US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved

Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by jcarreiro on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @01:37PM (#33973635)

Because they are researching inertial confinement fusion, not trying to build a working power plant. The efficiency of the lasers doesn't matter, since it doesn't affect their research.

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Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by Aeolun on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @05:41PM (#33977233)

Is energy on the order of 300MJ so cheap? You’d think that cutting it down to 150MJ would allow them to do more experiments.

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Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by kragen on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @06:24PM (#33977759)

300 megajoules is 83 kilowatt hours

a typical power price at trading hubs is US$40 per megawatt hour, though this varies considerably depending on many factors and is sometimes actually negative

a typical retail price is US$120 per megawatt hour

so this is about US$10 worth of electrical energy

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Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by nrki on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @05:58PM (#33977445)

300MJ ~= 83kWh which is like, $2000 in CA

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Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by IanCal on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @06:49PM (#33977998)

I think you're out by some orders of magnitude. With the current energy issues in the UK it'd be under £100. Other things suggest in California it's more like 20 cents per kWh so were you thinking ~$20?

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Re:US Department of Energy: Fusion Ignition Achieved by nrki on Tuesday December 13, 2022 @08:50PM (#33979030)

You're right of course, messing up my units again.

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