The world's biggest experimental nuclear fusion reactor in operation was inaugurated in Japan on Friday, a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity's future energy needs.
After what the USAians achieved with a net positive output, hopefully they can match and surpass that. Fusion is one of the few technologies that can get us to 1 on Kardashev scale.
But coal workers are a bedrock of American ideals! We can't take their jobs!
Is a /s needed? I don't know anymore. Do people really enjoy being coal miners and want their children to follow that wonderful career? I can get a yes to that question but only from people who have no idea what that entails.
The method they used is absolutely unsuited for power generation, they're doing weapons research. Two things:
Sure, more energy came out than hit the target but the amount of power wasted generating the laser light is right-out astronomical. People also gripe about other experiments not including those external (to the reaction) factors but then they're also generally magnitudes lower.
The targets are very very hard to produce, and you only get to shoot at them once.
I remember hearing when it was announced last that fusion was achieved, scientists were skeptical that we had finally achieved this and we wouldn't be actually putting it to use for decades to come.
But here we are. Yes it's experimental but it's working amd producing energy. I'm just surprised we're here already, even if it's only a proof of concept at this point
IAEA's estimate is that Nuclear fusion, if successfully researched and demonstrated at full capacity within 2036 at ITER (which is already lagging behind schedule) will result in commercial availability in 2050. So yes, we are still decades away from putting it to use.
Fusion is so dump. Were at least a couple decades away from brake even in the fusion reaction, but still people believe it will help solve the climate crisis.
Atm we put about 10 times nore energy into the whole system than we get out. And it generates nuclear waste because the wall materials absorb neutrons and get radioactive.
And so many other unsolved problems... this technology is a nice research peoject, but none of us will ever see a commercial reactor in action, because it is so far away, if even possible.
Max Planck plans on building an actual power plant in the 2030s. A stellerator (just like Wendelstein 7X) which, unlike Tokmaks, don't have scaling issues. They will still need to nail down tritium breeding (ITER not getting anywhere, it should have provided that data) and there's also some headaches about divertor panels which get (deliberately) hit by plasma and wear down quite a bit quicker than they would've hoped but a failure there would only get into the way of being price-competetive with other energy sources (lots of spare parts needed), not achieving net power output. Including cooling and everything, not just plasma heating.
As to it solving the climate crisis: Certainly not on its own, but possibly on the tail end of the transition. We don't only need to fix the climate issue but also switch to a circular economy and having plenty of cheap energy makes that way, way easier to achieve.
I’m as much a nuclear skeptic as anyone, but while fusion solves neither the time or budget problems of fission, it does solve the meltdown and waste problems.
It improves the waste issue, doesn't really solve it. A dirty, little-discussed secret about fusion power.
If we had a bunch of fusion plants go live, we'd soon have tons and tons of radioactive containment wall material to bury/store somewhere. Including all the special handling requirements that you need with fuel rod waste. I think fusion plants would actually create more waste than a comparable fission plant, at least as far as tons of radioactive material.
The benefit is that waste would be lighter isotopes and degrade faster. So you have more physical material to worry about but only need to worry about it for ~100 years, not thousands.