I wonder if it’s possible for a reactor to go out of control and accidentally create a star? That probably wouldn’t work out so well, unless it’s just a little star, kind of like the little planet in the Little Prince.
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Short answer: no, because there is insufficient mass involved to form a self-sustaining star. As a point of comparison, note that Jupiter failed the mass requirement by a factor of 70 or so.
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I’ll get excited when someone demonstrates an actual working fusion reactor. I worked too long with engineers and designers whose eternal litany was “we’re making progress”.
. . . and “we need more money”.
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Guess it depends how long you live, eh?
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Interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing.
There are many fusion startups getting serious funding these days. The world isn’t just waiting for ITER to complete. I don’t know all the physics but it seems like better computer modeling has made it possible to figure out new containment approaches that don’t require the world’s biggest supercooled magnetic confinement. I’m sure most of these startups will fail but we only need one to succeed.
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My two questions:
- Why are so many people working to create cheap clean energy? What do they gain? Such an expensive undertaking can’t be all about altruism.
- Why has no one yet replied with a DBZ gif?
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Developing the underlying technology, having the patents for it, and essentially having the most successful version of it on the market would set up a massive win for whomever can pull it off. Everyone would have to lease their tech or put in the work to come up with an alternative that works just as well (or better).
So yeah its 100% a money thing. It’s like how Ford was able to figure out a lot on how to mass produce cars and gained a monopoly on the market because his competitors had to lease the patents for a lot of his ideas or do crazy workarounds to not do so.
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Any amount of fuel big enough to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction… already is a self-sustaining fusion reaction. Gravity would be enough to start fusion.
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Given that Helium reserves are running out, a new source of it would be a nice additional bonus from Fusion power (as well as the whole “solving the world’s energy needs” thing).
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They’re also ready to build the prototype I believe in time for 2023 (it’s a bit later than expected but it was due to funding iirc). I know it’s going to be in the Vancouver area. I’d love to see it run someday. 
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The vast majority of research in fusion is funded by governments. Cheap energy would be a hell of a reward.
Private endeavors just want to be the next GE Hitatchi.
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Yeah, it’s possible. It is how thermonuclear bombs work.
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Also, coming up with a cheap way to produce energy, when the world us used to paying current prices for it is a good way to make a lot of money. Money that is currently being made by all other forms of energy generation.
As always, theree’s a relevant Alpha Centairi quote:
And when at last it is time for the transition from megacorporation to planetary government, from entrepreneur to emperor, it is then that the true genius of our strategy shall become apparent, for energy is the lifeblood of this society and when the chips are down he who controls the energy supply controls Planet. In former times the energy monopoly was called “The Power Company”; we intend to give this name an entirely new meaning.
CEO Nwabudike Morgan “The Centauri Monopoly”
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There is also something called “aneutronic fusion” that uses boron isotopes that doesn’t release neutrons. I don’t think it is currently being explored seriously for fusion energy.
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There will be a way to prevent that. Rest assured.
First, we cannot let the brainwashed hordes of communism win. So we’ll devise an investment strategy, and billionaires who chip in developing the tech and make it market ready will be able to monetise it.
Also, if we had unlimited energy, we would soon drown even more in our litter. The Great Pacific garbage patch would be just a minor footnote in that.
Currently, I trust Homo sapiens to ruin everything even faster with unlimited energy supply.
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In 1960, people knew it was probably possible to travel to the Moon, but there were a lot of unresolved questions. The Apollo program answered a lot of those scientifically, but (by design) it permanently foreclosed the question of whether it could be done cheaply. It’s very unlikely that anyone will ever propose or attempt traveling to the Moon for one fiftieth of the cost.
Fusion R&D seems to be a similar story. Even though none of the Big Science efforts has actually borne fruit, the common wisdom still appears to be that any practical design will involve a tokamak or something similar. Many other potential approaches are known, but most researchers aren’t pursuing those, and investors certainly aren’t. Basically, “everyone knows” you have to spend billions to get a useful fusion reactor.
If you were going to be cynical, you might say that if something can’t be done after spending dozens of years and billions of dollars trying, then it probably can’t be done. I mean, it’s not like this is a physics question; we know very well that fusion can be done. We have energetically-abundant hydrogen bombs and $300 garage-built fusors. The question tokamak projects are researching is, “can you economically sustain thermonuclear conditions using magnets?”, and for all practical purposes they have demonstrated the answer to be “no”.
It probably doesn’t help that people lump non-tokamak fusion ideas in with that Fleischmann & Pons hoax / crank silliness. There are plenty of entirely serious concepts, based on established physics, that don’t require sun-like conditions to sustain fusion. You could give a ten-million-dollar grant to a thousand such projects and it’d still be cheaper than ITER.
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We have achieved fusion through a variety of methods. Heck, you can build your own fusers that will achieve nuclear fusion.
We just haven’t hit the break-even point where we’re sustainably producing more energy than it consumes.
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Those other replies are confused. This is what fusion is:
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