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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Wolf who wrote (11967)	12/14/2022 1:40:09 AM
From: Jon Koplik	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12231

<<<<< Researchers said that shortly after 1 a.m. last Monday, they fired the largest laser in the world into a tiny cylinder holding a diamond capsule containing hydrogen isotopes. For a brief moment, the laser delivered energy that exceeds the entire U.S. power grid, in an attempt to compress the capsule’s fuel to reach densities, temperatures and pressures that are higher than the center of the sun. In the moments after the shot, the researchers weren’t sure what had happened. “The shot goes off. It takes only a few billionths of a second, and so we need an exquisite suite of diagnostics to measure what happened,” said Alex Zylstra, the principal experimentalist on the project. “And as the data started to come in, we saw the first indications that we had produced more fusion energy than the laser input.” >>>>> This was from : WSJ Dec. 13, 2022 Nuclear-Fusion Breakthrough Accelerates Quest to Unlock Limitless Energy Source archive.ph ----------------------------- uh ... personally, I do not think this will be commercial any time in at least the next 100 years. Jon. . . .

To: Bill Wolf who wrote (11967)	12/14/2022 8:05:48 AM
From: Bill Wolf	Respond to of 12231

Nuclear Fusion Could Transform the Energy Sector. Chevron and Alphabet Are Betting on It. By Avi Salzman Updated Dec. 14, 2022 7:51 am ET / Original Dec. 13, 2022 1:24 pm ET The latest step toward pollution-free power has the potential to transform the energy sector, perhaps decades from now, but some companies are already positioning themselves to benefit. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Tuesday that scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California had made “a tremendous scientific breakthrough” in their tests of nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun. While prior efforts to achieve fusion—combining two hydrogen atoms to produce helium in a reaction that produces energy—consumed more energy than they released, the Livermore scientists flipped the balance. They created a reaction that produced more energy than it took to power the laser that allowed the hydrogen atoms to fuse, a process known as fusion ignition. “Simply put, this is one of the most impressive scientific feats of the 21st century,” Granholm said. The breakthrough opens up the possibility of a future where nuclear fusion becomes a key source of power for the world, producing abundant carbon-free energy. Fusion is more powerful than fission, the process that powers current nuclear reactors, and doesn’t produce the radioactive waste that fission does. Companies are already investing in fusion energy. Granholm said that the private sector spent $3 billion on fusion projects last year, while President Joe Biden has announced a goal of achieving commercial fusion by 2030. But the hurdles to getting there are still enormous. Fusion fuel must be heated to temperatures of as much as 100 million degrees Celsius to spark reactions, and figuring out how to contain the energy produced is no easy feat. It will take billions more in spending to make this a commercially viable industry, and so far the companies haven’t attracted enough capital. More than 10 times as much money has been spent on 15-minute grocery delivery since 2020 than on fusion energy, according to Morgan Stanley MS +1.74% analyst Edward Stanley. Fusion was one of the “earthshots” that Stanley and a team of analysts identified in a report last month on ways to accelerate the shift to a clean-energy economy. Although solar and wind power, among other technologies, are scaling up fast, they may not grow quickly enough to keep global warming to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the level that scientists believe needs to be achieved to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. So “earthshots,” or radical technologies to decarbonize that are still being developed, may be needed to achieve bigger gains sooner. If nuclear fusion succeeds, it would be “the greatest change to energy use, consumption and production since the industrial revolution,” he wrote. Stanley believes that nuclear fusion could be remarkably efficient at generating power. One glass of deuterium, a kind of hydrogen found in water, could power an electric vehicle for 35 million miles, or replace 10 million pounds of coal, he wrote. That said, Stanley doesn’t expect the technology to be commercialized in the near term. “For a technology which has always been 20 years away, this is an important step, but still an early step,” he wrote in an email to Barron’s. Progress on fusion would have to progress at a more rapid rate now to make it useful for commercial application. Stanley wrote in his report that commercialization is possible by 2030, but he doesn’t expect significant adoption until 2040. “Even once the technology is ‘proven’, capital will be needed to scale and take capacity share,” he wrote in the email. Several privately held companies are investing in nuclear fusion, including one called Commonwealth Fusion Systems that came out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Others include California company TAE Technologies, which says it has raised $1.2 billion in private capital; Firstlight Fusion; and Helion Energy. Public companies have been investing in these technologies too, though largely at the venture stage. The Italian energy company Eni ENI –0.46% (ticker: E) has invested more than $50 million in Commonwealth Fusion Systems and has a seat on its board of directors. Alphabet GOOGL +2.49% (GOOGL), owner of Google, and Chevron CVX +2.23% (CVX) were part of a $250 million funding round this year for TAE Technologies. TAE has been working with Google since 2014 to use machine learning and data science to advance its research. TAE says it is aiming for commercialization of its fusion reactors by the early 2030s. That said, Stanley thinks that much more investment is needed soon. Given the urgency of climate change, he thinks investments in areas like carbon capture— a method of harnessing and storing carbon emissions from energy and industrial sites—may pay off more in the near term for the climate and investors. Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com