US scientists repeat fusion power breakthrough
www.afr.com
The latest result is set to fuel optimism that progress is being made towards the dream of limitless, zero-carbon power.

Until December no group able to produce more energy from reaction than it consumes. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory repeated breakthrough in experiment on July 30. Scientists believe fusion power stations still decades away.

  • fleabomber@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    11 months ago

    As always, gonna wait and see what people who know that stuff say about it. Feels like pr.

    • empireOfLove@lemmy.oneEnglish
      15·
      11 months ago

      I know a little about stuff.

      Similar to the 2022 firing, The fusion charge itself was net energy positive. That is, the fusion production was greater than the input of laser shot used, which means they’re closing in on optimal ignition.

      However: the total cycle energy was terrible. The lasers NIF uses are quite old due to the speed of government and the sheer size of the project, plus thermodynamics hates an engineer’s guts. so their total real input electrical energy to generate such a laser pulse of a few joules was hundreds of thousands of times greater than the actual fusion output.

      This is great for understanding the physics of conditions that fusion requires, but terrible for generating power.

  • amio@kbin.social
    33·
    11 months ago

    still decades away

    Yeah, let me guess - about 4 of them, like for the past 8 of them?

  • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
    36·
    11 months ago

    They are getting more out than the laser puts in.

    But the laser is about 10% efficient for starters, completely outweighing the generated power.

    This is about testing nuclear weapon designs, this is not a stepping stone to a power plant. The people building it would tell you that. In fact, they did, repeatedly, in their original press conference.

    This lab would have been shut down decades ago by oil and coal politicians if it were about power generation.

    • parrot-party@kbin.social
      121·
      11 months ago

      This is not about weapons. That’s a ludicrous viewpoint. We’ve been able to create fusion weapons for decades now by starting them with fission. There’s no way to build a pocket fusion device so it would only ever be a giant nuke, which we can already build.

      No, this is really real research. Oil and coal barons know the end is coming for oil and coal, that’s why they’re the primary card holders in renewables too. They don’t actually need to burn fossil fuels, it’s just more profitable to do so right now. Once it’s not, they’ll just turn to the next most profitable thing they’ve got their fingers in.

      • empireOfLove@lemmy.oneEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        He’s partially true- LLNL and NIF’s primary focus used to be weapons. But really nuclear weapons have hit the end of their development. This is all high theoretical physics at this point.

      • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        11 months ago

        Yo, watch the press conference where the program director and scientists presented the original positive-energy result.

        They were unanimously very clear that this research is about non-explosively testing whether our warheads still work.