84
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
84 points (92.9% liked)
Ask Lemmy
26890 readers
700 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Those scaling issues have always been the issues. We've had working reactors for over 65 years.
"The first experiment to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion was accomplished using Scylla at LANL in 1958."
And don't think that the NIF ignition results are the kind of breakthrough that headlines make it out to be - that project is weapons research, and is not designed to produce power, nor is it anywhere close to doing so when the power to the lasers is measured and not just what the pellet absorbs.
However, what's new in the last few years is commercial investment in fusion, and I do think that it will make the difference that the last 65 years haven't. Maybe even in the next 20 years™
we attained net-positive over a year ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/nuclear-fusion-passes-major-milestone-net-energy.html
as for scaling issues, we have just been able to tolerate 100 million degree reaction for a record amount of time, a breakthrough that sets a new milestone. a pretty big step beyond, ahem, 1958.
You've been taken in by intentionally deceptive headlines.
The energy absorbed by the pellet (what they are measuring as the "input") is something like 1/20th or worse of the energy used to power the lasers. The output is greater than that "input" by a little, but again, nowhere near the actual energy used, and it won't ever be at that experiment because it's not designed for it, it's designed so we can simulate H-bombs without setting off real ones.