Submitted 8 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://qz.com/nuclear-fusion-clean-energy-jet-record-energy-1851242131
Clean energy could be ‘closer than ever’ after a nuclear fusion machine smashed a record::JET’s final nuclear fusion experiment produced a record-breaking 69 megajoules of heat. Nice.
“closer than ever”
We are now closer than ever at anything that hasn’t happened yet and will happen in the future.
We’re closer than you think.
Obviously we are, because we do not think much of something which hasn’t already happened.
“Smashed”
Yeah, I’m not reading this.
I did it for you!
This heat output is about 20% higher than the previous record and twenty times higher than the net positive reaction that made headlines recently.
It’s worth noting that the “twenty times higher” isn’t the takeaway here as two different fusion methods were used. The article describes a significant, incremental milestone - not a ridiculously large leap forward.
The lab that conducted this experiment will be closing down soon, so this achievement is seen as the JET lab’s swan song.
Don’t you want to know how fusion slammed the nonbelievers?
Nuclear fusion, this one weird trick.
Excellent news. Small steps to hopefully thread the needle with. Don’t be discouraging, people, we need success and vigor.
We need renewables now, not viable fusion two decades from now.
It’s gonna be both. Only a simpleton would be worried others think that way.
Needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Actually capturing the heat for electricity, and getting more electricity out of it than required to run the reactor itself, remain massive open questions that this generation of research reactors does not even begin to tackle.
IIRC, this is a big deal because they are achieving more energy out than they put in.
If I’ve been reading these correctly they are achieving it with tiny amounts of fuel and slowly working up as they achieve success. I’m seeing these as proof of concept and fantastic steps in the right direction.
In this context, the “energy that they put in” only counts the heating of the plasma. It does not include the energy needed to run the rest of the reactor, like the magnets that trap the plasma. If you count those other energy needs, about an order of magnitude improvement is still required. Possibly more, if we have to extract the energy (an incredibly hard problem that’s barely been scratched so far).
So yeah, it’s nice to see the progress, but the road ahead is still a very long one.
It doesn’t look like they’re generating electricity with that energy yet, so while you are correct the person you responded to is also correct in that we still need to prove we can harness it efficiently enough.
I think they’ll get there, it just boils down to investment and time.
Nice
Tokamaks… sigh.
When it finally works, you will have invented the most expensive form of energy we’ve ever imagined. Congratulations.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m excited for fusion. Fusion has some amazing potential as a power source and propulsion for space ships. But outside of that application, I don’t know… I’m pissemistic. I do not think it will be the global energy revolution so many people seem to think it will be. It will not be unlimited cheap energy, not be a longshot.
its gonna be unlimited expensive energy, which is a start.
except we needed a start 20 years ago, not now lol
Is it though? I mean sure, the fuel is abundant, we have hydrogen. But the other support materials are quite limited, berillium, helium, nuclear engineers. I don’t think we have enough of all of that for an energy revolution.
Because you don’t understand shit. This can be made self sufficient and eternally run.
And if there’s one thing we’ve all learned, it’s that if it’s cheap to make, the trillionaire owners won’t overcharge for it.
Yes, I think we’ll have trillionaires first.
There are several other topologies with promise. But even a tokamak can use its first wall latent heat to turn the archaic steam turbine.
While I also have low expectations for plasma density in tokamaks, they’re able to keep plasma at fusion temperatures for minutes at a time.
69 MJ is 19.17 kWh. About 86p of electricity at today’s wholesale price in the UK (£45/MWh: today is fairly average).
The research they are doing is great, but there’s so much engineering to be done to turn fusion into something practical; something capable of running streams of pulses, not just single ones.
This was the last experiment for this reactor running it outside of design limits.
Yes. That’s already being worked on, in forms other than just the tokamak as well.
‘Closer than ever’
So perpetually 49 years away rather than 50 years.
If only it were leaps and bounds closer and not just a few inches.
So another site that makes it look like the article ends in order to inject some completely unrelated video in the middle
We could have a functioning cold fusion reactor tomorrow and it’ll never see public use because the pieces of trash that run the oil industry still have an iron grip on all the politicians worldwide.
Why is the project ended? Is there a next prototype?
It’s ending because it’s old. JET has been running since the 80s. It’s successor is ITER, which ran into some delays, but is expected to be finished sometime next year.
And which we (UK) have opted to not be part of.
Instead, we are making a budget available to our own research facilities.
It will be the utterly enormous, mind-blowingly vast sum of…
…wait for it…
600…
million pounds!
(༎ຶ ෴ ༎ຶ)
jordanlund@lemmy.world 8 months ago
newsweek.com/energy-nuclear-fusion-test-jet-world…
“By my estimate this is enough energy to make over 600 cups of tea,” professor Stuart Mangles—a physicist from Imperial College London, England—said in a statement.
rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
The most English measurement.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The British version of Americans measuring things in football fields
CaptainMcMonkey@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Wait, how big IS a football field?