back to article US shovels cash into supercomputers hoping to stoke fusion future

Fusion is hot right now - so hot that the US Department of Energy is dumping another $112 million into a dozen supercomputing projects to advance progress on further clean energy breakthroughs.  The Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program combines the DoE's existing Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) and …

  1. hammarbtyp

    On the road to no where

    As exciting as the LLNL is, it is a dead end as far as a practical fusion reactor is concerned.

    great for headlines, but the way forward is still probably in tokamaks and their ilk, still hopefully the engineering results will allow a better understanding of the process

  2. mpi

    on heels of LLNL's second successful fusion ignition

    These tests are weapons research. The point of ignition experiments of that kind is to simulate how nuclear bombs work, without having to blow stuff up.

    https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory Quote:

    LLNL is a research and development institution for science and technology applied to national security. [6] Its principal responsibility is ensuring the safety, security and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons through the application of advanced science, engineering, and technology.

    End Quote.

    How much energy they release per laser-power invested, is completely irrelevant. This ignition chamber isn't and wasn't ever a reactor design. How would that even work? Tiny elves shoveling pellets into the reactor chamber?

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