Arthur Turrell Profile picture
Aug 13, 2021 12 tweets 8 min read Read on X
People think a *net energy gain* nuclear fusion experiment is a long way off (as far as the Sun, the nearest fusion reactor). Researching #TheStarBuilders, I discovered extraordinary progress... hold on to your seats for a 🧵on fusion #physics and advances in #fusionenergy! 1/n The Sun, our nearest and de...
What's net energy? It's putting 1 unit of energy into a fusion machine & getting *more* than 1 unit out. Breakeven in energy = same out as was put in. Scientists refer to percentages: 100% for breakeven, >100% for net energy gain. Gain is like a single match lighting a big fire🔥
Why is net energy gain important? It's the first step to developing fusion as a power source. Scientists have been trying since the 1940s, & it’s perhaps the greatest technical challenge humanity has ever taken on. And we *need* cleaner energy.
Now, let’s talk about the advances. Our world in data chart sho...
1st, the USA’s laser-based fusion machine (@LLnL) achieved a 60x increase in energy between 2011 & 2018, reaching 3% of breakeven. IMPORTANT: at that rate *they are not very many improvements away from breakeven in energy*. With a bit of finessing, they might just get there first A scientist inspects the ar...
If finessing doesn’t work, they may only need to add a bit of extra juice to the laser. That raises energy in, yes, but it’s likely to raise energy out even more, because laser fusion is like using a match to light a fire; eventually it catches and lots of energy comes out.
Next:
ITER is a magnetic fusion experiment run by a large group of countries, coming 2025. It has the size, scale, & tech to wallop its fuel to 150million degrees! 'Proper' fusion fuel experiments won’t happen till 2035, but expect this behemoth to smash the 100% barrier when they do. Main inner components of th...
3rd, we’ve come so far and, extrapolating the trends, net energy gain is in sight. This gif shows the progress. Records are broken quite regularly; recently, China’s EAST magnetic fusion machine broke a world record by running with a temperature of 120 million degrees for 101s 🤯
Superconductors, advanced computing, & #machinelearning mean that even old approaches can be improved enormously. A paper in Nature just showed how favourable once-abandoned stellarator technology is: nature.com/articles/s4158…. Clever stats *tripled* energy in a laser experiment! A cut away of the Wendelste...
4th, there is the political will for more fusion, more quickly. In the US, a congressional bipartisan fusion energy caucus, led by @RepDonBeyer, has been set up. The US National Academies (@theNASEM) have argued for more effort on fusion: nationalacademies.org/our-work/a-str… An online meeting of the co...
5th, a private fusion industry has appeared, with ~$2 billion invested according to recently formed @Fusion_Industry association. The entrepreneurs are taking risks on different approaches that might offer short cuts. @CFS_energy was just profiled in NYT: nytimes.com/2021/08/10/tec… Commonwealth Fusion Systems...
CFS are hardly the only ones. There's @FLFusion, @TokamakEnergy, @Helion_Energy, @GeneralFusion, @TAE, and more! The private sector is showing a real interest in nuclear fusion. A shot of the ST40, Tokamak...
So there are *very* good reasons to be optimistic about #nuclear fusion, even if commercialisation is a huge technical challenge. There is enormous progress and a demonstration of net energy gain is closer than you think!

Read more in #TheStarBuilders, simonandschuster.com/books/The-Star…

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More from @arthurturrell

Dec 11, 2022
Get excited... press conference from @ENERGY on fusion results from the US National Ignition Facility @lasers_llnl on Tuesday with a potentially HUGE #nuclearfusion announcement: FT reporting that NIF has hit scientific net energy gain!
on.ft.com/3PgDdya #TheStarBuilders
Rumours have been circulating that this is what happened but I understand no official confirmation as yet—but numbers might be as much as 120% of net energy gain.

