Technology

Artificial sun rising from the EAST? These guys know how to name things.

Journalist reads "limit" and clickbaits it, typical

Just a few years ago US labs were the first to generate more power than they put into a fusion reactor, it was one of the most important breakthroughs to date in fusion.

Even under the shitheap Trump, the US is continuing to research into fusion and building stellarators such as Infinity 1 in Tennessee.

Europe likewise is leading breakthroughs such as with Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany lasting for 43 seconds. This is being improved with the new Proxima Alpha stellarator being built.

China’s EAST reactor had a breakthrough when they achieved 1,000 seconds last year. While Europes recent ITER tokamak should be achieving its first plasma in the coming years.

Fusion is a global effort, and scientists are benefiting from the works being put in elsewhere. Stellarators and Tokamak are both breaking new grounds each year, and each has their own pros and cons.

Don’t fall for any propaganda trying to claim anyone is “winning”.

If China's economic ascendancy happened 50 years sooner we would probably already have it. Democracies are allergic to massive capital investments that take decades to pay off.

Obviously the graph is very out of date, US funding is around 600 million 2012 dollars annually and China's is double that.

Practical power production through nuclear fusion still requires significant developments for it to be realised at scale, though several startups are already planning to deliver it within the next few years.

US-based Helion Energy secured the world’s first purchase agreement for nuclear fusion energy in 2023, promising to provide 50MW of fusion power to Microsoft by 2028.

I mean, time will tell. But that seems a bit sooner than 2100.

articles such as this one usually are optimized for their audience, you just aren't the audience. that's ok. I'm rarely the audience either :) a quick search should give you what you're looking for https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz3040

Most Americans read at or below a 6th grade level

article didn't say anything. How does denser plasma achieve higher temperatures or other benefits? What advances did their denser plasma produce?

I'm no China expert but I lived In South China for a while between 2016 and 2024. The Chinese people I know are mostly hardworking, very motivated to succeed, and well capitalized. In their major cities you might be surprised to learn normal guys who earn half what you do are living a higher quality of life than you are, in terms of access to technology.

Their government is no doubt using uncouth methods to give their country unfair advantages. They don't play well with others.

But holy shit there is one thing this Chinese government is doing well: effectively driving growth with targeted investments in the economy. They have been focused on that one mission consistently for a long time.

While democracies fuck around trying to decide if they should tax themselves to build public transportation, China installs 10 new ultrafast subway lines in just a few years in every big city. Covers the country in a network of high-speed rail. Drives the price of shipping goods around the country to almost nothing.

A kind of monoparty like China has is very likely a net negative when we look at world history, but for moments of time, if it's the right one, amazing things can happen.

China is now the world leader in science by most metrics (largest proportion of the top 1% most cited papers, most publications to prestigious journals, etc). It makes sense, with their high population and their government willing to fund research. I'm guessing their culture is much less anti-intellectual than the West too, especially the US.

The overwhelming majority of their so called breakthroughs are just media fluff pieces though. Their sources are more and more often AI generated studies and their supposed advancements aren‘t going anywhere a lot of the time. By the time people start asking questions and want to know more details they have already prepared another story for you to be impressed by. It‘s shock and awe.

Solar has the problem of storage. You need something like a generator to tide those in-between times. Also you need the signal to be a clean 60 hz and solar apparently isn't very good at keeping the power clean.

Solar is technically fusion though

but isnt it being centralized being the point? I have the (probably not so rare) tin foil theory that big energy spends a lot of money to dampen solar and other decentralized power generation. As a politician you have to ask yourself, do I get nice packages from big energy for not looking so closely when another forest is turned into a hole or do I hope that 20000 random people try to bribe me for something. In terms of money gain for a few big power plant is double plus good. Boring solar might be better for all of us, the rest, but not for the guys calling the shots. This all assumes of course that there is no empathy at all in the local legislation

But will Fusion ever be cheaper than solar?

Eventually. But, much like traditional fission power, you'll need a very large and complex piece of infrastructure to deliver it.

You won't be able to put a fusion plant in your basement like you can put solar on your roof.