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this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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I'd like to see fusion power (or some other good power source) become a thing. It'd be nice to live in a society where energy usage was basically safe and free.
If we're being unrealistic, easy access to ftl spacecraft for everyone would be nice. Exploring the galaxy sounds fun.
The last time I checked fusion was ..check notes.. just about fifty years away.
For the last 40 years it's been down to 20 years away.
Well, that was mostly right— until we actually built one. Now we’ve built 3 fusion reactors. It’s no longer theoretical.
Now comes the phase of overcoming certain limitations wrt scaling up the tech to make commercially-viable reactors, and estimating that at about another 15-20 years (considering the rapid advances of the last few years) isn’t unrealistic.
Before it was a question of, “can we even do this?” We’re finally past that milestone. Now it just a matter of the very achievable goal of scaling up the reactors. The timeline for that is much more predictable.
Those scaling issues have always been the issues. We've had working reactors for over 65 years.
"The first experiment to achieve controlled thermonuclear fusion was accomplished using Scylla at LANL in 1958."
And don't think that the NIF ignition results are the kind of breakthrough that headlines make it out to be - that project is weapons research, and is not designed to produce power, nor is it anywhere close to doing so when the power to the lasers is measured and not just what the pellet absorbs.
However, what's new in the last few years is commercial investment in fusion, and I do think that it will make the difference that the last 65 years haven't. Maybe even in the next 20 years™
we attained net-positive over a year ago: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/nuclear-fusion-passes-major-milestone-net-energy.html
as for scaling issues, we have just been able to tolerate 100 million degree reaction for a record amount of time, a breakthrough that sets a new milestone. a pretty big step beyond, ahem, 1958.
You've been taken in by intentionally deceptive headlines.
The energy absorbed by the pellet (what they are measuring as the "input") is something like 1/20th or worse of the energy used to power the lasers. The output is greater than that "input" by a little, but again, nowhere near the actual energy used, and it won't ever be at that experiment because it's not designed for it, it's designed so we can simulate H-bombs without setting off real ones.
The next major goal is still overall energy-positive output, right? We've only breached the threshold of output > input naively, without considering any external energy costs. I hope we get there though, it would be very neat!
Oh, no, we’ve managed net positive! That was the most critical achievement, and we finally did it last year! Not a whole lot, but we have. The problems we’re encountering now is dealing with the massive heat produced. But we just hit a new milestone in dealing with that, too!
Progress is being made, and that’s (the heat) is one of the biggest factors now in scaling up. But it’s an achievable goal. The more heat we can handle during the reaction, the bigger reactors we can build.
We did?? I thought it was just net energy gain from the impulse itself!
yeah, over a year ago
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/13/nuclear-fusion-passes-major-milestone-net-energy.html
it's been replicated twice since then
Wooooo yeah let's gooo
Sure it’ll be safe, but free is a pipe dream under our current system
What's funny is that we DO have access to fairly clean energy already! Nuclear and renewables (not as much solar, until we solve the rare earth metals problem) are pretty darn clean. I mean... have you looked up Thoroum reactors? Those things are really neat, much safer and better for the environment, etc., but came just a bit too late combined with the nuclear scare.