I didn’t see any mention of the output in the article. 22MW injected, but does anyone know if the reaction was actually generating a positive output?
Article said 2.6GJ input, 2.6 output so 1Q, but I’m not certain it’s really the case
Sounds like the goal of the test wasn’t to vet ignition power in relation to output. These people are testing the durability of system designs that can maintain a reaction after ignition.
If this was a car, they wouldn’t be testing the fuel efficiency, they’d be testing how long they could drive before the wheels fell off.
No magnetic confinement fusion reactor in existence has ever generated a positive output. The current record belongs to JET, with a Q factor of 0.67. This record was set in 1997.
The biggest reason we haven’t had a record break for a long time is money. The most favourable reaction for fusion is generally a D-T (Deuterium-Tritium) reaction. However, Tritium is incredibly expensive. So, most reactors run the much cheaper D-D reaction, which generates lower output. This is okay because current research reactors are mostly doing research on specific components of an eventual commercial reactor, and are not aiming for highest possible power output.
The main purpose of WEST is to do research on diverter components for ITER. ITER itself is expected to reach Q ≥ 10, but won’t have any energy harvesting components. The goal is to add that to its successor, DEMO.
Inertial confinement fusion (using lasers) has produced higher records, but they generally exclude the energy used to produce the laser from the calculation. NIF has generated 3.15MJ of fusion output by delivering 2.05MJ of energy to it with a laser, nominally a Q = 1.54. however, creating the laser that delivered the power took about 300MJ.
I’ve seen a few mentions of positive output in the last few years.
OK, so we should be clear there are broadly two approaches to fusion: magnetic confinement and inertial drive.
In magnetic confinement a plasma is confined such that it can be driven to sufficient density, temperature and particle confinement time that the thermal collisions allow the fuel to fuse. This is what the OP article is talking about. This Tokamak is demonstrating technologies that if applied to a larger the experiment could probably reach a positive energy output magnetically confined plasma.
The article you referenced discusses inertial drive experiments, where a driver is directly pushing the fuel together, like gravity in the sun, a fission bomb shockwave in a hydrogen bomb, or converging laser beams in Livermore’s case.
Livermore’s result is exciting, but has no bearing on the various magnetic confinement approaches to fusion energy.
I wasn’t aware of that distinction about the energy for the laser to generate the heat energy within the reaction not being factored into the Q value, very interesting, thank you! Would that energy for the laser still be required in a “stable reaction” continuously, or would it be something that would “trail off”?
In my experience the community will usually distinguished between “scientific Q” and “wall plug Q” when discussing fusion power gain. Scientific is simply the ratio of power in vs power out, whereas wall plug includes all the power required to support scientific Q. Obviously the difference isn’t always clearly delineated or reported when talking to journalists…
Inertial confinement doesnt produce a “stable reaction” it is pulsed by it’s nature, think of it in the same way as a single cylinder internal combustion engine, periodic explosions which are harnessed to do useful work. So no the laser energy is required every single time to detonate the fuel pellet.
NIF isnt really interested in fusion for power production, it’s a weapons research facility that occasionally puts out puff pieces to make it seem like it has civilian applications.
If you haven’t already seen the talk recently given at the Chaos Computer Club’s “Hacker Hotel” named “How Thermonuclear fusion works, free energy without waste”, I highly recommend it. https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-ff152736-e38872dd7aed088e
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand
la puissance du soleil dans la paume de ma main
Honhonhon
[Takes a drag on a sexy cigarette]
But I’m le tired.
Well have a nap
How big are your hands???
It’s not the size the matters, it’s the amount of hands that matters.
Nuclear powered hands in the palm of my hands
Didn’t read the article.
I have no clue wtf that technology is in detail but wouldn’t it be easy to have a longer reaction time by supplying enough energy? The news should not be how long the reaction lasted but how long it lasted selfreliant.
I read thorough it for the details.
It was net negative power, requiring 2MW of power to maintain fusion. The major achievement of this particular experiment was doing so without the fusion reaction damaging the containing assembly.
It was purely a test/demonstration of the containment of fusion-like conditions.
Thanks for this TLDR. I’m too high to read actual things.
You need to be the right amount of high to properly understand fusion. Too far either way, and it doesn’t make sense.
