- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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Should quit wasting time with this tech that’s always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.
Should quit wasting time with this tech that’s always 30 years and many billions of dollars away and focus our efforts on building as many new fission plants as possible.
Are you aware of how long people were working on flight before the Wright brothers finally got it working?
Is it scalable?
It’s the NIF. It’s a hydrogen bomb simulator, it’s not intended to become a power production mechanism. Roughly 0% of their budget involves researching how to turn single fusion explosions at most every few hours into continuous power output.
Scales great for getting around nuclear test ban treaties though, much quicker to retest than blowing up Pacific islands.
That sounds like we just gave a bunch of nerds a videogame where they get to throw nukes at random scenery and then claim they’re doing science by writing down the results.
Fusion reactor SLAMS surprised scientists with it’s INCREDIBLE output
You’ll never believe what they do next!
With this weird little device you can do that at home I’m 90 seconds!
No, really, you can.
The end 😂😂😂
What happens in the reaction at the 69th microsecond will shock you!
Fusion engine stuns EV industry!
Scientists RIP stubborn atoms for bad faith energy negotiation policy.
Firstly, the energy output falls far short of what would be needed for a commercial reactor, barely creating enough to heat a bath. Worse than that, the ratio is calculated using the lasers’ output, but to create that 2.1 megajoules of energy, the lasers draw 500 trillion watts, which is more power than the output of the entire US national grid. So these experiments break even in a very narrow sense of the term.
It’s so refreshing to see an article at least mention the way these tests are measured are based on the energy just in the laser itself and not the total energy used.
I agree it’s good that the article is not hyping up the idea that the world will now definitely be saved by fusion and so we can all therefore go on consuming all the energy we want.
There are still some sloppy things about the article that disappoint me though…
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They seem to be implying that 500 TW is obviously much larger than 2.1 MJ… but without knowing how long the 500 TW is required for, this comparison is meaningless.
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They imply that using more power than available from the grid is infeasible, but it evidently isn’t as they’ve done it multiple times - presumably by charging up local energy storage and releasing it quickly. Scaling this up is obviously a challenge though.
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The weird mix of metric prefixes (mega) and standard numbers (trillions) in a single sentence is a bit triggering - that might just be me though.
Electricity stuff is funny because it combines metric and imperial units sometimes to make bastard measurements
Huh? Whatchu talkin bout Willis?
Watt is a Joule per second
Volts, Amps, kWh, MJ… These are all metric.
Sssch don’t tell the Americans or they will try to wrangle in BTU in nuclear power plants
WE INVENTED IT AND BUH GAWD, WE WILL MEASURE IT IN MURICA UNITS!
Ignore how nonsensical BTUs are: Gonna shove energy and weight into a single measurement and it changes based on the initial temperature of the water.
Y’all do know what BTU stands for, right?
British Thermal Units. It’s the energy needed to heat 1 lb of water 1 degree F.
The bad part is that no one bothered to set the starting temp of the water so there’s 5 separate standards for what the hell a BTU actually is, which makes it a really bad standard.
Or HVAC uses tons of ice needed to cool something. Euroguys probably don’t have air conditioners, just that tilt window technology.
I do like the obscure AWG scale especially 0000
lol tilt windows
Yeah electricity is weird because Americans use metric for it. And it’s that way because metric predates it
Fun fact: While metric predates our full understanding of electricity, our understanding of electricity played a key role in the definition of the SI units.
As I understand it, the reason the SI unit for mass is kg not g - making it an outlier to my mind - is so that electical engineers could keep volts and amperes as convenient numbers.
Long read: https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.07306
In a number of instances where there is not a standard in place already it is not uncommon to see metric measurements mixed with imperial or US customary measurements.
I’m not in any way shape or form claiming that ALL of it is mixed.
However what does actually happen is the a unit of measure might be mixed with a customary one and then that becomes the defacto measurement, you may see wire resistance shown as a mix of Ohms/1000ft.
