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[-] teft@lemmy.world 36 points 3 days ago

Right beside full self driving? Is this like the classic “fusion is just 5 years away”?

[-] EleventhHour@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Hey, at least we have actually accomplished (edit: net-positive) fusion. 10-20 years before the first commercial plant comes online, but fusion is a technology which now exists. This is extremely awesome. Honestly, I never thought I’d see it. But, it’s here, it exists, and now the distance between today and when the first power plant comes online is just a matter of scaling the tech upwards.

Full, autonomous self-driving cabs - especially from Tesla - on a massive scale… not so much.

[-] Badabinski@kbin.earth 5 points 3 days ago

Question for you, when you say that we've accomplished fusion, do you mean fusion that produces more power than took to generate it? Or simply the act of fusing atoms together in a reactor (vs the uncontained fusion present in thermonuclear bombs)? If it's the former, then like, holy shit, that's actually been accomplished‽ Like, I know NIF had their whole thing with breakeven fusion a couple of years ago, but that was only counting the energy that made it to the hohlraum, not all the energy that was lost powering the lasers and shit. When you factor all of that in (like you'd need to for realistic power generation) then it's very far away from breakeven generation. It's still an incredible breakthrough and will help us figure out fusion energy, but it's not a practical means of energy generation at this time. Did something else happen that I missed‽

If it's the latter, then we've actually been fusing atoms together in reactors since the 1950s. In fact, there's a community of people who build small fusion reactors as a hobby! I learned about this a few years ago when a 16 year old made the news by being the youngest person to build their own reactor. The main site I know of is https://www.fusor.net/

[-] movies@lemmy.world 9 points 3 days ago

Previous commenter may have been referring to this, where Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced producing more energy than the laser energy put into it https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-national-laboratory-makes-history-achieving-fusion-ignition

[-] EleventhHour@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I appreciate the link!

I forgot bout this achievement in 2022!

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this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
363 points (96.4% liked)

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