Inching Toward a Fusion Energy Future | A handful of startups are racing to usher in an era of near-limitless fusion energy, but big questions remain.

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Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨silence7@slrpnk.net⁩ to ⁨energy@slrpnk.net⁩

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threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

One reason it’s so hard to make predictions about the fusion age is that we’re still not sure what the best fusion device will even look like. A tokamak, the doughnut-shaped machine Commonwealth is building? A giant laser, like Livermore Lab’s? Or one of the many other shapes and concepts that other start-ups are working on?

At this point, aren’t we pretty sure that laser confinement won’t easily scale to continuous operations? All the fusion startups I can think of are using some form of magnetic confinement.

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- RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Mmm… I wouldn’t say that it’s difficult to scale. Getting fusion to happen is hard, but repeatedly is simply an engineering problem (still hard, but less so).
  
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