Comment on Scientists successfully replicate historic nuclear fusion breakthrough three times

• partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The hydrogen is the most common element but 96% of it is currently produced from fossil fuels.

  I’m not expert either, but I don’t think most of that 96% of hydrogen is a candidate for the fusion we’re doing today. NIF (like the OP article) uses Deuterium (Hydrogen with 1 neutron) and Tritium (Hydrogen with 2 neutrons) is what is squashed together to produce energy. The more neutrons make the fusion “easier” to produce energy.

  Naturally occurring Deuterium isn’t crazy hard to find. Its in sea water, but you have to go through A LOT of sea water to pull out the rare atoms of Deuterium. Naturally occurring Tritium is much more rare with having to find very small amounts in ground water.

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  • Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    For reference and because I was curious enough to look for it, Deuterium is 0.0156% of the hydrogen in ocean water.

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  • Promethiel@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In a perfect world, NASA was always funded like Humanity depended on it since after WW2, and by 2010 a unified global space organization supplanted the need for any militaries because we’re too busy building fission plants on the moon to bind with that sweet HE3 to power the Space Mobile Homes affordable for all because of course we researched fusion without profit motive until it worked.

    Kinda my preferred alt-world, now someone please fire up all of the world’s particle accelerators on high at once, that’ll get us there right?

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• Zeth0s@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  If you have fusion energy, creating H2 from water via electrolysis is a joke. You can do it at home. It only requires a lot of energy. But with energy from fusion it will become super easy, barely an inconvenient

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  • BehindTheBarrier@programming.dev ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well. Assuming the cost of splitting water is lower than the energy produced from the same amount of hydrogen.

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    • Zeth0s@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It is muuuuuuuuuuch lower

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  • Sphks@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    In the news, 5.000 years later : “Scientists warned that our mass extraction of hydrogen may produce global salinization, but no one wants to reduce its energy consumption.”

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• MonkderZweite@feddit.ch ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Electrolysis has up to 70% efficiency and needs sulfuric acid. The superheated thing has about 90% efficiency.

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