Eh, fusion isn’t that complicated. You push things together and heat them up until they get even hotter on their own. That’s all that’s happening.
Wth is this comment?
A reasonable question.
Seems like the person wants to learn something, but with zero effort. (i.e. won’t read the article; and certainly won’t look for additional context or information.) So maybe it would be better to post the question into an AI chatbot. You can just ask whatever question, and get some plausible but possibly-bullshit answer; then feel good for satisfying your curiosity.
I haven’t read the original comment and don’t know anything about how conversations work but would it not be easier to Google chatgpt?
Meanwhile in America we’re trying to make macdonalds cheaper by bundling an extra sandwich to go along with a value meal…
That’s called McFusion
And it only takes 22 seconds to consume.
And only 12 seconds to regret.
Which means you are still consuming the burger for 10 seconds fully regretting your decision.
110% commitment to the burger and the regret. USA! USA!
That’s way better than Taco Bell, where the regret sinks in when you consider going there.
Spoken like someone who’s never had a cheesy gordita crunch
Oh I have, and they’re delicious. I still regret it every time though because of how low quality everything is.
And keeps you sated for another 22 seconds.
Then you want seconds.
America would blow up a fusion reacto, call it dangerous, elon musk has a lot of things to say about it and then it would be illegal worldwide. Have you guys heard about coal? We already fixed it, just burn coal.
When the fuck did maccas start doing a sandwich?
Day one? A hamburger is a sandwich.
That was such a culture shock when I went to the us for the first time.
In Germany and many places in Europe do not think of burgers as sandwiches. I was so confused when I ordered a sandwich and got something like a burger.
I expected something like this. My confusion must’ve been quite the sight, the waitress even seemed concerned. Tasted great though.
Only difference between that and a burger is a burger is usually on a roll, not slices of bread. (And a burger is always hot, but then so are some sandwiches.)
This is so cool. I remember seeing that Europe is working on a massive mega project to build an even bigger reactor for more experiements. Its costing like 75 trillion
Oh shit. Things are heating up in the fusion race.
IIRC it was expected because previous record from China was essentially a trial for this one. It all happens under ITER project so it’s not that much of a race.
Good shit. I’d rather this be a global cooperative effort rather than a jingoistic dick-waving contest.
It’s several cooperative and competitives projects. Diversity is not bad for science anyway. ITER itself involve tons of countries.
Good. The only thing that was quite good about the cold war was the competition.
That’s not what this is, and even then, that competition wasn’t even good. You had two countries hoarding technological advancements for themselves, with everything having to be discovered twice.
This is a worldwide collaboration, where each assists the others, and it’s a much better way of making progress. See ITER.
I should’ve replaced ‘quite’ with a more clear ‘remotely’ but you’re absolutely correct
Has DOGE cut funding to ITER yet?
They sacked everybody. Now they are trying to get them back.
/s
But only the white middle aged men with regular male names and above average height.
What about my racist and misogynist views I try to hide underneath my crazed and incompetent rantings about DEI? Is there room for someone like me?
You are now leading the department.
Amazing news!
Mr. Fusion now 1 step closer… 10 years late, but still!
Only ten more years, and we’ll have it!
So, some as graphene.
We’re using graphene! Almost entirely for it’s electrical properties true, but we’re using graphene doped batteries in consumer electronics currently. We also use fusion and ITER research for a whole lot more than just power generation - plasma dynamics, just one tiny subfield concerned with physics, has applications in everything from radio transmission beam forming techniques to satellite engines to magnetodynamic modeling to the EMI shielding on your vacuum cleaner.
I would like to subscribe for more graphene facts.
…you said 10 more years 50 years ago
In just 10 more years, it’ll only be 40 more years!
I feel like the awesome back to future reference was missed completely.
How ks the drill baby drill crowd going to compete against mini stars in a can?
Lmao. Fucking oil losers
How ks the drill baby drill crowd going to compete against mini stars in a can?
Nu-Cu-Lar Bad? That’s…about as far as they’ll make it. To be fair, that might be as far as they need to. It’s all the oil companies will approve of them learning, at least.
Of course, it sounds like the big problem of how to remove more power from it than you spend keeping it reacting remains an issue, presuming they can continue to extend reaction lifetimes to be functionally unlimited.