I am not getting into an argument about the merits of metric, I’m on board, I am with you. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some silly oddballs.
Is their an imperial equivalent to ohm?
It might be the case that imperial resistance is ohm the same as metric. Metric uses ohm as it’s constituent with base units of metric, but imperial doesn’t abide by rules like that.
If you had to make a imperial equivalent to resistance, it would be a fraction of the resistance of the monarchs finger.
There’s no non metric electrical units except ohms/1000 ft or cross section dimensions, and AWG (and MCM kilo circular mils kcmils) versus mm^2
Why US uses awg with reverse scale instead of diameter is insane
formula: D(AWG) = 0.005·92^((36-AWG)/39) inch
Until we actually electrocute a king there probably won’t be
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Still, from an acorn grows a massive tree.
That, is not an illusion, Master Oogway.
Exactly. These tests aren’t meant to create a practical solution, but to provide knowledge and insight that a) it is possible and b) exactly what is necessary to make it happen, at a physical level. Before this, it (more out than in) was all theory, but now we’re got some hard data to work with.
That’s a big step we’ve been chasing for a long, long time.
Yeah, and a good sign is that the countries with money to invest in the race all seem to be convinced we’ve got the science right and that the engineering challenges are solvable. There have been so many records broken recently we’re getting towards the end of the mile stones, hopefully soon we’ll start hearing about self sustaining experiments with records for how long they ran
I thought because of the law of conservation of energy you couldn’t get more energy out of something you put in.
I’m getting troll vibes, but I’ll bite lol. Fusion reactions are the exception since you’re turning some mass into energy according to:
E = mc^2
There’s many quality videos on YouTube that can provide a better explanation than I ever could.
They’re not an exception to conservation of energy, it’s just that matter is energy in another form. Fusion reactors just harness that energy.
True, thanks for the clarification!
No worries 👍
That doesn’t include the change in mass tho
You can think of the material being fused as fuel. More energy is produced by burning the fuel than in the spark it took to ignite it.
nice to see more progress.
we need this now more than ever.
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I think you’re wrong and furthermore, that your attitude is unsavory.
Shallow, and pedantic.
Mmm, yes, shallow and pedantic.
Shallow is debatable but what have I said that’s even remotely pedantic?
Pretty sure they were not talking about you, but riffing on what you were saying.
Specifically, a Family Guy reference
They were agreeing with you
We’re actually closer than ever. If people like you ruled the world we would still have rock tools and would still be wearing animal skins.
ITER will probably work. It’ll be a long and expensive process, but it’ll work. Question is if something else gets there sooner and cheaper.
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I dunno. How do you get through life completely missing the point while getting hung up on minor issues?
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It already has?
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November 1, 1952. Enewetak Atoll.
the reactor exist, isn’t comercially viable but it exist
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I mean … the article is literally what it’s about.
You’re being downvoted because you’re being a cynical contrarian.
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Saying nothing will ever work ever and nothing is ever good is not being skeptical.
The article you’re commenting on is the citation, you’re being cynical and acting in bad faith.
People disagree with you, I’d wager if you used a little more tact you might have more reasonable discussion.
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That’s because your comment is on a post that is literally one of the sources you’d get. More efficiency, overcoming total input, making it a generator, etc are all ancillary.
Those crazy sons of bitches actually did it!
Can’t drink it though, tastes like burning.
Got 'em
The technology exists. There’s huge funding going into it recently. Europe’s ITER project is working towards it also, but in a different way.
The only major issue faced right now is how to increase the efficiency.
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Citation?
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No, just the rate of improvement in efficiency of fusion reactors.
It is being surmounted now. Slowly but surely, it’s happening. And progress is accelerating also.
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I mean, it’s what the whole article is about. If you mean successfully generating sustainable electricity from fusion then yeah, maybe. Maybe not. People said flight was impossible too, you never know.
