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Summary: researchers are hopeful of achieving break-even in a controlled fusion reaction this year, based on extrapolations of small-scale experiments. But it's
by CWuestefeld 17y ago
Summary: researchers are hopeful of achieving break-even in a controlled fusion reaction this year, based on extrapolations of small-scale experiments. But it's still a long way from an actually commercially-viable process, and there are other approaches that may be more successful -- or none at all.
- stcredzero 17y agoThe Inertial Containment folks are going to go for exciting a hohlraum with their 192 lasers. I don't think blasting a precisely machined gold-plated metal cylinder every second is going to be economically viable.
- mattheww 17y agoIf they can reach create a controlled fusion reaction, a commercial reactor would be designed to continually feed fuel into it to continue the reaction. Reaching "break-even" is when the lasers don't have to be fired for the reaction to continue.
- CWuestefeld 17y agoReaching "break-even" is when the lasers don't have to be fired for the reaction to continue No, that's a "self-sustaining" reaction. Break-even means that the amount of energy released in the reaction is equal to the energy necessary to fuel the reaction.
- jerf 17y agoI can't even imagine how to make this commercially viable. Even if they reach breakeven, I can't imagine a process that would take less than a minute to reset the reactor for the next run, given the incredible precision necessary with the target, and I suspect my "minute" is grotesquely optimistic. I guess what this goes to show is that "breakeven" itself isn't even all that interesting. "Commercially viable" is what we are looking for. Here's hoping Polywell works out. Vaguely promising signs seem to be coming from the project but it's hard to see much detail through the Navy classification.