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kyoko9 t1_j3r8ead wrote

After 50 years of research, we've finally managed to get fusion power to work for more than a few seconds.

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TheEvilBagel147 t1_j3tdjwi wrote

It’s proof of concept. I think the very first airplane was in the air for 11 seconds.

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themadpants t1_j3v3hhw wrote

Yup, and the first commercial flight was in 1914, and the first commercial jet flew in 1949.

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P1xelHunter78 t1_j3wh8vt wrote

Orville Wright allegedly was allowed by Howard Huges to to fly a Lockheed Constellation prototype before his death. In his lifetime he went from an aircraft that flew 11 seconds to one that helped establish reliable land based transcontinental service to the masses.

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saltyhasp t1_j3u3m8o wrote

I do not think it was seconds. Probably much less. It was not energy positive either except in a very narrow sense.

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derKonigsten t1_j3u7bxy wrote

Unless this is a different experiment than from a few weeks ago i remember watching a press briefing where the white coat said they input .5MW, and achieved an output of 1.5MW, albeit for like a few micro seconds (10^-6 seconds), but i think he also said their ignition pulse was in the hundreds of nano seconds. So very energy positive, just not sustained for any real world application

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Independent-Ad-8531 t1_j3u9y1f wrote

And don't confuse the unit, they where talking about MJ not MW.

1MJ = 0.27 kWh

Edit: In more common units this reads like 0.14kWh of light energy produced 0.42kWh of fusion energy.

Edit2: To produce the amount of 0.14kWh of light energy the amount of 14kWh of electric energy where used. And an infinite amount of energy (in comparison) to produce the "fuel"

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TerpenesByMS t1_j3uniff wrote

NIF's "COP>1" run that you joke about here points out how its style of fusion generation will never scale economically. Check out Helion's design and approach. Lofty targets, but my fave design among all I've reviewed by a lot. Electrolyzed heavy water? Direct-to-electric operating principle? Now we're talking

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Independent-Ad-8531 t1_j3u9hst wrote

And the energy positivity is just the energy of the light hitting the target. Not the energy of the particle accelerator to separate the different hydrogen isotopes nor the electric energy to generate that light via lasers with a efficiency of about 1%.

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CatalyticDragon t1_j3vckhh wrote

The reaction lasted for 5 microseconds.

And the power required to get it was 300-400 megajoules of grid power to create a 2.05-megajoule laser shot which yielded 3.15 megajoules of energy output.

Getting 0.9% the energy returned for a small fraction of a second is a breakthrough, of sorts, but fusion power remains many decades away from being a reality and even then it'll only be a reality in niche (military, space) applications.

It's complex, expensive, and produces massive amounts of waste heat, so it's just not really compelling when it goes up against dirt cheap renewables.

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Independent-Ad-8531 t1_j3u4by0 wrote

No we didn't. We managed to get fusion stable for a tiny fraction of a millisecond. This uses the inertia of the "fuel" and ignites a miniscule fusion bomb. This is not stable and can not be done more often then once or twice a day by the nature of this experiment.

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