4 ms·
> so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as re
by naasking 4y ago
> so the improvement needed to scale and "commercialize it," whatever that really means looks more like 10x than 200x. In the world of fusion, that counts as really good progress.
Yes it's good progress, but an order of magnitude is not nothing. Squeezing another order of magnitude efficiency out of the lasers will be very difficult. It took 30 years or so to go from 1% efficiency to 20%, and law of diminishing returns applies.
- pclmulqdq 4y agoIt's still probably about 100x, given efficiency losses all around, even on the highest-efficiency lasers.
- janalsncm 4y agoWhy does the law of diminishing returns apply? A lot of things aren’t diminishing returns.
- naasking 4y agoLiterally everything has diminishing returns because nothing is infinite. Edit: to clarify, lasers will have some maximum efficiency that is less than 100% and approaching that maximum is subject to diminishing returns.
- nchi3 4y agoDiminishing returns usually applies if you assume there are no major breakthroughs. Can we assume that there won't be any major breakthroughs in this field?
- naasking 4y agoDiminishing returns describes a trend. A breakthrough describes a single data point that bucks the trend. I'm not sure these are mutually exclusive, as after any breakthrough the diminishing returns trend is reestablished. I wouldn't bet on no breakthroughs happening in laser efficiency, but more efficient lasers doesn't look like it will be enough to get to net energy given other inefficiencies in the system.
- janalsncm 4y agoThat is trivially true at the extremes of energy input. If you input an infinite amount of energy you will not get an infinite amount out. But that’s not what we’re talking about. This is a physical process which is known to be exothermic for the energy ranges we care about. As another example, raising the temperature of a flammable material 1 degree from room temperature will probably not light. Ditto with 2 degrees. But eventually, if you raise the temperature high enough, you’ll get more energy out than you put in. That’s the type of process we’re talking about now.