'Breakthrough in nuclear fusion'

domalino said:
These experiments are about ignition. It’s producing that much energy in a few billionths of a second.

Once we’ve solved ignition, keeping things going is theoretically much easier.

It took us centuries to get to the Wright brothers and from there 60 years to moon landings.
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We’re already 70 years on from the first man made fusion reactions. Ignition was solved then. The problem is sustainable ignition over time at levels appropriate for electricity generation.

The news yesterday was a small necessary step on the way but I can’t see any reason to believe that it’s a significantly bigger step than that made 8 years ago. Seems more like a PR exercise to secure ongoing funding. I’m not against that because it will be necessary in the long term but there’s not too much for the average person to get excited about.
 
Did we stop investing because the Wright Brothers flew a feet off the ground? No, and now we have an aviation industry which has benefitted humanity, brought us closer together and increased international co-operation and encouraged travel.

Did we stop investing in space exploration because Sputnik went up? No, and now we have international telecommunications, internet, bringing us closer together as a worldwide community.

Nuclear fusion will take time, it will cost countless billions to develop further, just as aviation and satellites did, but the end goal is clean, green, safe, abundant energy that will benefit the planet and us in equal measure for the foreseeable future and beyond.
 
west didsblue said:
We’re already 70 years on from the first man made fusion reactions. Ignition was solved then. The problem is sustainable ignition over time at levels appropriate for electricity generation.

The news yesterday was a small necessary step on the way but I can’t see any reason to believe that it’s a significantly bigger step than that made 8 years ago. Seems more like a PR exercise to secure ongoing funding. I’m not against that because it will be necessary in the long term but there’s not too much for the average person to get excited about.
Click to expand...

the very recent breakthrough was a decent step on from 2014 - one difference is that the recent reporting is closer to the truth of the results while 2014's were slightly hammed up (for whatever reasons) (also see interpretations of net usage).

but the principle breakthrough is: in 2014 there was net energy creation from fusion reactions from energy absorbed by the fuel, while in 2022 there was net energy creation by fusion reaction from all energy fired at the fuel. In the former, the absorbed energy was something like 1% of the laser's energy fired at it, while it 2022, 3MJ was produced by reactions using 2MJ of laser meaning more energy was created than the energy used to ignite it (not just limited to energy absorbed by the fuel), which was nowhere near the case in 2014.

Subtle wording in 2014 is a point of discussion but it is a very separate achievement a few days ago.

Neither result (2014/2022) came close to replacing the energy used to fire up and charge the whole experiment, but the point in the latter results is that the chain reaction was producing more than ignition and if you can sustain that? then overall fire-up energy will be deemed insignificant.
 
shemnel said:
the very recent breakthrough was a decent step on from 2014 - one difference is that the recent reporting is closer to the truth of the results while 2014's were slightly hammed up (for whatever reasons) (also see interpretations of net usage).

but the principle breakthrough is: in 2014 there was net energy creation from fusion reactions from energy absorbed by the fuel, while in 2022 there was net energy creation by fusion reaction from all energy fired at the fuel. In the former, the absorbed energy was something like 1% of the laser's energy fired at it, while it 2022, 3MJ was produced by reactions using 2MJ of laser meaning more energy was created than the energy used to ignite it (not just limited to energy absorbed by the fuel), which was nowhere near the case in 2014.

Subtle wording in 2014 is a point of discussion but it is a very separate achievement a few days ago.

Neither result (2014/2022) came close to replacing the energy used to fire up and charge the whole experiment, but the point in the latter results is that the chain reaction was producing more than ignition and if you can sustain that? then overall fire-up energy will be deemed insignificant.
Click to expand...

It's also worth pointing out that these breakthroughs are happening at the end of the life cycle of the machines made for the experiment. JET in Oxfordshire, NIF which is the one that made news yesterday...these machines were built 30 years ago.

The next generation of machines, like ITER in France or SPARC at MIT, which should both start running in 2025, are built for much bigger and longer reactions so we should see a technological leap. Going from fractions of a second to several minutes. Going from 1.5x energy out yesterday to 10-100x energy out.
 
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