A physics-major friend of mine in college once described a problem involving a spherical chicken radiating spherical egg waves. Science is wonderful.
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Just a heads up this announcement isn’t an indicator that we are close to commercial Fusion.
When they say get gain they mean something really narrow.
The energy that laser put into the fuel pellet was less than the energy of the fusion reaction.
This doesn’t include the energy to power the laser, nor the total energy needed to run the facility. Or take into account energy lost while heating water and running a steam turbine.
In addition the fuel pellets are made of gold. That gold is vaporized on every shot.
Inertial Confinement Fusion is for basic research. It’s not a path to build an effective fusion power plant.
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Of course there will.
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Watch this be so heavily caveated that scientists will still be achieving “first-ever breakeven+ fusion reaction” results for decades to come. It’d be cool if it meant things were about to change but I’d have to learn more to get excited.
I think there’s been a lot of small yet important advances to come out within the last 5 years or so, to your point that doesn’t mean fusion is around the corner but i do think it’s exciting and keeping excitement going with the public at large is really pertinent as far as continued or increased funding goes.
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And the control room operator’s coffee doesn’t heat itself… 
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And you still have to buy the donuts…Doh!
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I think the point here, which may be missed, is that the problem may have moved from a physics issue to an engineering one. That’s the difference between “20 years away and always will be” and “give me a minute here.” No, it wont change things now. That’s not realistic. But if we want a Star Trek-like, post-scarcity civilization, fission* is pretty much the only game in town within the laws of physics as currently understood. Not gonna change my plans for solar panels on the house, but gives me more hope for species survival. And we are so starved for good and encouraging news, i will take this, thank you very much.
(*ETA: Fusion, not fission. )
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Moving something from “It’s not possible” to “We’ve shown it is indeed possible” is a very big step in any technology. It’s usually one of the biggest and hardest steps to take.
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It wouldn’t surprise me if it never ends up being cheaper than solar and wind. (Seems like there are going to be a lot of costs, including dealing with radioactive waste, that renewables won’t have.) If it ever works, it’ll likely be a complement to renewables, providing power when they can’t, or beyond what they can provide.
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isn’t the goal there rather to simulate atomic bombs? so kind of success i guess.
And free from inevitable political interference.
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Fusion, surely
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Sorry, you are correct. I fizzed when i shoulda fused.
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We’ve all been there.
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Yeah, I’m guessing something close to 100 years before fusion plants are a significant source of power. But given the timescales* involved in climate change, that does give me some hope.
*yes, I know that we need to do more NOW. But fixing the mess that we have spent more than 100 years getting ourselves in to will require sustained, continuous improvement as we collectively lower our carbon footprint.
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Of course xkcd has something apropos:
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The good thing about rare earth metals is that they’re not actually that rare (they’re not earths either, but that’s for another day). Until relatively recently it was the cost of extracting them and isolating them from each other that had dissuaded production in most countries. The Chinese mining companies were less concerned with environmental protection and the toxic, occasionally radioactive waste streams found with rare earths and so went on to dominate the market.
More countries are now beginning to extract rare earths - and in a friendlier manner - as well as new technologies coming along that need less of them, or dispense with them entirely.
The same for lithium. As well as the existing reliance on salt deposits, other sources of the metal are now becoming viable - down in my former neck of the woods in Cornwall, there is a lot of interest in lithium micas found in the waste tailings of china clay extraction as well as lithium rich geothermal brines which can not only make battery fuel but also generate electricity and warm houses.
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Good point - and another is that there are now several different approaches to fusion that are all showing genuine potential. Fingers crossed, at least one of them will be a viable source of energy in the near future.
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