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I’m all for skepticism but, like, how are you gonna hoodwink someone into nuclear fusion power? Can that even happen?
You’re calling the US National Ignition Facility at LLNI snake oil salesmen?
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Bro 😭
Combined with actual progress and scientific methods “you never know” is how you fly helicopters on other planets too.
Reminds me of the Librarian in W40K, “An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.”
We’ve harnessed the power of fusion in nuclear weapons for decades already.
We’ve literally put it in a small container.
Sounds like solid reasoning to me
You do understand ‘lifetime of man’ is the larger of those time frames, right?
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There was an article in 1902 about how ridiculous powered flight was and that humans would never be able to fly,
The next year the wright brothers achieved the first powered flight.
There was also an article in The mid 1960s that reaching the moon was at least a century away and that NASA wouldn’t achieve it’s goal until the late 21st century,
We had boots on the moon before the end of that decade.
We will “bottle the sun”, and we’ll do it before the turn of the century.Removed by mod
You fall under the former though. Have you actually looked into this at all or do you just feel that fusion is impossible and then bother all of us with that?
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The g-force problem is unimprovable-- humans themselves have a limit. The containment problem is not.
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Perhaps you didn’t understand me. I’m saying there’s a difference between a problem which cannot be reasonably solved (humans can only sustain X amount of g-force) and a problem which is merely difficult (plasma containment).
No, using a bottle would be ridiculous, they use a reactor of course!
Tokamak is Russian for magnetic bottle and is one method being explored for thermonuclear fusion containment.
Yeah, but it’s not a literal bottle.
Well that depends what you think defines a bottle
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I’ll bite. What problems are insurmountable?
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I read the whole thread and didn’t see you mention it. Anyways, there were some promising improvements on that a while ago with new shapes for the plasma to hold that are easier to contain. That’s also only an issue for reactors that use sustained plasma instead of short-fire bursts.
We’ll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.
There is a very efficient way to beam solar power from space. It is called light.
The nice thing about space is that there isn’t any weather up there to make the solar panels dirty etc. There’s also a lot of space, which solar panels need a lot of.
And we can position a bunch over the poles to help stave off climate change.
The poles aren’t really the place that need that the most.
You wouldn’t think so but them staying super cold helps stabilize a large chunk of our climate. Also throwing shade on arable land isn’t great for food production.
They’re already really reflective and don’t get much light.
They’re losing reflectiveness as they lose ice and it’s one of the major drivers of climate change.
How would you move the power down to earth?
Funny thing is, no matter how you arrange to do that it becomes a de-facto death ray. Stick a terawatt of solar panels in space, use the power to shine a laser/maser down to earth, then build a station to turn the laser power back to electricity? Great, until some hacker figures out how to control where the laser is pointed. Then you get Dr. Evil holding the world for ransom.
Nah it’s not really bad at all:
The use of microwave transmission of power has been the most controversial issue in considering any SPS design. At the Earth’s surface, a suggested microwave beam would have a maximum intensity at its center, of 23 mW/cm2 (less than 1/4 the solar irradiation constant), and an intensity of less than 1 mW/cm2 outside the rectenna fenceline (the receiver’s perimeter). These compare with current United States Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) workplace exposure limits for microwaves, which are 10 mW/cm2,[original research?] - the limit itself being expressed in voluntary terms and ruled unenforceable for Federal OSHA enforcement purposes.[citation needed] A beam of this intensity is therefore at its center, of a similar magnitude to current safe workplace levels, even for long term or indefinite exposure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power?wprov=sfla1
Long cable
We need to make sure we knot it at the joins so it doesn’t get accidentally disconnected.
Or just charge up car batteries and drop them.
Isn’t there already a tesla up there?
Checkmate, Elon haters
Lasers
How would you move the power down to earth?
Last time I read up on it it was via converting the energy into microwaves and beaming it down.
I think masers (microwave lasers) are the new theory for achieving this, previously it was beaming microwave down much like your microwave oven beams your food.