Plastic Straws. Plastic cups. Wrapping indvidual food items in plastic and then putting them in a larger plastic bag which you carry home in an even larger plastic bag.
The food has been impregnated with microplastics as well. This machine runs on sugar, but someone put oil in the tank. :-/
The ironic thing is the human body runs on fat and a huge portion of our illness stems from the insane amount of sugar we consume.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cST99piL71E&list=PLE8LmUoWei5Qp5Nz7C4FMNs6hGNx7M3Jg&index=2
Summary: In 1984 our group published the first modern study of the effects of adapting to a low carbohydrate high fat diets on athletic performance. I have spent the next 31 years expanding on this research. In my presentation I will present the results of that research program and conclude with our exciting new evidence for the role of low carbohydrate diets and ketosis in the prevention of whole body inflammation in athletes training daily at very high loads. I will also present evidence to show that elite ultra-endurance athletes have an unexpectedly high capacity to oxidize fat during exercise and so potentially to run at fast paces for prolonged periods without the need to ingest exogenous fuels.
The 1928 Bellevue Stefansson Experiment McClellan W, et al. JBC 87:651,1930 http://www.jbc.org/content/87/3/651.f… Keto-adaptation Demonstrated Vermont Study Phinney et al JCI 66:1152, 1980
Thanks for sharing. As a frequent cyclist who loves cheese and doesn’t drink soda or eat many sweats, I feel like this will be an interesting read.
Idk dude, we already have the sun and wind but they hate that stuff too, despite it being very close to free. Hell they’ll probably bitch about fusion causing a surplus of power outside peak loads.
If it doesn’t perpetuate the broken ways we currently do things it doesn’t give their buddies money, so it’s woke or something else bullshit.
Well, if I lived in the world of American liberals and conservatives I was taught about growing up, the game would be over the moment fusion power became cheap, and everybody would be happy.
In the real world though? We’ll wait way too long, then get excited when it finally starts to happen, and then right before The Big Day some smooth brained asshole will blow up part of the reactor or fly a plane into the facility or something.
1,337 seconds
Le et
Rumor is next they are trying for 11.6858˙3 hours
Elven time conversion is the worst.
5,318008 seconds should be a new goal.
Flexing
Flexing is not good for the containment
No, but some guy proved that we could use that to our advantage. If you don’t use the magnetic constrictors to compensate for the heat from the fusion expanding the vessel, you can have it enter fusion and leave fusion several times a second. Wrap the thing in copper wire coils, and you have now got your vessel in a state of flux, and producing enough power to blackout your local grid, and get lots of fines from the feds in less than 5 seconds of runtime. He obviously didn’t continue working on that particular method of generating power with a Tokomak
Can you link to something so I can read more about this please?
Wish I could. Only reason I know about it, is that it was mentioned briefly in the Navy Nuclear Power Program training materials.
France’s 22-minute plasma reaction is a bold stride toward sustainable fusion energy but remains experimental.
🐱🐱🐱🐱
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Which lemmy client are you using? Your reply has
Check out more details here: <a href=“https://markdown-viewer.com/”>markdown viewer</a>.
Doesn’t sound that impressive when Wendelstein 7-X achieved 17 minutes of plasma in 2021.
Yes but 22 minutes is longer than 17 minutes
Think of it like a pizza oven
How well done is your pizza?
at temperatures that exceed the surface of the sun, there’s only one setting.
carbonized.
Agreed. Plus, when talking about that reactor you get to say “stellarator”, which is always fun.
I can’t find a reference to that but China did 17 minutes in January this year. I think you’re confusing the announcement that they increased power by 17x while maintaining plasma.
This test was 20 minutes at a higher power setting without being incredibly destructive, that’s their milestone.
Maybe if it runs longer, we all get to jump to a better timeline. 😅
No tech will give you a better timeline, back on the floor please ^^ It’s a political problem before anything else, and energy production is far from being the first problem.
Scientists: invents commercial scale fusion Capitalist: hordes the almost free energy because why not? Poor people are only useful as a resource anyway.
Or the world blows up and it’s all over. I guess what I’m saying is, no downside, fire it up and let’s see what happens.
