The scientists used lasers to fuse two light atoms into a single one, releasing 3.15MJ (megajoules) of energy from 2.05MJ of input – roughly enough to boil a kettle.
Why do we even study this? Renewables are the only way. This is a waste of money which is a finite resource.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The world’s biggest nuclear fusion reactor has begun operations in Japan, marking a major milestone towards achieving the “holy grail” of clean energy.
The experimental JT-60SA reactor in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture offers the best opportunity yet to test nuclear fusion as a sustainable and near limitless power source.
The opening of the JT-60SA reactor comes just one year after scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California achieved a net energy gain with nuclear fusion for the first time.
Physicist Arthur Turrell, who was not involved in the research, described the achievement of nuclear fusion ignition as “a moment of history” that could define a new era of energy.
“This experimental result will electrify efforts to eventually power the planet with nuclear fusion – at a time when we’ve never needed a plentiful source of carbon-free energy more.”
One of the main objectives for the newly opened reactor, which measures six stories in height, is to replicate the feat of producing a net surplus of energy.
The original article contains 419 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 60%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So 1. This is newable. Green, almost waste free, and unlimited.
If we can refine fusion, we will stop global warming and energy insecurity, virtually overnight.
It’s not a waste to invest in clean tech R&D. At one point, people said the same thing about solar, and look where we are now
Do you really think PV cells and nuclear fusion are in any way comparable? What a strange take.
In the way the other poster compared them? Yes, in so far as people who complain “the new, developing technology isn’t immediately as optimised and refined as I want it to be” for both.
Do you have a basic understanding of the challenges of getting electricity from a fusion reaction vs the challenges of manufacturing PV panels?
Fusion is constant, wouldn’t require large amounts of batteries to store energy. There are advantages to each.
It’s not though, not withstanding stars. We’ve managed 17 minutes so far. We’re so far away from turning this into a useable power source that it’s absurd.
While this is exciting and there are many reasons to continue to research fusion, fighting climate change is very much not one of them. It has all of the real problems of fission, namely high cost, low scale, and difficult construction, but exacerbated to an extreme degree. If new fission projects struggle to get investor funding becuse of low profitability and difficult construction times dispite nearly a century of development, it is unlikely that a technology so complex and expensive that we don’t even had a plan for a power plant yet will do better.
We might have a fusion pathfinder plant by 2050 or 2060, we need to be off fossil fuel by 2030 to 2035. We might be able to built sufficient fission by then if we started now at scale, national average construction times tend to be between 5 to 10 years, but fusion is a tool that might at best replace the power plants we build today, not the coal and natural gas plants we built yesterday.
I bring this up not because I oppose funding fusion and pure science, but because any argument that calls it an answer to climate change is going to fall apart the second you consider any alternative on a cost or time basis.
Fission requires insanely costly wastes management. It is very dangerous and security is a huge costs-contributing factor. This is not the case with fusion, so costs might be lower despite complexity.
Fusion also produces most of the nuclear waste that a fission plant does thanks to undergoing the same nutron activation process, and while it lacks spent fuel rods, thouse are already infinitely recyclable, so the only real waste saveings would be in low grade waste like dust covered clean suits and such.
This also doesn’t help the case for Fusion very much given that even with these disposal costs ITER has costs four to six times any average fission plant for a donor reactor that has no generating capacity and which is mearly to prove that the physics work, something we did for fission with the Chicago pile in 1942 at an estimated inflation adjusted cost of 53 million dollars.
If it’s this expensive for a proof of concept, it is very unlikely that any full plant would be much cheaper. Compare it to things we can actually deploy at scale today like onshore wind or battery backed solar, and it is pretty clear that Fusion is an expensive but important science project, not a serious proposal to power the electrical grid.
Renewables are already well researched. It’s up to governments to enforce their use if they want.
Fusion can be huge because it can theoretically be scaled up significantly.
Even though both this reactor and ITER have small energy production goals, if they can get a reaction to run for a usable period of time, then it becomes something worth investing into to improve.
Even the USA chucks money at it because it could have military use. Fission power started in a similar way.
Why do you have multiple post of breakthroughs in nuclear tech with negative criticism?
In fact multiple posts appearing to concern troll renewables with statements like “coal is here to stay”??
Id you’re going to judge me on my post history, then read ALL of them.
Creep
is it not creepy to photograph children in a public park?
just because things are in the public, doesn’t mean what’s happening is not creepy
Because they’re all solar punk enthusiasts. Basically modern day hippies but without the common sense.
They really really like renewable energy but they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about so anytime anyone comes up with anything that isn’t solar panels or wind turbines they throw a fit.
Renewables are the only way.
You’re right! We should power everything by burning charcoal.
I wasn’t being sarcastic at all. OP wants renewables, and charcoal is renewable.
Well call me a dumbasses for thinking that was sarcasm. Charcoal is not renewable bro. Wtf.
