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A comment on Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma duration. Parent comment

Re:Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma du... by slightwinder on Thursday February 20, 2025 @05:46AM (#43113228)
That's not really how it works. We do know SOME ways to reach fusion, but they are not on the level we need. We haven't mastered fusion yet, we still need to research the foundations. We don't even know if scaling is all we need, and we don't know how to scale it to the level we seek.

Technology usually has a range of performance, what it can do and what not. And our technology for fusion-process is not in the range for a commercial reactor, so we still need a breakthrough in our understanding.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Nuclear fusion: WEST beats the world record for plasma du... by api on Thursday February 20, 2025 @08:03AM (#43114163)
Hmm... in that case the analogy with AI is even better. This sounds like neural networks before things like deep learning and the transformer architecture -- before we figured out how to scale them. Turns out this did require some innovations. It wasn't just a matter of making a bigger model.
[ Parent | on HN ]