A headline without calling it an "Artificial Sun"?!
this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2025
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The amusing thing is that the sun is actually quite a shit fusion reactor. It's power per unit volume is tiny. It just makes it up in sheer volume. A solar level fusion reactor would be almost completely useless to us. Instead we need to go far beyond the sun's output to just be viable.
It's like describing one of the mega mining dumper trucks as an "artificial mule".
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand.
Don't worry, it will stabilize
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?
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.
Doesn't sound that impressive when Wendelstein 7-X achieved 17 minutes of plasma in 2021.
This is cool but also remember the practicalities of Fusion make it not much better than nuclear:
1,337 seconds
Why don't we use "shatters world record" like the pro-China articles where they did this for 16 minutes?
I know why.
Why do you care so much what an article says about France's accomplishments of science and China's accomplishments of science? Why can't we enjoy the movement of technology without bickering about lines drawn in the sand by people none of us know or care about?
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.
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand
How big are your hands???
It’s not the size the matters, it’s the amount of hands that matters.
1,337 seconds? That... that number used to mean something, but now i can't recall what...
I still use 1337 sometimes, for joke names like 1337h4xX0r, or I use 1337 where others would use 42 or 69, but it's always that nobody gets it. How could past internet culture vanish like that?
All your base are belong to us