this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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You are technically wrong, the worst kind of wrong :)
DT and DD fusion reactions release energy. More energy than is put in. It's the whole system that hasn't been energy positive. We're close to breakeven in terms of plasma (heating power vs fusion power, and it's not like heating power is lost from the system it still heats the reactor) but to be useful fusion power needs to be >10x heating power so the whole system is more than self-sufficient.
Technically, this part is correct as far as I understand the laws of thermodynamics
Hehe, I walked right into this one. You're right. I totally failed at trying to be a smartass.
With energy positive here I mean useful energy positive, so electricity or high temperature heat.
What counts is the whole system. You need to get more output energy than input. Right now this was never done.
And the input energy includes the energy lost by for examples lasers because they are inefficient.