US nuclear-fusion lab enters new era: achieving ‘ignition’ over and over (www.nature.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 2023 18:00
https://lemmy.world/post/9645660

US nuclear-fusion lab enters new era: achieving ‘ignition’ over and over::undefined

#technology

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luthis@lemmy.nz on 16 Dec 2023 18:09 next collapse

This news gives me confidence that fusion is now only 9 years away.

davidgro@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 2023 20:11 collapse

For several decades it’s been 20 years away, and before that 50, so yeah. Progress.

(No /s, I think the money is finally in place to make it happen, and that was always the bottleneck.)

That said, NIF is for weapons research, not power, but some of the knowledge they gain is probably transferable.

PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee on 16 Dec 2023 18:23 next collapse

The use of “over and over again” gives me amusing Homer Simpson thoughts, “Oh yeah baby fuse me so hard! Just like that!”

Sibbo@sopuli.xyz on 16 Dec 2023 18:33 next collapse

Did they already build cooling?

n3m37h@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 2023 18:47 next collapse

Let me know when it actually produces electricity then I’ll be happy till then we should have been working on MSR

davidgro@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 2023 20:13 collapse

This one is for weapons research, nothing like the ones that are doing power research, but some of the knowledge might transfer

n3m37h@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 2023 21:19 collapse

Oh of course it is, 7000 nukes aren’t enough

rustydomino@lemmy.world on 16 Dec 2023 19:23 next collapse

I can’t believe that “Secretary of State John Kerry” passed editorial review in 2023. In Nature. Makes you wonder why academic institutions are paying these journals exorbitant subscription fees for alleged editorial rigor.

Womble@lemmy.world on 17 Dec 2023 21:40 collapse

The article glosses over it a bit, but I think it’s important to stress here that this isn’t energy gain in any real sense. Its more energy being created from fusion than laser energy gets to the target, but before then 99% of the energy input is lost in creating the laser beams.

So to give one of the examples used in the article, 2MJ of laser energy is delivered to the target and 3.9MJ is released. But to create this 200MJ was consumed to create that laser pulse.