It’s not that new. Sim City 2000 included a power plant that was just a receiving dish for a maser
Microwave transmission is what’s usually said, then someone says anything in the beam’s path will get zapped, then it’s pointed out the energy density isn’t that high. Just wanted to shortcut that for ya
But what if I want to zap anything in the beam’s path?
Then a meddlesome British agent will interfere.
Well at least I still have my cat.
And my moon laser
The nice thing about space is that there isn’t any weather up there to make the solar panels dirty etc.
There’s a lot of junk though can that can damage those panels.
Not at the legrange point! Yet, anyway
Not at the legrange point! Yet, anyway
Actually, that’s not true. The latest telescope we sent up there has been getting damaged from the junk at that point.
Space Lane cleaner was going to become a thing at some point anyway…
We dont need to collect it in space, just direct more of it to certain ground based collectors?
Increasing solar incidence will increase the planet’s temperature.
So will any other space collection of power.
what if we burn the co2 away
We might be able to burn this atmosphere away yet!
It’s not efficient, a huge amount of it gets diffused or absorbed
It’s not efficient, a huge amount of it gets diffused or absorbed
The amount that’s left over though is more than enough, especially with today panels which only convert a very small percentage of that remaining energy.
As the panels improve even more they’ll be a very large energy surplus, even with how much solar light actually gets through the atmosphere.
Wow, you’re right! We should just build a Dyson sphere around the sun. 100% efficiency achieved. What could possibly go wrong?
Where did I say that?
Did you understand the person you respond to as saying its inefficient because the sun shines in other directions than the array proposed?
I’m pretty sure the person talked specifically about the beam from the array to earth being inefficient.I was joking, but apparently nobody picked up on my snarky sarcasm. Disregard.
It doesn’t need to be efficient. Capture all the light that hits earth for 5 minutes and that’s the world energy demand for a year.
How would you store it though?
solar george
Solar Robert
Stéphane Robert
Usually In plants and algae.
Black hole
no stop
Wait… Beam solar energy from space? That’s what the sun does?
We’ll probably be able to harvest solar power from space then beam it to Earth in a practical way first, than nuclear fusion becomes practical.
You mean solar panels?
What?
Basically, the idea is to build orbital solar farms (where is always sunny), then beam the energy produced back to the ground with microwave transmitters and ground recievers. It’s technically feasible, unlike fusion we have all the technology needed to do it right now. However, it’s cost and resource prohibitive. The US government studied building such a system in the 1970-80’s after the energy crisis. We could do it, but building it would take a generation to get running and about double the US’s current military annual budget. Launch costs are coming down since then, but the industrialization of space and the moon will take generations and would need to be an international effort to have any chance of success.
You know, for a bunch of people who crave power, politicians sure don’t seem too keen on harnessing it.
I’m not sure what comment to reply to, but I feel obligated to remind people that the sun is a fusion reaction.
solar powergravity confinement fusion
Why are so many people talking about nuclear fission waste here?
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You seem to be implying that fusion is a gimmick of an idea by comparing it to Hyperloop which was nothing but that.
Fusion is a mechanism which has been providing humanity with energy from the first moments in the form of the sun. It’s a well known functional form of energy generation. The struggle isn’t whether or not it could possibly work, but just to make it practical enough to make it work.
This isn’t even necessarily about a single company promising that they have an idea that may work, this is an example of it functioning in some capacity.
Your comparison is simply arbitrary.
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What in tarnation? You literally did no such thing in this thread. You expect people to go find your comments?
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While you’re at it, figure out how a thread works. And maybe tack on some social awareness.
I didn’t miss for it, I just didn’t search through your comment history to find your own arguments for you. Consider editing the actual top level comment if you want to use these arguments without retyping them.
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It’s not my job to do either of those things. It may have been in your interest to make a comprehensible point though.
Nobody’s at work here.
