Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed as a major breakthrough

Re:Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed ... by IshKebab on Monday December 19, 2022 @09:35AM (#34052488)

Not really because we have known for almost a century that nuclear fusion is a real thing that can release energy.

The problem is the engineering of how to actually do it in a useful way. They have made some progress towards that but it's still extremely unlikely that laser based fusion will ever work as a power source because: a) they're still two orders of magnitude from break-even from the input side, and b) they don't have a practical way of capturing the energy that's produced at all as far as I understand it.

None of that has changed.

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Re:Nuclear physicist explains why fusion ignition is hailed ... by Robotbeat on Monday December 19, 2022 @10:19AM (#34053045)

All of that has changed, since they’ve achieved ignition in 2021 and then confirmed the result here. https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2022121...

The way to capture the energy and make it into electricity was studied here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Inertial_Fusion_Energy

But it had been premature before they achieved ignition. You don’t build a boiler before you even have been able to spark a flame.

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