If this is true, we are witnessing a moment of history: controlling the power source of the stars is the greatest..
technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken. Scientists have struggled to show that fusion can release more energy out than is put in since the 1950s, and the researchers at Lawrence Livermore seem to have finally and absolutely smashed this decades-old goal. This...
Read 4 tweets
Dec 10, 2022
Nuclear fusion is much closer than you think!

A short 🧵👇🏾

(You can find pretty much everything in this thread in #thestarbuilders book: aeturrell.com/#writing)
First, what is nuclear fusion? It's a reaction that literally creates new atoms from old: lighter nuclei (say types of hydrogen) are smashed together to make heavier nuclei—and LOTS of energy. And the energy comes from an equation you already know! (Yes the one by Einstein) Schematic of nuclear fusion: small nuclei in, bigger nuclei
You should care about fusion: apart from being the reaction that makes the Universe light up (powering stars) and the reaction that created most of the elements we're made of, fusion promises clean, safe, low radioactivity energy for everyone—and wow do we need more clean energy World energy consumption in exajoules broken down by energy
Read 20 tweets
Nov 17, 2022
#economicsfest #EconTwitter: "What next for central banks?" with @bankofengland's Chief Economist Huw Pill and @jagjit_chadha. First Q: where is inflation coming from and what should central banks do about it? The panel
Huw: "we would have acted differently with the benefit of hindsight... but I think we got the big picture right" also talking about the need for humility, and that "big things" have happened. "The big story is about gas prices".
Huw: "We've acted decisively... that action is not over".
Read 5 tweets
May 30, 2022
Today, @ONS & @DataSciCampus publish an article tracking the prices of the lowest-cost grocery items using web-scraping, inspired by @BootstrapCook & other campaigners who have rightly asked about the #costofliving experiences of the poorest in society. Here's what we found 🧵 Text saying "Tracking the price of the lowest-cost groc
First: a caveat. This is highly experimental research, as web-scraping supermarket data for 30 grocery items can go wrong in multiple ways! But even though this is experimental, we thought it was really important to talk about it and the results. 2/n
#datascience #econtwitter
Okay: results. Lowest cost items (eg value brands) have had significant price increases: 13 of 30 monitored had average lowest price increase faster than overall equiv. inflation measure. Big movers: pasta (up 50%), crisps (17%), bread (16%), minced beef (16%) & rice (15%). 3/n Lowest price of selected 30 everyday groceries, item-level p
Read 8 tweets
Aug 17, 2021
#BREAKING #fusion #news: The National Ignition Facility (@LLnL) has reported a *twenty-five times* increase in energy released as compared to their 2018 world record for laser fusion: 1.3 MJ out for 1.92 MJ in, a 67.7% gain in energy!! 🤯
llnl.gov/news/national-…

#TheStarBuilders
This is MASSIVE. It’s so close to energy breakeven that it’s now almost inevitable that NIF will make history and be the first to hit 100%, showing that #fusion is not just a power source for the stars, but that it *could* work on Earth too. Here I am touring the NIF with Bruno: Arthur Turrell and Dr Bruno...
I’ve long rated the chances of NIF of getting there 1st, simply because they have a machine that—in principle—has the size and science to do it right now. (I give serious love & attention to this giant laser & the people behind it in #TheStarBuilders)

Read 7 tweets
Nov 6, 2020
Ok, we're all tired of the neverending count, so here's something completely different:

10 less well-known code packages; the fun, the useful, and the unexpected.

🧵below.

#EconTwitter #DataScience #RStats #Python #PyData
1. Jazzit. “Ever wanted your scripts to play music while running/ on erroring out? Of course you didn’t. But here it is anyway”

Yes, Jazzit laughs at your expense when your code hits an error, here via a clip from curb your enthusiasm. github.com/Sangarshanan/j…

(see also: beepy)
2. Handcalcs

Handcalcs renders maths in latex in your console/notebook and can also export latex equations to file. *Really* useful for writing papers where you want your code and the mathematics in your paper to be consistent.

github.com/connorferster/…

(see also: sympy)
Read 15 tweets

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