To me it’s not so much about it being your job, as the fact you aren’t willing to just say it again indicates you don’t really enjoy this topic.
Lol what? This is a crazy take. I’m not reading you’re comment history to make sense of a single comment
Not me, but I think fusion is not a 1:1 equivalent to the hyperloop.
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Just say what you want to say instead of riddling us with your smug responses.
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Nobody’s going to look for another top level comment that’s further down
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The reason is your comment was shortsighted and contrarian with no backing for the claim.
I think it won’t be in our lifetimes, if ever. Its a cool idea though
It was doomed from the beginning, but it was just meant to delay or supercede the HSR proposal in California. But what does that have to do with this post?
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Ehhhh, not really. This is a pretty common belief about the Hyperloop. A couple of years ago, someone released a book claiming they had private interviews with Musk back in the early 2010’s where he admitted to trying to delay HSR. Here’s an article explaining it: https://jalopnik.com/did-musk-propose-hyperloop-to-stop-california-high-spee-1849402460
The reason this is not conspiratorial thinking is that automakers have a long history in the US of dismantling, lobbying against, and even physically preventing railways from being developed. Elon Musk, especially at that time, was an automaker making claims in order to directly counter proposed high speed rail.
Yes, it was in California, but the intended reasoning is that if it succeeds in California it may be expanded upon elsewhere, meaning there would be less reliance on cars.
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I’m not making the claim myself, just explaining it is a bit different than engaging in what we colloquially understand to be conspiratorial thinking. I would argue it falls under that category in the most broad, objective sense, but I would also argue that the common belief about conspiratorial thinking is that it is when someone believes demonstrably false information.
The difference is that most conspiratorial thinking is believing something despite overwhelming evidence of the contrary while this situation is believing something despite a lack of conclusive, objective evidence (that being no official statement from Musk or investigation into him about this). There is a lack of overwhelming evidence in support of Musk.
Excluding all the ancillary services, including the lasers that maintained the plasma, which was the principle part of this latest test.
Factoring everything in, they’re at about 15% return.
This is still very good for this stage, but the publications are grossly misleading.
That’s what I came to the comments to find. Thank you. Would have been much bigger news if it was net energy positive.
15% return is still net energy positive isn’t it? Or is that not 15% above the input?
I can’t read the full article (paywalled for me) but it references the National Ignition Facility so the way it goes is super lasers blast a tiny hydrogen thing and that creates a tiny bit of fusion that releases the energy. The energy of the laser blast is what’s being called the input and the fusion energy released the output. What is misleading is that a greater amount of energy was used create the laser blast than the laser blast itself outputs. If you consider the energy that went into creating the laser blast the input (rather than the laser blast itself), then it’s usually not a net positive energy release.
What other energy are you referring to? Like warming up the laser?
[email protected] got it, but basically lasers are pretty inefficient. The article I just found said (in a different run of this facility) they put 400MJ into the laser to get 2.5MJ out of it. So that makes the whole firing system what, 0.6% efficient? Your fusion reaction would have to give more than 400MJ to truly be in the positive for this particular setup/method, but again this facility is a research one and not meant to generate power - there isn’t even a way to harness/collect it here.
Oh so the laser’s generating mostly heat and a little coherent radiation, and they’re only referring to the coherent radiation as the “energy input” to the process.
Hmm. Kinda sketch.
Especially because that’s not trivial. If we have no way of obtaining laser light other than that process, and the laser is the only way to feed the fusion reactor, then that’s 100% on the balance books of this process.
Remember when incandescent light bulbs were the norm? They worked by sending full line voltage through a tiny tungsten wire that would get so hot that it glows, making some light, but 95% of the energy that gets consumed is frittered away as heat? The high-power lasers needed to make fusion happen are a lot like that.
I believe all this article is saying is that 15% more energy than what came out of the lasers as useful laser light was liberated in the reaction.This completely ignores the energy it took to power those massively inefficient lasers.
