LLNL NIF Plans for Higher Laser Power and a Roadmap to Over 10X Fusion Gain

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) made worldwide news when they reached nuclear fusion ignition in December 2022 but they went beyond that result on July 30, 2023. I am attending the 2023 International Conference on Inertial Fusion Sciences and Applications where there have been numerous presentations by leaders of …

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Megawatt Muon-Catalyzed Nuclear Fusion From 100 Watt Lasering of Ultradense Deuterium

Muon-catalyzed fusion has been studied for 60 years and new work with lasers and ultradense material could lead to commercial nuclear fusion. A 100-watt laser power could create a megawatt nuclear fusion generator. This would provide a total energy gain of more than ten thousand. It would have deuterium-tritium as fuel. It would use a …

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Railguns Stabiliize ITER Nuclear Fusion Plasma Three Times Faster than Gas Guns

One of the problems preventing the Multi-billion dollar ITER nuclear fusion project from scaling to provide commercial energy are disruptions of the plasma. Disruptions are sudden events that can halt fusion reactions and damage the tokamaks. Princeton has developed an electromagnetic particle injector (EPI) which is a type of railgun that fires a high-velocity projectile …

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CEO of TAE Technologies Says They Will Begin Commercialization of Fusion by 2023

TAE Technologies will bring a fusion-reactor technology to commercialization in the next five years, its CEO Michl Binderbauer announced recently at the University of California, Irvine. UPDATE- I was emailed by TAE Technologies and they say they will begin commercialization in 2023. TAE Technologies next fusion device will be called Copernicus and it is designed …

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Alliance of private fusion companies working to get $100 million prize for first to achieve net energy

A dozen private fusion companies, including LPPFusion have joined together in an alliance to promote fusion and to try to get government funding for a broad-based approach to fusion. The new alliance consists of a few cooperating organizations— * the American Fusion Project (AFP), which seeks to educate the public about the benefits of fusion …

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LPP fusion claims to have achieved nuclear fusion confinement record of 200 kiloelectron volts

LPP Fusion has submitted a paper for peer review to the journal Physics of Plasmas, in which Lerner and his coauthors claim to have produced a confined mean ion energy of 200 kiloelectron volts, equivalent to a temperature of over 2 billion kelvins. “As far as we know, that’s a record for any fusion plasma,” …

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Small nuclear fusion space and energy systems using high efficiency RF heating

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has two NASA grants. Princeton satellite systems and Princeton Plasma Physics Lab will work on the two projects. Phase I STTRs of $125,000 each will run for one year, at which point we have the opportunity to propose Phase II work up to $750,000. 1. High Efficiency RF Heating for Small …

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Lockheed compact fusion reactor design about 100 times larger than first plans

There is updated technical information on the Lockheed compact fusion reactor project. It was originally believed that the compact reactor would fit on a large truck. It looked like it might weigh 20 tons. After more engineering and scientific research, the new design requires about 2000 ton reactor that is 7 meters in diameter and …

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LPP Fusion working on Tungsten anode related impurities and in the summer will have experiments with new Beryllium Cathode

Hardric Labs in Massachusetts has reported to LPPFusion that its work on machining the new beryllium cathode is nearing completion and they expect to ship the finished piece in early March, only a few weeks behind their initial schedule. Since the beryllium anodes have already been received at the Middlesex NJ lab, we will soon …

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Alphago explained by Demi sHassabis

Demi explains the policy and value neural networks. Policy is neural network trained to make reasonable moves based upon supervised learning of 100,000 games. Value network is built from tens of millions of games to be able to determine what winning positions are. The value scoring of positions was previously believed to be impossible. Alphago …

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