U-234.

Well I've always equated "several" with "about three", but changed anyway.

• Fission–fusion hybrid: Reading through this section I kept thinking what it says in the last paragraph. In addition to that, you beg the question of the dubious value of fusion if it is going to produce large quantities of neutrons and therefore vast quantities of radioactive waste. In the MFE neutrons are contained magnetically, but I don't understand how this works with IFE

A couple of things here, let me know which ones you think I should add...

Neutrons are not contained by magnets - they're neutral! In a typical MFE design they (hopefully) pass through the first wall (the vacuum container) into the lithium blanket. Here they (hopefully) turn into tritium to feed back into the reactor. If they don't, they hit the magnets and Bad Things Happen. IFE is almost identical except the mechanical arrangement is MUCH simpler - it's not a torus encased in magnets, just a big ball encased in nothing. As noted later, the idea was to keep multiple chambers in the plant and roll them in and out for maintenance, something you simply couldn't do with a tokamak.

As to the fast breeder issue, one of the major advantages touted for fast breeders is the same as fusion - less neutrons in the wild. Both remove long-lived isotopes through neutron bombardment while also breeding new fuel through the U238-P239 reaction. This process requires high-energy neutrons to begin with, which is a problem for a conventional light-water design, which is why breeders normally run on plutonium (which they are producing) and are sodium cooled.

In the fusion-fission hybrid, all you're doing is replacing the fission core with a fusion one. The advantage is that the neutrons have higher energy, which improves breeding ratios. But it also has the disadvantage that you are removing some of those neutrons to produce your tritium. That's the trade-off that's mentioned.

In either event, both designs have the same economic problem - they only work if they're really big and fuel is really expensive. The reference on fission-fusion hybrids has a very good explanation of this, worth leafing through. They put break-even just over $110/kg of fuel, and the current inflation adjusted price is around $6.

Two remarks --Afernand74 (talk) 16:33, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Fission is an energy rich (208 MeV) process producing few neutrons (2-3) per reaction while fusion a neutron rich process because ~80% of the reaction is carried by 14 MeV neutrons. Bring the two together and you get yourself, on paper, a fusion energy amplifier.

In MFE designs, neutrons not only contribute to producing D-T but also to elevate the temperature in carefully designed blankets (+neutron shielding). The continuous cooling of this blankets lead to the extraction of power that can be use to produce electricity. (https://www.iter.org/mach/Blanket)

Remarks from me

1. Neutrons are electrically neutral but they are not magnetically neutral! See neutron magnetic moment.

Which is great if you want to polarize them, but not so great if you want to confine them. For that you need an electric charge.

1. The breeder concept was originally based on the notion that uranium was scarce. This was true before it became valuable. Then people went prospecting for it and found large reserves. The breeder then became more of a liability, as it created plutonium that might not be needed.

Plus there was the fact that a GAO accounting at the time found 5,900 lbs of Pu unaccounted for, which they only went looking when enough HEU for several bombs went missing. If this stuff couldn't be protected in top-secret bomb labs, what hope did they have in a civilian reactor cycle?

1. Consider incorporating everything after "Bad Things happen".

Ok I'll play with it.

1. I had no idea that the current situation with fusion was this bad.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

• Reference required for the first paragraph of "Pure IFE" and "IFE problems"

I'm not sure how to reference the first para of Pure IFE. What is the process for "all the references in this article with a date after 2009?" Does that even require an inline? Or all of them? Perhaps a single representitive one?

I suggest removing it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I thought it was worth saving so I went through the refs from that time and found one that mentions it. Interestingly, other people I talked to that worked on the program stated that the utility companies wanted nothing whatsoever to do with fissile materials, subcritical or otherwise. That says something.

The other one I removed.

• Consider removing the first phrase in "Pure IFE"

Considered; removed.

• Several paragraphs are of one or two sentences. Consider merging some of them.
• Embrittlement looks like a disambiguation page. Consider linking to Wigner effect instead.

Done.

• Consider using ≈ instead of ~=

Considered, changed.

• Link price per watt

Done.

• "Which is competitive with wind today". Wind was $59 per MWh in 2015 [http://energyinnovation.org/2015/02/07/levelized-cost-of-energy/, so it is ten times as expensive as wind.

That's an older version of the report, and I'm comparing to their published number of 9.1 cents. @Hawkeye7: Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:36, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:43, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

More comments

• FN3 is using the ISO date format.

I do not see this - all the dates I can see at first glance are dd MMM yyyy

Did it for you with this edit Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:14, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

• Do we have issue/page numbers for FN6?

No, it was originally published on the web.

• An access date for FN 28 and 67?

Added.

• A link for FN 57"

Added.

• author-link Hans Bethe

Added.

• Several of the external links are broken [1] - considered adding archive links

I added the ones I could find, but it appears LLNL erased the entire LIFE site and it is not available in Wayback :-( Maury Markowitz (talk) 00:15, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

But they are. I have added the archive links for you. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 1 May 2017 (UTC)