I think it also ignores the fact that the 15% more energy liberated wasn’t actually, like, harnessed by a generator. I believe (and I may be wrong) this was testing only the reaction itself. Actually hooking that up to a turbine and using it to create energy that is cost competitive with contemporary sources is still a completely unsolved problem.
Thx. Rip tho
From another article: “In an experiment on 5 December, the lab’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) fusion reactor generated a power output of 3.15 megajoules from a laser power output of 2.05 megajoules – a gain of around 150 per cent. However, this is far outweighed by the roughly 300 megajoules drawn from the electrical grid to power the lasers in the first place.”
That’s worded strangely (powering the lasers takes both 300 and 2.05 megajoules?) but oof
Powering the laser takes 300 MJ but the actual laser power (the energy in the light) is only 2.05 MJ. The rest of the energy is lost to heat and other inefficiencies. If the laser could be created with 100% efficiency then the input energy would also be 2.05 MJ.
Energy can be measured as occurring in different physical phenomena. There is energy in sound waves/packets, energy in light waves/packets, energy in matter, etc.
The 300 MJ number refers to the electrical energy in the form of electromagnetic fields carried specifically through solid conductors via electron movement along the conductors.
The 2.05 MJ number refers to the radiative energy in the form of electromagnetic fields sent specifically through free space/a vacuum (I presume; I didn’t read the article, so maybe the laser medium was a vacuum or something else) via photons/waves. No electrons, aside from those in the lasers that create the photons in the first place.
So there is a conversion from electric to radiative energy here.
Start Edit:
And as another commenter said, in this conversion there are losses because materials aren’t perfect.
:End Edit
If the 3 MJ radiant energy from the nuclear material was then converted back into electric energy via steam processes, we’d get a comparable number compared to the 300 one.
This is also why you see nuclear/CSP plants quoted in MWt and MWe: there is a conversion that takes place from thermal energy (vibrations of atoms/compounds) into electric energy.
but the publications are grossly misleading.
I think you’re only referencing the headline, the article itself clearly states what you said
Is the headline not part of an article?
When one says a publication is grossly misleading, it certainly implies the entire publication
“article” vs “publication”
Two different things.
The link takes you to an article. Publications are in actual scientific journals, not intended for popular consumption.
Why have we accepted the standard of misleading headlines? “Oh well you didn’t read the article, I guess you and 90% of eyeballs get to be fundamentally misinformed” is an unhinged take.
I never said a misleading headline was acceptable. I said the publication is not misleading and that it covers the criticisms dude up above was leveling.
The headline is part of the publication though.
No, this is a popular science article, not an actual publication.
It is misleading, for someone to be misleading they must mislead, and the headline misleads.
Often the author doesn’t write he headline. Not sure it matters but most a bit of info.
You’re not wrong, but we also should stop excusing, normalizing, and accepting wildly exaggerated for sales purposes titles of articles.
We should stop accepting lies.
Unless there is some way this reaction actually did produce twice the energy input, it’s not misleading it’s a lie.
When I see “publication” I assume it’s the actual scientific paper and not the article reporting on said paper.
That’s a great point. I absolutely agree with you on that.
It’s easier to nitpick than it is to interact with the actual argument. The headline is misleading, and I think it devalues the article.
Generally no
Lol ok
What was your question? I only read “is the” and thought I could base my response off of only that.
I want to add that experimental reactors used for scientific research might never become net energy positive and that would be fine. Their purpose isn’t to generate profit, it’s to learn more about the physics, so it will be more valuable for them to be adaptable than efficient.
However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t take a configuration that has been shown to have potential and make a reactor that is more efficient than adaptable and use that to generate power for the electrical grid.
Basically, they have two different purposes.
Absolutely. Also, the fact that the reactor was only running for a short time plays a part. Usually there is a significant energy cost in starting and stopping, which is offset by running for a long time. However, these reactors are not designed for continued running.
