Fusion breakthrough

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Alan Phipps
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Alan Phipps » Wed, 14. Dec 22, 09:38

Back onto thread topic please.
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by esd » Wed, 14. Dec 22, 17:13

The BBC covered this recently, and one thing that jumped out was that the power for the lasers wasn't included in the power cost calculations!

On the bright side, there's a new, low-power, method for extracting hydrogen and oxygen directly from seawater! Linky.
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Observe » Wed, 14. Dec 22, 20:23

esd wrote:
Wed, 14. Dec 22, 17:13
The BBC covered this recently, and one thing that jumped out was that the power for the lasers wasn't included in the power cost calculations!
I had been wondering about that. So this breakthrough has not resulted in an overall net gain after all. I haven't seen any details about the efficiency of the lasers used in terms of power loss from the grid. It seems the old joke that nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, likely remains true in spite of recent accomplishments.

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by exogenesis » Thu, 15. Dec 22, 09:22

esd wrote:
Wed, 14. Dec 22, 17:13
The BBC covered this recently, and one thing that jumped out was that the power for the lasers wasn't included in the power cost calculations!

On the bright side, there's a new, low-power, method for extracting hydrogen and oxygen directly from seawater! Linky.
Interesting, but reading the article it seems the advantage is in not needing pure water
for electrolysis (can be used in sea water), rather than being 'low power' :

"Power-wise, the system used about as much energy as a standard electrolyzer, confirming that the water purification wasn't exacting any energetic cost."

"it certainly has the potential to allow us to scratch "needs pure water" off the list of those problems."

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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by JSDD » Sat, 24. Dec 22, 00:23

what the americans do with that "laser show" will never be useful to produce electricity ...
problem is that its not designed to operate continuously, so its just a nice experiment (to prove that the scientific principle works)

gotta wait for ITER (or its chinese copy) to learn something new about fusion, self-heating plasma and the materials necessary to operate such a fusion reactor commercially

"break-through" is an over-statement ... what they "figured out" is what was already known: you can get energy out when fusing 2H and 3H
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Re: Fusion breakthrough

Post by Observe » Sat, 24. Dec 22, 02:49

JSDD wrote:
Sat, 24. Dec 22, 00:23
"break-through" is an over-statement ... what they "figured out" is what was already known: you can get energy out when fusing 2H and 3H
The dog-and-pony show was mainly to provide justification for increased funding and to bedazzle the general public into accepting that the expense is worthwhile and that the goal of net gain is achievable. Naturally, they didn't elaborate about the fact that overall, they lost 99% of the power that they put into it.

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