[FRIAM] technical notes on fusion announcement

Tue Dec 13 20:52:45 EST 2022

Responsive to the issue of public funding of science (and advanced 
technology):

We all know I'm a bit of a Luddite by most measures.   By coincidence I 
was listening (with one ear) to Bill Nye (da Science Guy) give his 
popular hip-hip-hooray for the latest DOE announcement as I read your 
post here.   He nailed *ME* with the perfect alternative descriptor to 
NIMBY (not in my back yard) with BANANA (build absolutely nothing 
anywhere anything).

I believe it is inevitable that under our current self-conception (all 
humanity,not just US or the Western Nations) it is virtually impossible 
to imagine us doing anything but driving technology forward (roughly) as 
fast as possible, as if to outrun the consequences of our previous 
actions (and out-compete our competitors with similar levels of 
capability). Singularity much? Evolutionary Biology coined the Red Queen 
Hypothesis <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis> to 
describe the latter but I think of it more as (also) a corollary to the 
prisoner's *dilemma*.

This Medium article 
<https://medium.com/thinking-is-hard/a-prisoners-dilemma-cheat-sheet-4d85fe289d87#:~:text=When%20you're%20playing%20against,also%20defending%20against%20Always%20Defectors.> 
is a nice pop-sci summary of Prisoner's Dilemma strategies, covering 
*especially* multiplayer games which I think our various tech/arms races 
are implicitly.  The conclusion of the article, author Benson makes the 
astute obvservation:

    /The most interesting thing is that cooperation//has//evolved, even
    if it feels impossibly complicated and always on the verge of
    tipping over into fake cooperation (mimicry) and probing (extortion)./

And as always, when discussing iterated prisoner's dilemma, Nick, et 
al's MOTH <https://backspaces.net/28/moth-my-way-or-the-highway/> must 
be referenced.

On 12/13/22 12:04 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I thought director Budil made a good case for the unique value of 
> public funding of science and advanced technology. Rockets are 
> understood, Musk and others can build them.  Decades of investment to 
> do something like this is, it is just different.   And they were not 
> timid about mentioning the defense side.  Concurrent with the test of 
> a U.S. hypersonic too. 
> https://www.defensenews.com/air/2022/12/12/air-force-conducts-first-operational-launch-of-arrw-hypersonic-missile/
>
>> On Dec 13, 2022, at 10:16 AM, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
>>
>> Great synopsis... thanks.
>>
>> I'm fascinated at how long we've been "on the cusp" of "lighting up" 
>> a micro-star in the laboratory.
>>
>> My first awareness was in the early 70s when a Radio Engineer I 
>> worked with had just come from the early MFE Livermore efforts to my 
>> tiny hometown AM RAdio station... He described what they were up to 
>> as I was taking my first physics course (Junior in HS)... and 
>> thinking about the implications both for science (as little I knew 
>> it) and society (cheap/ubiquitous energy).   Working at LANL for 3 
>> decades (starting with the high energy Proton Storage Ring) put me 
>> close to lots of this as an "educated layman".
>>
>> I can't say "nothing's changed" but it is mind boggling how long one 
>> can "hang on the cusp" of something.   Or how quickly we can go from 
>> burning coal to make steam to drive mechanical devices to replace 
>> animal and human (and water and wind) labor to lighting up tiny stars 
>> for the same purpose.
>>
>> - Steve
>>
>>     "some days just drag on, but the years they just fly by"
>>
>>
>>> Awesome. Thanks. I'm still trying to catch up with the QC Wormhole 
>>> kerfuffle. Who knew Quanta was so click baity?
>>>
>>> What is "DT"?
>>>
>>> On 12/13/22 09:02, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>>>> In case no one wanted to get up at 7:00am to watch DOE 
>>>> administrators talk:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 1. Controlling the laser in space and time was important for 
>>>> maintaining symmetry. Timing precision of 25e-12 secs and laser 
>>>> spatial precision of 5e-12 meter were needed.  This was thought to 
>>>> be the main explanation for the achievement.
>>>>
>>>> 2. 8% more power on the laser this time
>>>>
>>>> 3. x-ray tomography is used to find flaws in the capsules. 
>>>> Developing software to do the counting.
>>>>
>>>> 4. They have ongoing efforts to study the fabrication systems and 
>>>> their components (done in Germany) to find idiosyncrasies of each.
>>>>
>>>> 5. Laser technology improvements since NIF was built which are 20% 
>>>> more efficient.
>>>>
>>>> 6. Target cost is from labor, and it takes 7 months each
>>>>
>>>> 7. 4% of DT is burned in a shot
>>>>
>>>> 8. Machine learning ties together radiation hydrodynamics and 
>>>> experimental data.   (It sounded preliminary.)
>>>>
>>>> 9. The (successful) capsule had more defects than previous 
>>>> experiments.   However, previous experiments did show benefits from 
>>>> capsule quality.
>>>>
>>>> 10. 15% of experiments are indirect drive of this kind, 15% of 
>>>> experiments are other approaches to ignition.  The rest are weapons 
>>>> and materials characterization.
>>>>
>>>> 11. Anomalous laser directional control were problems in the summer 
>>>> runs. Fixed that.
>>>
>>
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