3 ms·

Can you expand on that? I find the claim almost trivially true: we care about electricity production, so that should be the main goal we're tracking.

• willis936 5y ago
  A high Q machine is expensive. It's by nature a nuclear facility, which adds a few zeroes to the cost. Nuclear fusion machines needs tritium fuel, which is made in exactly one breeder on the planet. In general a fusion machine just being nuclear doesn't add much scientific value. The plasma physics for making a better (cheaper) reactor has been pushed in smaller machines, as shown by better triple product values and empirical scaling laws. Triple product is a measure of how well the plasma is confined. That's the metric to focus on (when accounting for the fact that the science machines are small with scaling laws). In that regard, we have made excellent progress. A high Q machine (such as ITER) is valuable because it lets us study burning plasmas. It's an expensive pill to swallow but an essential step towards making a real reactor. Qtotal = 1 is a nothingburher. Qplasma = 1 is also a nothingburger, but at least going past that barrier grants new knowledge.