4 ms·
Fusion is easy. Lots of fusion (but not quite city leveling kind) is hard. As far as I can tell most of the difficulty arises in the plasma physics part instea
by welterde 10y ago
Fusion is easy. Lots of fusion (but not quite city leveling kind) is hard.
As far as I can tell most of the difficulty arises in the plasma physics part instead of the actual fusion bit (the latter being fairly well understood now for quite a long time now).
That's where 90% of the work has to go get fusion power and also the reason the early estimates for when fusion power would be available were so optimistic.
It wasn't clear back then how difficult and unforgiving plasmas can be (and making the plasma extremely hot, applying strong magnetic fields and running high currents through it doesn't make it easier to work with - quite the opposite).
- YZF 10y agoSure. I believe there's some fusion happening around us all the time. It's a statistical event. But to get a useful amount of fusion is different. Yes, plasma is very difficult. You need to get it hot enough and in the right shape and in the right position at the right time. But even when you do that there are still many hard problems to solve. One of them is irradiation embrittlement. Capturing all the energy efficiently and converting it efficiently into power is also difficult (steam turbines I guess). The efficiencies of the input side are also a problem (the energy intake of creating the plasma, managing it, "fusing" it). All these inefficiencies eat into your energy budget making it harder to get significantly more energy out than you put in... Anyways, I'm not a physicist, but every little problem I hear about related to this process seems to be of monumental proportions and there are many of those...