Nuclear fusion breakthrough: US lab achieves multiple ignitions

[Redaktion]

Nuclear fusion: Is infinite energy on the horizon? US researchers have achieved fusion reactions that produce more energy than they consume, and have repeated the ignition several times. Funding for three new laser fusion research centres has been announced by the US government.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Nuclear-fusion-breakthrough-US-lab-achieves-multiple-ignitions.787254.0.html

[Mr Majestyk]

And it will always be 20 years away. Still good to see inertial confinement devices making progress. Tokamaks will never be viable. Inertial confinement and Stellarators are the only path forward.

[Olderguy54]

Its coming less than 20 years some say 10 fingers crossed think the shoe Expanse

[Jack Braden]

The amount of energy output by this quick fusion reaction is stated as 4MJ, and the amount of energy in the 192 laser beams is stated as 1.9MJ, the amount of energy required to power the 192 lasers is not specified as that is the critical value.  I would be interested in seeing what the real overall system efficiency is because that's the efficiency that matters from an engineering standpoint. Plus, there massive power supplies that power these lasers, and they aren't 100% efficient.
 I'm guessing this efficiency is way far (maybe orders of magnitude away) from ever making fusion a viable means for generating power.  There's a reason why this value isn't being stated.  The details are critical.

[David Lee]

"... equivalent to the energy released by the explosion of 10 kilograms of TNT." That's 22 pounds. How would that much TNT not blow the whole machine to bits?

[A]

))))

[NikoB]

In reality, there is no progress, because the entire consumption chain up to the final generator consumes an order of magnitude more than the reactor produces. Those. efficiency is at least an order of magnitude lower than the minimum possible input-to-production ratio of 1 for this to become commercially interesting and practically feasible.

[A]

In reality, there is no progress, because the entire consumption chain up to the final generator consumes an order of magnitude more than the reactor produces.

Finally, a real nuclear fusion expert. Now go google what "fusion ignition" is and why "entire consumption chain" doesn't matter. Then come back and tell everyone.

[DavidC1]

but the 3.15 MJ it outputted is equivalent to the energy content of about a tenth of a gallon of gasoline. Notably, the energy that the lasers input into the reaction, 2.05 MJ, is only a tiny share of the 300 MJ of energy the facility needed to run the experiment.

3.15/300.

Not even close lol. There are countless battery tech that's supposed to be 5-10 years away and it doesn't happen. If they are claiming decades, it's probably not coming for several lifetimes.

[A]

Not even close lol

"Not even close" to what.
It's a fusion ignition demonstrator, not a power plant.

[Patrick Robertson]

Once I transform light into matter then I can achieve the speed of light. It will be simple