It’s all a process of development, and even though the article is perhaps a little sensationalist, they’re making good progress.
If anything has been consistent about fusion its always them desperately trying to spin babysteps and monumental leaps forward and trying to make themselves seem super clean and safe especially compared to fission.
If anything has been consistent about fusion its always them desperately trying to spin babysteps and monumental leaps forward
That’s usually the media outlets sensationalising the results to the point where the articles are grossly misleading.
trying to make themselves seem super clean and safe especially compared to fission.
That’s just a fact, no need to try. The Fusion process is inherently safe the radioactive byproducts are generally short lived and easier to handle.
Fusion is not inherently safe. It has significantly higher rate of neutron discharge for the enegy produced which can damage the reactor vessel and potential to cause nonfuel material to become radioactive.
Ontop of any power disruption of the system has the potential for radioactive plasma to escape with nothing even remotely equivalent of a SCRAM to bring it back under control.
The only reason fusion appears safe right now is because its all still developmental phase and any issues are being handwaved as prototyping issues and not treated like the actual potential catastrophes they are.
Sigh, here we go, the propaganda is already starting lol
The total mass of reactants in the fusion chamber is below milligram, some of which is bound in stable isotopes. Even if all of it escaped, it would be far from catastrophic.
The reaction itself cannot run away on its own because it requires a delicate balance in temperature and density, which will be immediately disturbed if there was a breach in containment.The walls will be activated by neutrons, but short of blowing the reactor up, there’s not much chance of materials escaping in a significant amount to pose a danger.
Just for comparison: The nuclear safety requirements of a fusion reactor are ballpark those of the radiology department in your local hospital: An accident will give you, if you’re unlucky, a dose on the order of a dental x-ray. Decommissioning involves letting it sit there for 100years until it has cooled down to ambient radioactivity levels, if you’re cheeky you could send it to a place where the natural radiation levels are higher and declare it cool much faster.
Why does noone talk about those ludicrously strong magnet fields and gigantic vacuum vessels? You’re standing right next to a massive volume of practically nothing and are worried that something leaks out?
If publications keep misreporting your work, stop talking to them, and see different publications with a stronger commitment to the truth.
The publications are not misleading, just these headlines.
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Nope
I saw the headline and thought “In what reality is that newsworthy? That actual seems really low for Fusion Power” and then I saw the actual return was closer to 15% and I thought “Now That is News. That’s incredible how little yield we’re getting from the most destructive force on earth. Should have made that the headline.”
At some point we’ll be able to say: …and thus, humanity created its first star.
…and accidentally incinerated its home world, as the supply dependant lunar colony could only look on in horror.
✨The End✨
I know you’re joking, but nuclear fusion is inherently safe because if it breaks there is no way to sustain a chain reaction. And is only creates mildly radioactive byproducts. So you could blow it up and it wouldn’t seriously contaminate the area.
Technically fission has a similar physical barrier to infinite meltdown. Once the water leaves the core, the reaction stops. It was called China Syndrome, and we wouldn’t have worried about it at all, had the physicist that thought it up been a bit more competent with his math skills. Unfortunately, there are plenty of other ways that the reactors that we currently use can catastrophically fail.
Not only are the radioactive byproducts not that dangerous (everything is relative of course). But also they have incredibly short half lives so they go away long before the firefighters turned up.
Nah, the Earth doesn’t have enough mass to become a star. If it did, it would already be one.
I mean, no, it also doesn’t have enough hydrogen.
Everything’s hydrogen if split enough ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
But we’re talking fusion
And directly started demanding money to use some of it.
When they do they should come up with some original quote.
“The power of the sun in the palm of my hand”, something like that.
Melts Your Mouth, Not Your Hand
At least they won’t be in danger of falling flat on the ground, halfway through their Big Words, due to muscle atrophy, the way every single other “first person on ______” is gonna have
“That’s one small trip and fall for a human, one giant faceplant for mankind.”
