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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Everything is a stopgap until fusion is available
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. A large portion of Georgia's power comes from natural gas; anything we can do to move away from that is a step in the right direction. Except, like, coal obviously.
For sure, I more meant that fission works just fine for clean power until then.
We can't let that hinder progress toward implementing the most responsible forms of power generation.
There never has been a fusion reaction which created energy so I guess we'll have to wait some time
You are technically wrong, the worst kind of wrong :)
DT and DD fusion reactions release energy. More energy than is put in. It's the whole system that hasn't been energy positive. We're close to breakeven in terms of plasma (heating power vs fusion power, and it's not like heating power is lost from the system it still heats the reactor) but to be useful fusion power needs to be >10x heating power so the whole system is more than self-sufficient.
Technically, this part is correct as far as I understand the laws of thermodynamics
Hehe, I walked right into this one. You're right. I totally failed at trying to be a smartass.
With energy positive here I mean useful energy positive, so electricity or high temperature heat.
What counts is the whole system. You need to get more output energy than input. Right now this was never done.
And the input energy includes the energy lost by for examples lasers because they are inefficient.
Thermal Fusion is much more limited than solar as an energy source. It may be useful for niche applications, but waste heat alone limits it to a tenth of the power available from solar on just the built up areas.